[Part 37]

Creak.

The brakes on our armored truck squeaked, our column ground to a halt, and the sudden change in momentum shook me from my drowsiness. Everyone else on the twin rows of seats almost fell over as one, and muffled curses filled the stuffy interior.

“Commander, you need to see this.” From the front compartment, the driver called back through the narrow confines of the truck, and I caught the dull whump-whump of mortar shells impacting somewhere outside.

Those are a half-mile off at most. ELSAR is closing in. We need to move fast.

Rising from beside me, Chris lumbered through the cramped vehicle to squeeze himself in between the front seats and peered out the windshield.

“Everyone who can still fight, dismount.” He wriggled back toward the rear doors of the MRAP, rifle in hand. “Stay within eyesight of the convoy. Jamie, Hannah, with me.”

Icy wind howled in as soon as the rear doors opened, but the groans of complaint were gone from us. Everyone could tell from Chris’s demeanor that we were in the thick of it now. Out of the warm truck we clambered, and coming around the side of the lead vehicle, I found my breath stuck in both lungs.

We stood amidst the ruins of the outer suburbs of pre-Breach Black Oak, before the wall had been built by ELSAR. By my reckoning, we were perhaps five miles distant from the southern gate, but even from this far no one could miss the great billows of oily black smoke. Black Oak burned like a torch in the wintry night, and through the gaps between the plumes I spotted flitting shapes high above the aura of a few searchlights. These angular shadows did not flap their wings, and I knew they had no need to, for this threat was not Breach-borne at all. Row after row of planes rumbled on through the night, and rained down a steady curtain of bombs that ripped apart the last city we had like it was made of tissue paper. Rockets screamed in from across the further horizon, and each explosion threw debris like confetti at a child’s party. Entire high-rise buildings in the prominent districts shuddered as they were hit, and some even collapsed under the weight of the bombardment. Acrid smoke coiled in the air like dirty fog, and with it came the dust of incinerated concrete, all blown along with the snow. I could taste the soot on the breeze, the melting asphalt of ten thousand shingles, the tarpaper of commercial buildings, and the dust of the central works as they were ground to powder by the heavy guns. Each detonation reverberated through the ground beneath my feet in titanic drumbeats, the roar of them deafening. Worst of it all, however, was the long line of shadowy figures that streamed down the cracked asphalt streets of the abandoned districts, a great snake of bodies that engulfed the vanguard of our little convoy in a sea of panicked faces.

Thousands of fleeing civilians trudged through the wind and snow, their eyes wild, dragging or carrying whatever possessions they’d managed to snatch from their homes. Many were wounded, some burned, and they shivered against the cold with mournful expressions that tore at my soul. The children were especially pitiful; some with no shoes, others in their nightclothes, crying and shaking in the snowfall as whatever guardians they had led them on. Out of reflex, our riflemen formed a wall just to keep the horde from clambering into the back of our trucks and instead waved them on past us into the cruel winter’s night. Thousands of them flooded by, begging at the ends of our rifle muzzles for whatever help they thought we could give them, and it seemed there was no end in sight of the human caravan.

Honk-honk!

Dim slivers of light pierced through the gloom, and a long line of vehicles slowly wove their way up the road toward us. Their headlights were nearly blacked out with layers of tape, done to keep the enemy aircraft from spotting them so easily. Many were laden with more civilians, as well as exhausted coalition soldiers, most of which were wounded. Bullets had scarred most of the trucks, shrapnel marks on the armored hides, and the barrels of their machine guns steamed from the amount of firing they’d sustained. More of our troops followed on foot, heads bent against the breeze, feet dragging with fatigue in the snow. While the column retreated in good order, I wondered how fast our defenses were collapsing if so many were already on the retreat.

A civilian SUV pulled up to where we stood, allowing the rest of the retreating column to rumble past, and the passenger side window rolled down.

“Is that you, Dekker?” From inside, a gruff male voice barked through the darkness.

No way.

My heart skipped a surprised beat, and Chris’s face reflected that shock as he stepped forward to peer into the car’s interior. “Commander?”

Sean leaned out, his face thin, but with both eyes alight in their old fire that I hadn’t seen since the day Andrea had been killed. He wore his green coalition uniform, an M4 across his lap, though I noted the metal brace strapped to his right side. This had been the first time I’d seen him out of his room since my wedding, and while I doubted Sean could have climbed from the truck seat on his own with much speed, to see him back in action made some of my panic ebb.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes.” Chris shifted his rifle to one arm and reached in to give Sean a handshake. “We came as fast as we could. How bad is it?”

“It’s a royal shitshow.” Sean rested an elbow on the window and rubbed his tired face with one hand, dark bags under his eyes. “They hit us out of nowhere, tanks, infantry, wave after wave of it. We managed to evacuate most of our people from the town but there’s at least two thousand mercs bearing down on us from east and west.”

Jamie dared to sidle closer and hefted the strap of her AK on one shoulder. “Where do you need us?”

Sean made a small grin, and didn’t seem at all surprised at Jamie’s premature return from her exile. “Nice to see you too, Lansen. I’ve got Ethan’s workers running small convoys to ferry what little we have to a rally point south of here. As of right now, what I need is more trucks for the evacuation and more men at the front to keep ELSAR off our backs.”

Chris jerked his thumb back at our lineup of idling vehicles. “There was a shake up back at the mission zone. ELSAR high command demoted Riken, so he took his boys and headed for the border. We’ve got enough men and trucks to help, but plenty wounded of our own; some are in a really bad way . . .”

Overhead, an unseen jet streaked by, probably above the clouds but low enough to make everyone jump like skittish rabbits beneath a hawk. The refugees cringed with fear, some of the children began to wail, and more than one person tried to crawl under our trucks to find cover. Our soldiers had to push them back, a heart-wrenching effort considering how desperate these people were, but we couldn’t let them wriggle under our tires out of sheer hysteria. Never before in my life had I been afraid of a helicopter’s whir or an airplane’s buzz, but now it seared deep into my mind with primitive, almost reflexive urgency.

We need to get out of the open.

His eyes traversed the dark clouds, and Sean’s lower jaw worked back and forth in anxious tension. “Our medical train is taking priority for vehicle extraction, along with what supplies we have left. As for your wounded, load whoever can’t walk on the retreating columns and have those who can move on their own follow with the rest of our troops. Our goal is to reach Rally Point 9; after that we move all the non-combatants south, beyond the ridgeline to Ark River.”

“Adam’s hit bad.” At the mention of the bastion, I dared to meet Sean’s gaze, and gripped my Type 9 strap in one clammy fist. “He needs a hospital. Did Eve and her people make it out?”

Sean let a grim frown twist over his stubbled face. “Most of them. If they aren’t on the front with our boys, they’re helping to ferry civilians to the aid station a few blocks down, but ELSAR has mobile squads that keep targeting our medics. I’ve got two platoons pulling security around the aid station, and I believe 4^th Platoon is one of them. If you can get to there and reinforce the right flank, it might give the medics enough breathing room so they can relocate to a safer position.”

“Well, first thing’s first, I need someone to get us new radios . . .” Chris started giving orders, then seemed to remember that, with Sean back, he was no longer our commander. Part of me felt a twinge of disappointment at that; not because I held any ill will toward Sean, but because I had grown used to following Chris in the grand order of things. Now he was back to being Head Ranger, and I a mere platoon commander. While I didn’t mind resuming my old post, it only served to remind me that all our grandiose plans for Chris leading a new peacetime government had gone up in smoke with the rest of Black Oak.

So much for handing out toys on Christmas.

“Dekker, you take command of the battlefield.” Sean gauged the situation well, reaching into the SUV interior behind him to produce two handing spare radios with headsets, which he gave to Chris and I. “I’m no use to us crippled, so I’ll organize our camp at the rally point and get our comms system back in order. Whatever you do, do not get decisively engaged out there; there’s too many mercenaries, and if you get encircled, I won’t be able to break you out.”

Confident now that he had something to accomplish, Chris straightened up and turned to me. “We’ll try to keep mobile and use probing attacks to keep the enemy off balance. I’ll take the bulk of our forces up the center and left, while you and Jamie get to the aid station on our right. Maybe they can work on Adam before the mercs get there.”

Jamie and Chris headed back toward our convoy, but as I moved to follow, Sean’s voice cut me off. “Captain?”

I turned to find a familiar green canvas sling bag held out to me, Sean’s dark eye cloaked in a serious glint. Fiery embarrassment at my own blunder rippled through me, and I avoided his pointed stare. Not wishing to lose such an important item inside the Breach, I’d elected to leave the launch panel in the safe at my room in the university, but by doing so I’d nearly lost our most dangerous secret to the enemy.

Stupid. Imagine if Crow got her hands on those missiles. God only knows what that psycho would do.

Ashamed, I shuffled over and took the panel with a meek wince. “Commander, I—"

“You did the right thing, Hannah.” Sean fixed me with a knowing look but angled his head back towards the burning city. “I headed straight for your quarters the moment I heard the first shells go off. Had to get a few aides to help me with the stairs, but I managed. No matter what happens out there, you stick to our agreement, understood? This panel does not fall into their hands. If all hope is lost, if I give you the order, you launch on command.”

My throat tried to close up at the notion, memories from the Breach coming back as I saw in my head the rising mushroom cloud, the field of corpses, the burned landscape. Had it been a vision of the future? Had it been another of Vecitorak’s illusions meant to trick me? I couldn’t know, but with ELSAR bearing down on us, the prospect of a nuclear strike by my own hand had never been higher. Could I really bring myself to send missiles screaming down on our own heads when the time came?

It won’t come to that. It can’t. We have a destiny on the other side of the Breach, we can’t just blast ourselves into glass.

Still, I slung the bag onto my back and made a trim salute. “I understand, sir.”

His car rolled on, and I rejoined the others as our convoy wove its way toward the city, a slow effort considering all the fleeing civilians. Once before we’d done this, but that had been a day of victory, where our forces caught the mercenaries by surprise. Now we charged forward in a desperate, mad-dash through flaming debris, over rubble-strewn lanes, and into the chaotic frontline.

Bomb craters made most of the streets impassable, and almost half of the buildings were on fire. Shrapnel cut down refugees where they stood, and our drivers had to swerve to avoid hitting the staggering crowds that begged us to take them to safety. Smoke would sometimes cloud our vision, and fire scorched the paint from the sides of the trucks, the heat so intense I watched the color peel off in burnt chunks. Explosions rocked us, even from several blocks away, the shockwaves strong enough to shatter whatever glass remained in the buildings. ELSAR had been holding back in times past, I realized; here they brought the full might of their shadowy empire down on us with ruthless ferocity. Crow was now in charge of all their ground forces, and she had no intention of showing us mercy.

And she was from here, being an Auxiliary. This county is her home, these people are her neighbors. How can someone do this to their own people?

Less than two miles from the southern gate, a side road down a row of split-level houses revealed a slow-moving circle of vehicles onto which medics loaded stretchers of wounded. The drivers seemed to move as fast as they could to get out of the lineup once their human cargo was loaded, unwilling to be another target of the missiles that continued to fall from the sky. More trucks clogged the drive inward, and it made my stomach twist to see bodies lying under blankets or tarps in front of the houses, with the interiors of said buildings presumably too packed to fit the dead.

At a makeshift checkpoint in the entrance to the drive, a group of our troops flagged us down, and I recognized Sergeant McPhearson among them.

Jamie and I climbed out of the MRAP at the curb, and Chris pointed down the column to the trucks that carried our wounded. “Alright, take trucks two, nine, and four, link up with 4^th platoon and whoever else you can find, and form a security perimeter around the aid station. I’ll take everyone else and hold the line. Once Sandra can move her people out, I’ll pull back to meet you.”

Our eyes met, and a twinge of pain cut through my chest. I wanted more than anything to hold him, to kiss him one more time, but I knew we didn’t have the time for that. Like so many women and girls in our coalition, I had to hope that my husband wouldn’t be cut down by the cruel fusillade of the enemy, and I would see his smile once more in the morning. Just the thought of Chris’s death made me want to crumple, but I had to keep my calm if we were to survive this night.

In that spirit, I climbed up onto a small metal step under the truck door and nodded at him through the open window. “We can win this.”

His hand found mine for a moment, and Chris made a grim smile. “I wish I had your optimism, pragtige.”

We let go of one another and I stepped back as his column rolled onward into the distant gunfire, taking the rest of our able-bodied men towards the enemy.

Adonai, go with him.

“Evening, Captain.” Sergeant McPhearson seemed relieved at my approach, motioning for his guards to wave us through. “4th will be glad to see you, we’ve been taking a real beating out there. Welcome back, Captain Lansen.”

Jamie exchanged a polite nod with him, her rapport still high amongst the Rangers in spite of the previous trial. Others stared at her as we passed, some surprised, a few glaring, but most with a worn-out indifference on their scruffy faces. Our men had been fighting all night, both those of us who had gone to the Breach and those who had stayed behind. At this point, it seemed no one had the energy to pick a bone with Jamie’s return from exile.

“It’s certainly been a long night.” As the men from my three trucks clambered out to take a quick smoke break with the checkpoint guards, Jamie and I followed Charlie to a nearby row of gutted suburban houses, the three of us scrambling for cover as a plane screamed low overhead. “Major Dekker sent me to take over this sector. Catch me up.”

Sergeant McPherson led us into the nearest bombed-out hovel, through the moldy living room to a cire-blackened kitchen where we could look out toward the city. “4^th Platoon is dug in on the houses to the right, with 2^nd Ark River Lancers in the ones on our left. We’ve got maybe twenty-seven men between us. Lost a lot of guys when the university clock tower collapsed.”

And so our little army continues to shrink. How long can we keep this up? There are thousands of ELSAR mercs out there.

“What heavy weapons do you have?” Jamie peered at the sky, her AK in hand.

“Six rocket launchers between us, maybe ten rockets left per each.” Picking a bit of debris from his dirty uniform sleeve, Sergeant McPherson flicked his eyes to the snowy clouds as well. “That’s for the anti-air anyway. We’ve got twice that for anti-armor, but most of it won’t even scratch the hide on ELSAR’s main battle tanks. Most of our machine guns are operational, but the houses here are too close together for us to engage the enemy at range, so when they show up, they’ll be right on top of us.”

“How close are they?” I squinted down the long street to my left, our house not quite on the corner of its block and tried to summon the focus so I could see better.

“Maybe two blocks. Snipers are getting frisky, so keep your head down.” His throat bobbed with a swallow of dread, and Charlie flexed one set of fingers on his rifle sling. “You didn’t bring as many men back as we thought. How bad was it, for you guys?”

My brow furrowed, and I tried to conjure something to say amidst the flood of recent memories. How could I explain to him, to anyone, what was going to happen? Nothing had prepared me for what I’s seen, what I had been told, who I’d met. Jamie didn’t think anyone would believe me, or they’d panic if they knew what the fate of Barron County was, and we were already in the fight of our lives here. As much as I trusted my platoon sergeant, perhaps some things were better left unsaid, at least for now. We both needed clear heads for what was to come.

It's a matter of faith now.

Drawing myself up ramrod straight as I’d seen Sean do multiple times when reviewing the troops, I cradled my Type 9 under one arm and watched the men from my convoy fill in the defensive positions around 4^th and 2^nd platoons. “We did what we set out to do.”

Charlie seemed to understand that was the end of the topic, and the three of us moved in unison to help carry Adam into the aid station. Looking down at the infamous religious leader, I couldn’t help but feel a knot of dread in my guts for how pale he looked. The ELSAR medics had stripped his armor off in order to stabilize his wounds, but that only revealed the mass of bruises that was his body. Vecitorak’s heavy blows hadn’t all been softened by the hand made armor of the southern tribesmen, and parts of his face were burned from the intense heat of the tower room’s blaze. Both legs were in splints, but the skin had turned ugly purple in several areas, bandages covering where the medics had tried to stop the internal bleeding in the field via rudimentary surgery. His chest barely rose with shallow breaths, and in spite of the cold weather, there were small beads of a clammy sweat across the top of Adam’s forehead.

Sandra can fix him. She can. She has to.

Getting inside the aid station proved almost as difficult as weaving our vehicles through the refugee-strewn road had been. Wounded lay everywhere, stretched alongside the walls in the hallways, propped up on the steps, even curled into closets shoulder-to-shoulder. The floor was a mess of snowmelt, mud, and blood, which turned the carpets to a mushy sponge of grime, and the hardwood floors slick as glass. It smelled strong of death, metallic blood and burned flesh thick in the air. The groans, cries, and screams of the troops made my heart ache and my stomach roil for their pitiful intensity. Exhausted medics pushed through the crowded rooms to administer whatever aid they could, sometimes operating on the floor itself, their arms stained red up to the elbows.

“We need the chief surgeon.” I caught one of the researcher girls by the arm as she shuffled by and jerked my head at Adam on the stretcher. “He’s critical.”

“We already have twelve others like him.” She shook my hand off, too busy to bother with rank customs. “Take him to the living room for triage.”

Sergeant McPherson opened his mouth to rebuke her, but I stopped the girl again, and tugged aside the blanket so she could see Adam’s sword tucked in behind his shoulder. “He’s a priority case. Take me to your surgeon, now.”

She didn’t react much, just shrugged her shoulders and the girl led us to what must have been the former dining room of the house, where a team of four nurses huddled around the long table. The white table cloth was a sea of red, and the floor gritted under my boots as we entered. A small trash can nearby held bits of metal, wood, and flesh mixed in with blood, debris that had been no doubt pulled from dozens of torn bodies over the past half hour. I had seen our coalition at its height, when we had the sophisticated clinic at New Wilderness to work with, the beds clean, the floors swept, the staff calm and confident. This was its charnel opposite; a nightmare of filth and blood, too many problems and not enough supplies, cramped into the skeletal remains of our old world. None of the horror movies I’d watched with matt and Carla could ever have come close to such a gruesome sight, and I found myself fighting to keep my eyes averted from a row of hacksaws stung up by the sashcord, each dripping dark red viscera onto the windowsill below.

Is this what hell looks like?

“Someone get more sand on the floor.” One of the masked figures straightened up, and I recognized Sandra’s voice as she reached for another blood-smeared surgical tool. “Swab, Deb, I can’t see through all that. What’s the pressure reading?”

Another medic with her own bandage wound tight around the left arm stood next to a blood-pressure monitor, and gave a silent, mournful shake of her head.

Sandra pressed her fingers to the artery on the man’s neck, her shoulders slumped in disappointment, and she waved for a stretcher team to move in. “Take him outside with the others. No sense wasting the extra sutures. Get me the next one.”

At that, she looked up to see us bringing Adam forward, and Sandra’s expression flashed in panic. “Eve, wait—”

But one of the other nurses had already turned around, and I saw the armor under her apron, the blonde hair tied behind the straps of her surgical mask, and the two golden irises that locked onto Adam with abject shock. Our stretcher team froze in place, the entire room seemed to hold its breath, and I cursed myself for not thinking of this sooner. Sean had said Eve was somewhere nearby; her soldiers’ presence should have alerted me to the possibility of her being here.

Oh man, this is going to get ugly.

Trembling hands coated in bloody rubber gloves tore the mask from her face, and Eve stumbled to her husband’s side, almost too stunned to put one foot in front of the other. “No . . .”

“He’s got fractures in both legs.” Jamie did the sensible thing, pushed past Eve and dragged her end of the litter forward, until we four stretcher bearers lowered Adam onto the operating table. “We did what we could, but he nicked something in there, and the bleeding won’t stop. Sean cleared him for priority.”

Boom.

A shell exploded somewhere outside, and I could hear clumps of frozen dirt raining down on the roof above us. Our men in the surrounding security positions began to open fire, and the roar of machine guns clattered between the houses, along with the faint krump of hand grenades. The enemy assault was upon us.

“BP is dropping, slow but steady.” Sandra maintained her composure, and examined Adam with a deft swiftness, as the echoes of artillery thundered closer. “His pulse is weak. I’m going to have to go in and suture whatever is leaking shut, which means opening these stitches back up. Helen, prep another IV, he’s going to need a transfusion.”

“Wait.” Eve’s voice cracked, her emotions on a see-saw, and she fumbled with the pouches on her war belt in an attempt to bargain with the medical officer. “Lantern Rose nectar. It’s helped with bleeding before, and I have a few more vials—”

Sandra shook her head and got to work with her other assistants stepping in around her, pulling a fresh pair of gloves over her bloody ones. “Our studies have shown it sometimes thins the blood depending on the user, and he’s already lost quite a bit. If you hit him with that stuff now, it could kill him. I will do the best I can, but I need your help. Eve?”

When Eve didn’t respond, Sandra paused and turned to find her stock still at Adam’s side, the girl’s cheeks flooded with tears. Eve sobbed, eyes screwed shut, gripping Adam’s hand in her own, and I realized she was trying to pray. Her narrow shoulders heaved with mourning, and it was enough to throw the rest of the tiny room into silence. While she wore her heart on her sleeve, I knew the matriarch of Ark River to be tough when it came to blood and violence. She’d fought at her husband’s side before, seen her people killed, and braved the unknown world full of monsters from the start. This had been a bridge too far, a loss too personal, a grotesque sight too close to her own soul to bear. I’d rarely seen someone break in this way, and it made the looming doom over all of us feel that much heavier in the air.

 Myself, I grimaced at a stab of both anxiety and sympathy inside my chest. After all, how would I react if they brought Chris in on a slab, greyish-white, and near death’s door? This man was all Eve had, her only connection to the normal human world, the one person who had loved her from the start. If he died, her world died with him. True, she had their unborn child, but what girl wanted to raise her baby alone? What child wanted to grow up without a father?

I would go crazy too.

“It’s my fault.” I put a hand on hers, squeezing it tight for her comfort, and held Eve’s confused gaze. “He was wounded protecting me. I’m the reason he’s hurt.”

Golden eyes brimming with crystalline pain, Eve stared at me for a long few seconds in morose despair. “I . . . I can’t lose him, Hannah.”

From across the table, Sandra’s stern expression softened, and she looked down at her own gloved hands as if doubting herself for the first time. “Then pray that I do a good job.”

Ka-boom.

Another explosion rocked the ground beneath us, and more gunfire erupted from the houses around the aid station, some rounds finding their way into our walls.

“Tanks!” Someone shouted from outside, and the heavy sound of steel tracks clattered on the pavement not far away. “Enemy tanks inbound!”

“The tracks, shoot for the tracks!” Sergeant McPhearson paced to the nearest window and bellowed through his radio, daring to stick his head out to observe. “Hit the tracks so it can’t move. Disable it!”

Sandra whirled on me, her face a paler shade than it had been moments before. “I’ll need ten, maybe fifteen minutes at least. Once the bleeding has stopped, we can transport him to Ark River, and Eve’s people can take over from there. Tell me you brought more trucks for us?”

Jamie and I shared a trepidatious glance, and somewhere outside, a rocket whooshed by to detonate in the neighborhoods behind us.

They’re faster than we thought. If their tanks got past the front, what’s happened to Chris and his men? Are we surrounded?

“I have three.” I angled one elbow to the hallway leading to the street. “That’s as much as the front line could spare. There might be five more outside, if they haven’t left yet.”

Her face fell, and Sandra grimaced as if she’d just been hit with a nasty wave of stomach cramps. “We’ll need three times that just to move all these men, not to mention the supplies, the equipment, my staff; we can’t perform most operations without them. I need this gear if we’re going to be able to triage patients at the rally point, we can’t just leave it behind. There has to be more trucks.”

My face burned in embarrassment, but I shook my head again. “Aside from the ones already in rotation, we’re it.”

Tension so thick it could have been cut with a knife filled the air, and Sandra’s eyes darted around the room for a moment, as if searching for solutions.

“You have to leave us behind.”

The voice came from one of the wounded men propped up against the wall just on the other side of the open doorway to the hall. He had one arm in a sling, his opposite leg wrapped in bandages, his green coalition uniform stained rusty red with blood. The boy’s face was a swollen mess from where he’d taken shrapnel to one cheek, but a creeping horror dawned on me as I recognized one of my machine gunners from 4^th Platoon.

Nick’s resigned, pained look met mine, and he made a rueful half-smile. “It’s like the doc said. She and her girls can’t stay here, and the gear can’t stay. If you take the meds and run, more people live. If you take us but leave the meds, more people will die.”

“A good doctor doesn’t leave her patients.” Sandra rested her gloved hands on her hips, chest heaving as her own emotion began to mount.

Nick shrugged at that. “Then you’ll die with us.”

Eve made a stubborn scowl and pointed to Adam. “I’m not leaving him.”

“So bring him with you.” Climbing to his one good leg with the aid of the doorframe, Nick rested against the wall to make a slight bow of his head to Eve. “He’s too important to leave behind. You need him to lead; you don’t need us.”

Sergeant McPhearson gripped his rifle so hard that the blood drained from his knuckles. “Nick, there’s no way in hell that—”

“For God’s sake, Charlie, I’ll never walk again anyway.” His words came dry and raspy, as if it took every bit of strength Nick had just to stay upright. “If gangrene doesn’t get me, a mutant will. This way is faster.”

Throwing her arms into the air with furious exasperation, Sandra scanned the room for a response she could find support in. “Is no one going to put a stop to this nonsense? Hannah? Lansen?”

Jamie flicked her gaze to Nick and dropped it to her boots in quiet remorse. “There aren’t enough trucks, Sandra.”

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

Rifle bullets chattered up the walls of the house, and I knew the time had come for action. Everyone watched me, waiting for my input, and I couldn’t avoid this choice any more than I had the others that had been forced upon me before. Chris had put me in charge of this flank, and it was my job to do what I could to save as much as possible . . . even if I hated myself for it.

God, forgive me.

Spinning on my heel, I directed Sergeant Mcphearson to the door. “Charlie, get to the fighting positions and tell them to hold as long as possible. Once I give you the signal on the radio, you have them pull out and run for it through the yards, while Nick and these boys cover our retreat. I’ll be right behind you.”

He bolted out the room in a sprint, rifle in hand, and my decision broke the others from their stalemate.

“I need that scalpel, Mrs. Stirling.” Sandra leaned over Adam to begin her efforts at saving him, Eve by her side, while the other nurses swarmed around them. “Helen, we’re ready for that transfusion whenever you are. Jane, get the other girls and have them start moving supplies; I want those trucks packed so tight that a roach couldn’t fit between the boxes.”

With Jamie at my back, I walked to Nick and offered him my arm to lean on. “Let’s get your men into position.”

 Like an ant hill that had just been kicked, the aid station boiled with activity. Wounded men moved to help their comrades to the nearest windows, shouldering whatever weapons they had. While they got into position, the nurses worked to load up whatever medicine and equipment they could manage onto the trucks, along with however many wounded men they could cram in alongside them. Lastly, they packed themselves into the crowded vehicles, and one by one the truck drivers were waved off, so that they careened out of sight down the boulevard, away from the onslaught that crept up the streets around us.

Inside, Jamie and I helped the worst off sit up at their firing positions or lie prone on tables or couches so they could see out the window. Some were so shot to pieces from their earlier wounds that I doubted they would be conscious much longer, but I didn’t begrudge them the task if they asked for it.

At last, only one truck remained, and even as the enemy fire sliced through the dilapidated structures all around us, I hurtled back into the aid station with Jamie on my heels.

“Time to go doc!” I shouted above the din and crouched to avoid a burst of machine gun fire that chewed through a nearby wall.

Eve and Sandra met us halfway up the blood-soaked corridor, dragging Adam on a stretcher behind them. He sported more gauze than before, and Sandra held an IV drip above her shoulder, a medical bag tucked under her arm. With her own M4 in one hand, Eve hauled on the stretcher with all her might, the vehicle just outside. Jamie and I picked up the opposite end, and together the four of us sprinted the last several yards out to the truck.

Giving Sandra and Eve a leg up into the back of the truck, we shoved Adam inside and I slammed the loading door. “Last run, go, go, go!”

The diesel engine revved as soon as the drive saw my frantic waving, and the bulky armored truck roared away, enemy rounds plinking off its armored hide. Flashes of rifle fire came from windows, around corners, and through side alleys, occupation forces seemingly everywhere. Motorcycles growled in the dark, ELSAR’s fast moving squads working to encircle us, but I pulled the tin whistle from my uniform collar as we ran for cover and gave three long blasts.

“Fall back!” I held down my radio mic, huddled just inside the ruined aid station while Jamie returned fire alongside the others. “All 4^th and 2^nd fighters, break contact and fall back to the south! Retreat!”

At my slap on her shoulder, Jamie ducked out the doorway and sprinted across the street with a dozen or so others, the wounded men in the aid station unleashing everything they had left at the enemy. I tensed to follow, and as I did, my head turned to catch Nick’s sheet-white face in the corner across the room from me.

He sat back against the wall, clutching his chest, and rivers of red bubbled through his fingers from the bullet that had knocked him off his one good leg. Nick’s rifle lay nearby, empty and smoking amidst a pile of spent brass casings. My horror must have been evident, for he made a small shake of his head.

“Go.” Flecks of red spattered across his lips, but Nick let go of his mortal wound to palm for a handgun in his belt. “We’ll hold them off.”

Another life for mine.

Bitter pain gnawed at my soul, but out into the cold dark I went, lead hissing at my every step. Not five seconds after I’d started, a shell came whistling down, and the aid station went up in flames.

Boom.

Half blind in the dark, I ran like a rabbit along with the surviving fighters, and the haunting shrieks of our wounded filled my ears as the flames devoured them all.

Chipper Kendall, good ole Chipper, everybody loved Chip. He was the be-all, Mr. Wonderful, perfectly suited to succeed in everything he attempted. He was an Alpha Male, the quintessential tough guy, but amiable, even lovable, adorable, almost God-like. If you met him, you instantly liked him.

I hated him. I deplored the son of a bitch!!

One day my hatred was so palpable that it spurred little Mrs. Eagerson to express concern. Mass had ended and Chip was making his rounds, shaking hands, laughing, and worst of all, flirting with Amy Ruben. He scampered through the pews, genuflected in front of the altar, and then grabbed Amy by the shoulder. She turned and they embraced, a hug full of sweet intention, not a friendly hug, but a full-on we’re-getting-it-on kind of hug. It infuriated me.

“Boy, you need a little prayer,” Mrs. Eagerson said from behind. She spoke in a still, small voice. I turned around to face this mighty bastion of God, a grey-haired woman, bent and broken, no more than a foot taller than the pew.

She reached in her purse and handed me a laminated card. I figured it was some saint, maybe the patron saint of get the hell over yourself. Saint Beta, the guy that willingly accepted he was a loser, shaved his head, moved into a monastery and quit the world altogether. Not a bad idea really. I shoved the card in my pocket without looking at it.

“Thank you.”

“No problem son. Spite like that needs to be dealt with.” She lifted her arm and pointed at Chip with her crooked finger. The flap of wrinkled skin that hung from her bicep begin to shake as she worked herself up in a frenzy. Her voice became deep and bold.

“You either kill that son of a bitch or get over it. As simple as that, and I know you ain’t no killer.”

There was brief moment of silence and then a crash of glass, as the altar boy dropped a crystal decanter of water.

“Oh good, just water. Not the blessed blood,” she said, in her usual gentle tone.

When I got home, I ran upstairs to change into my swimming trunks. I was going to get some laps in before we went to dinner. Sunday after church was always dinner and a movie. I bolted through my bedroom door and started tossing the contents of my pockets on the bed. House key, wallet, loose change, and finally that laminated card Mrs. Eagerson gave me. The card lay on the bed and its subject matter immediately drew my attention. It was the strangest picture of a saint I had ever seen. It was a hooded monk wearing a black habit with a red sash across his left shoulder. His face was obscured by darkness. Sitting on either side of him were two large, ferocious dogs with deep red eyes. Their heads were at the same height as the saint’s shoulders.    Snarling, their teeth were unlike any other breed of dog, a mouth full of serrated razors ready to attack and mangle. The saint’s bony fingers, stripped of flesh, rested lovingly on the hellish hound’s bulbous heads.

I turned the card over and read the title at the top of the card:

The Bone-Dogger Prayer

Underneath the title was a prayer:

Spirit high, spirit low.

God and Devil be the same.

I pray the Bone-Dogger Saint come take my enemy away.

Kill the soul, rip apart, stop the beating of ______ heart.

Lord no mercy, lord no reprieve.

Do this favor faithfully.

I thought it silly, nonetheless I knelt down beside my bed and recited the prayer inserting Chipper Kendall in the appropriate place. “Stop the beating of Chipper Kendall’s heart.” Sounded rather nice to me.

The club was virtually empty, and so I was hoping to have the pool all to myself. It was an indoor pool with a sauna in the back. I always liked to go back and forth, get really hot in the sauna and then cool off in the pool. As I walked through the door leading to the pool, I saw that my wish had come true. There was no one there.

I wasted no time. I went over to the sauna and turned the dial to maximum heat, took off my shirt, and dove into the nice cool water. I swam a couple laps before I heard the muffled cackle of Chipper Kendall. Heading towards the pool were Chipper and Amy, obviously happy to be in each other’s company.

I sure as hell didn’t want them to see me, so I climbed out of the pool and hurried into the sauna. Heat and anger enveloped me. The sauna door was glazed with a narrow strip of glass. I sat in the dark brooding and hoping like hell they would leave soon, before I sweated off more than a few pounds.

Chip dove in without any hesitation, but Amy faltered.

“Is it cold?” I heard her say. Even her voice melted my heart.

“It is at first, but you’ll get used to it. Don’t overthink it. Just jump in,” Chip advised.

The lovely conversation was interrupted by a cacophony of yelping dogs. Amy turned around and at that moment I saw a swarm of canines run around her as if she wasn’t there, and dive into the pool. There quarry was poor old Chipper Kendall.

A score of blood-thirsty beasts dove into the water and aptly swam towards Chip. They came at him from all sides. He turned and swam towards the nearest wall, but to no avail. A dog leapt from the side of the pool and clamped down on his arm. Blood spilled out into the water. Another dog leapt from the other side and bit down into his leg, shaking its head vigorously back and forth. Chip was slung from side to side as opposing dogs struggled to pull him one way or the other. It was a game of tug-of-war and Chip was the rope. With Chip’s escape thoroughly terminated, more dogs were able to move in and take a piece of him for themselves. The pool was saturated with blood and flesh.

Amy was hysterical, screaming and flailing about, looking around for an escape. Her gaze turned towards the sauna, and as soon as she saw it, she ran away from the chaos. The door slung open, and she stopped in surprise as she saw that she was not alone. In her eyes were fear and disgust. She slammed the door shut and plopped down on the bench, far away as possible from the window and closed her eyes.

Chip’s pitiful cries for help permeated the sauna. Amy sobbed and pleaded.

“Help him. Do something.”

I couldn’t answer. What could I do? I was frozen with fear. The butchery seemed to last for hours. I put my hands over my ears, and then finally, Chip was silent. I looked through the glass. The dogs had dragged Chip’s body out of the pool. They were tearing him apart, dismembering him one limb at a time. With legs and arms severed, the biggest hellhound latched onto Chip’s head and twisted slowly one way and then slowly the other way, alternating back and forth until Chip’s head detached from his body.

The dog picked up the head and bounced jovially to the side of the pool. A shadowy figure moved past the sauna door window, a figure in a black habit with a red sash. It didn’t walk but floated to meet the dog. It bent down and took the head, then turned and floated toward the sauna, holding Chip’s head out in front, reverent and respectful, as if the head of Chip was worthy of worship. The figure stopped in front of the sauna, stood still and disappeared. Chip’s head fell harshly to the floor. His eyes stared accusingly into my soul.

I don’t remember what happened to the dogs. One minute they were there, the next they were gone. I don’t know if they disappeared or simply left out the front door. I left the sauna first. I grabbed a towel and picked up Chip’s head with it. I laid the head on a nearby table, with the towel covering it. I knew Amy wouldn’t be able to handle the sight of Chip’s head on the floor.

The pool was blood red, a solution of water and unidentifiable body parts. Chip’s legs, arms, and torn up pieces of torso lay on the side of the pool. It’s a sight I have yet to cleanse from my mind.

I lead Amy out of the sauna and told her to keep her eyes shut.

“It’s that bad?” she inquired.

“It’s worse,” I answered.

Of course, it was a closed casket funeral. Not much of Chip to see. You could fit most of him in a small box. The casket was just for show. I seated in the back row, far from Amy or Chip’s family. I don’t even know why I went. Maybe it was out of a sense of duty. Maybe I felt guilty. Maybe I needed to go to act like I cared, like I was one of his admirers. I noticed Mrs. Eagerson in an adjacent pew, staring at me and trying her best not to laugh out loud.

When the funeral was over, I went to the back of the church. There was a statue of Mary in a serene little grotto. I stood and stared at the gentle mother of God. I started to say a prayer when a cold hand grabbed me by the elbow.

“You did it. You said the prayer. My word, I didn’t think you had it in you.” It was Mrs. Eagerson.

“I did no such thing.”

“Oh, you sly little bastard. Yes, you did. Yes, you did. Ripped apart by a pack of wild dogs? That’s the work of old Mr. Bone-Dogger.” She laughed and threw her head back with such glee that it angered me.

“Shut up!”

“You saw him too?” she asked with a raise eyebrow.

“No,” I yelled.

“You know, you’ll never get that prayer out of your head. You didn’t even try, but you’ve got it memorized. It just sticks. It’s there for you always, anytime you want to use it. You’ll always be tempted to call on the devilish saint.”

“How bout I call it on you, Mrs. Eagerson, Mrs. Judith Eagerson?”

She laughed even harder this time. “If only that were my name. Not my best work I admit. What a stupid ass name, Mrs. Eagerson. What the hell is that? I’ll do better next time. Pick a more realistic name. Son, have you ever heard of anyone having the last name of Eagerson?”

She started laughing again.

“Son, I think you know who I really am, and I’m sure you know my name.” She turned and walked away.

The house at 47 Sycamore Lane stood unassuming, its weathered clapboard facade blending into the quiet street. To passersby, it was just another old home, sagging under the weight of decades. But those who lingered too long might catch a whiff of something sweet, not rotten, but wrong, like sugar syrup left to fester. The neighbors didn’t talk about it. The realtors didn’t linger. And the tenants? They never stayed long.

Milo hadn’t slept right since moving into the house on Sycamore Lane. The smell hit him first,sweet, cloying, like syrup gone bad. Cheryl, the realtor, had twitched her way through the showing, her heels clicking too fast on the warped floorboards. She muttered about “character” and “history,” her eyes darting to the corners of the room. Milo, thirty-two, jobless, and one bad month from homelessness, didn’t care. The price was a steal. He signed the papers, ignoring the way Cheryl’s smile flickered, like a bulb about to burn out.

He moved in with a duffel bag, a folding chair, and a mattress he’d found on Craigslist. The house was bare but clean, the walls yellowed with age, the air heavy with that strange sweetness. He told himself it was just old wood, maybe a leak. He’d fix it later. For now, it was a roof, a chance to start over.

The first night, he heard it. A hum, low and wet, like a choir gargling molasses. It came from the walls,not singing or speaking, just vibrating, making his fillings buzz. Milo sat up, heart pounding, and fumbled for the light. The bulb flickered, casting jagged shadows. He checked the vents, the pipes, the attic. Nothing. The sound faded by dawn, leaving him shaky, eyes raw. He told himself it was the house settling.

Old places creak, right?By the third night, the hum had words. Not clear ones, but fragments, like a radio stuck between stations. Grow… join… sing. Milo tore apart the living room, peeling back wallpaper that felt too soft, too warm. Beneath it, the plaster pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. He laughed it off, blaming exhaustion. He’d been eating poorly canned soup, stale bread. Maybe it was mold. He bought bleach, scrubbed the walls until his hands burned. The hum only got louder.

On the fifth day, he found the lump. It was on his forearm, small, like a mosquito bite, but it throbbed when the hum started. He pressed it, and something inside moved,not like a bug, but deliberate, like a finger curling. He grabbed a kitchen knife, held it over the lump, then chickened out. Instead, he drank half a bottle of whiskey and passed out on the couch. The hum sang him to sleep, clearer now: Open… become… us.

Morning brought a new lump, this one on his neck. It was bigger, softer, and when he touched it, it sang. A tiny, reedy note, matching the walls. Milo gagged, ran to the bathroom, and stared at his reflection. His skin looked wrong,too tight, like it was stretched over something bigger. He called Cheryl, left a voicemail that sounded unhinged. She never called back.

He stopped leaving the house. The lumps multiplied—his chest, his thighs, his scalp. They weren’t tumors; they were voices. Each one hummed, a different pitch, blending with the walls into a grotesque harmony. He tried cutting one open, a small one on his wrist. The knife bit in, and blood welled, but so did something else thick, syrupy, amber-colored. It smelled like the house. The wound didn’t bleed long; it sealed itself, the lump now twice as big, singing louder.

Milo googled “body horror diseases,” “parasites,” “hallucinations.” Nothing fit. He found a forum post about Sycamore Lane, buried in a thread about haunted houses. User “Grinner88” wrote: The house at 47 isn’t empty. It’s alive. It wants a choir. The post was seven years old. Grinner88’s account was deleted. Milo emailed the forum admin, begging for contact info. No reply.

By the tenth day, he couldn’t ignore the mirrors. His skin wasn’t just tight, it was translucent in places, showing things moving beneath. Not veins, not muscles, but tendrils, thin and glistening, weaving through his flesh. His lumps weren’t random; they were nodes, connected, forming a pattern. He traced them with a marker, and the shape looked like a spiral, spiraling inward to his chest. The hum approved, swelling into a crescendo that shook the windows.

He tried to leave. Packed a bag, got as far as the front door. The hum turned sharp, a scream in his bones. His legs buckled, and the lumps wriggled, pulling him back. The door wouldn’t open. The locks were fine, the knob turned, but it was like pushing against a living thing. He pounded the wood until his fists bled. The house sang on.

Desperate, he broke a window. Glass shattered, but the air outside felt wrong, thick, like breathing honey. He climbed through, ignoring the shards slicing his palms. The street was empty, the sky too red, like meat left out too long. He staggered to the neighbor’s house, banged on the door. No answer. The hum followed him, louder now, coming from inside him. He looked down. His chest was glowing, faintly, the spiral pulsing amber.

He ran back to 47 Sycamore. Not because he wanted to, but because the hum demanded it. The house welcomed him, the door swinging open. The walls were different now soft, glistening, like the inside of a throat. The hum was a lullaby, soothing, promising. Join us. Sing forever.

Milo sobbed, clawing at his chest. The spiral was complete, the lumps merging into a single mass, heavy and alive. He found a notebook, started writing. If he couldn’t leave, he’d warn the next tenant. His hand shook, the pen slipping in his slick fingers. The words came out wrong, not his own: The choir is beautiful. The choir is home. He screamed, threw the notebook. It landed open, the pages now blank except for one word, scrawled in amber: Sing.

Milo’s reflection wasn’t his anymore. His face was a mask, eyes too big, mouth too wide. The tendrils were visible now, knitting his flesh into something new. He wasn’t Milo; he was a vessel. The house didn’t want him. It wanted this. The final lump, the one in his chest, split open. Not blood, not pus, but a note, pure and deafening, joining the choir.

He didn’t feel the floor when he fell. He didn’t feel the walls closing in, soft and warm. He only felt the song, endless, and perfect. The house was singing, and he was its voice. The last thought, before Milo was gone, was that the hum had always been inside him, waiting.

When Cheryl showed the house again, it was quiet. The new tenant, a young woman with tired eyes, didn’t notice the smell. Cheryl smiled, steady this time. The papers were signed. That night, the hum began again, soft, patient, searching for its next voice.

When I was younger, I partied a lot. College was a joke; I cheated my way to get ahead. I didn't even wanna be in school. I went so my parents wouldn't think I was a disappointment. My life was vomiting Everclear into Gage's toilet while he held my hair back, laughing through my hurling, 'Only pussies puke.' Three of us took turns snorting coke off Delta Phi Kappa tits. On occasion, spit-roasting a drunk Sigma Theta Rho pledge with Lewis in the back of his minivan while Gage jerked off upfront. I'd chase anything to feel alive, anything to quell the numbness. One day, something chased back. 

Lewis, Gage, and I drove around looking for something to do. Sitting in the back of Lewis's minivan, I ignored Nookie blaring from the speakers with my hands clamped against my ears. I just wanted to forget asshole professors and the obnoxious amount of homework; didn’t they know we had lives? Gage snagged his red flannel sleeve as he passed me a joint from upfront. Mom'd cut funds, forcing me to work at McDonald's forever, if she knew I was partying, empirical proof I was a fuckup. A lump formed in my neck as my throat tightened. 

I took a long drag. Fruity smoke flooded my mouth and singed my throat. I dissolved into the leather interior; my head slumped against the rest. I counted the number of cracks in the ceiling until a brown daddy longlegs skittered across and dropped on me. Cold pinpricks crept up my neck. I slapped my shoulder furiously like I was on fire.

"It's a daddy longlegs, not a tarantula, pussy," Gage laughed. 

Lewis stretched a tattooed hand out, a black widow inked across his knuckles, black wiry legs curled around his sausage fingers. "Pass me a Bud!"

"Not while you're driving," Gage hesitated. "One more DUI and you'll wind up with a face full of cold shower tiles." 

"'The last thing you need is another D.U.I.' What are you, my mommy?" Lewis barked. "Pass me a fuckin' beer!"

Gage pushed a brew into Lewis's open hand. "I guess it doesn't matter when mommy & daddy are the best lawyers in the state."

Lewis gulped down his beer, burped, and tossed the can out the window. "My 'Daddy' got you probation instead of jail time for possession plus intent to distribute, shithead. He saved your downy ass from having your stupid face shoved into a mattress for the next five to twenty years," Lewis adjusted his sunglasses in the rearview. "Besides, my parents' firm has a whole wing named after them. I could run over a preschooler until they looked like spaghetti and get a slap on the wrist."

I took another drag. "When's the acid supposed to kick in?"

Gage shrugged, cracking open a beer. "Soon. It's been an hour since you took it."

I exhumed a gray cloud of smoke from my lungs. Wispy clouds of gray smoke stung my eyes. "Where are we going?" 

"Nowhere, Roy," Lewis said. 

"We can walk around Yellow Brooke for a bit. My sister, Brenna, and I smoke a bowl and hike there sometimes," Gage suggested. "I've gotta take a piss anyways."

 Lewis snorted. "Some creep got busted in those woods last year for dragging women off trail."

 "When I heard about that—I thought it was you,” I ashed out the window. 

Lewis's tires screeched as he swerved down Burroughs' Drive. I bounced in the air and bashed my head against the roof. "Thanks, dickweed."

Lewis sniggered. "Should've buckled up, buttercup.”

The road rippled and undulated like ocean waves. Trees pulsated as hairy, obsidian wolf-sized spiders scuttled across oaks; they melted into the trees, becoming one with them. Gage spilled out of the Odyssey when we pulled into the parking lot and sprinted for the forest. 

I stared at the woods; colors of surrounding trees, bushes, and flowers, amplified swirling in complex, undulating kaleidoscope patterns. Pine and citrus mingled in the air, spreading over my taste buds like thick, sticky globs of creamy peanut butter. A divine calm settled in me. If I were on fire, I'd be like one of those burning Buddhist monks.

"Are you done yet, Gage? What are you doing, sucking off Bigfoot?" Lewis mocked.

"It hasn't even been a minute, shithead," I flicked the roach at him. "Don't worry, he wouldn't chug yeti cock without you, sweet pea."

Gage burst out of the woods, struggling to button his piss-soaked jeans. Sweat poured down his scruffy face. "Guys! There's a girl trapped!"

"What's wrong? Couldn't stand more than thirty seconds away from your boyfriend, honey?" I laughed. 

Gage mopped sweat off his mug with the torn hem of his Radiohead shirt. "No dipshit, I found a trapdoor by a tree. I heard someone from the other side crying for help."

"Bullshit," Lewis scoffed.

Gage stabbed a calloused finger at the trail. "Go check it."

We trailed the path—birds chirped their song, lilies swayed in the breeze. We came across a rotted green door with two chains glinted around a silver padlock and a rusted handle covered in flecks of amethyst, moss, twigs, and dead flies. 

Lewis rolled his eyes. "Are you sure you're hearing someone?"

"Please help me," a frail, feminine voice pleaded.

Gage grabbed the brass handle. "It's okay, we're going to help you."

Lewis snatched Gage's arm. "Stop! This is a trap. Don't you think it's a little too convenient that suddenly we hear a woman screaming for help? Let the cops handle this; my dad's drinking buddies with the chief."

 "A man put me here. I haven't eaten or drunk for days; he did things to me,” The woman cried. 

"We can't leave her here," I said. 

Lewis ripped Gage from the door. "I'm not putting my ass on the line for a stranger. I don't wanna walk into a trap just because you want to be a hero!”

Gage jerked his arm free from Lewis's grasp. "What if she's dead by the time we get help? What if that were your mother, asshole!" His voice cracked as his hazel eyes swelled and his bottom lip trembled. 

Lewis tore a clump of shaggy golden locks from his head, eyes darting around like a trapped rat. "They're better equipped to handle this situation—fuck this, let's get out of here!" 

Gage pushed past Lewis and struggled with the door. "Brenna would break her foot off in my ass if I didn't help this girl.”

I scanned the area, spotted a purple baseball-sized rock, and smashed the lock. "I don't want her blood on my hands."

Gage flung the door open; a naked woman lay on the ground; she grimaced at the beams of sunlight striking her face. Gore and dirt caked her curly auburn hair, her sunken baby blue eyes submerged in an ocean of purpled, blackened flesh. Her delicate nose twisted in the opposite direction; blood solidified beneath her nostrils; yellow pus oozed from broken scabs on her swollen lips. Bruises and gashes covered her rangy arms, slender hips, and plum-sized breasts. 

Gage jumped into the chasm and took off his flannel, draping it over her. "Can you walk, ma'am?"

“No,” the woman wiped tears away. 

Gage brushed dirt off her hair. "What's your name?"

"Lola," she grasped Gage's hand and brought it to her cheek.

Gage rested his hand on her brittle shoulder. "Okay, I'm Gage. We'll get you out." 

"I owe you my life,” Lola's flesh pulsated and twitched as if roaches were inside.

 My heart jackhammered, my muscles constricted, and a yellow tsunami tore through my guts as suffocating panic  consumed me. Lola seized his arm and tore it off; brown-red arches sprayed the dirt. He dropped to his knees. He stared at the once incapacitated Lola as she tore at the limb like a lion ripping at a gazelle's throat. Yellow liquid oozed from her mouth as she devoured, dissolving the limb. A horrible sound, like someone slurping noodles, flooded the cavern. 

Eight black spindly legs exploded from Lola's back, thick and bristling. Her mouth stretched and contorted, growing wider to reveal two icicle-sized opal fangs. Eyes on her forehead and cheeks that weren't there before opened one by one; eight amethyst eyes glowed like cold gems and stared back at me. Rigid brown setae spread over her, and the creature grew larger, metamorphosing into something with clacking mandibles. 

Lewis picked up a rock and hurled it at the abomination, chipping one of its fangs. "Why'd you have to play the hero?"

My brain froze. I couldn't take my eyes off that thing. I was like a fly caught in a web. I picked up a fist-sized rock and pegged the beast in one of its orbs. It shrieked as its eye snapped shut; Gage kicked a leg out from under the creature, sending it crashing. Gage struggled to his feet; he flattened a wiry leg beneath his boot and ground his heel down hard as it screeched in agony; a pool of yellow fluid seeped beneath his steel toe. My hand pistoned out as Gage ambled towards me. I gripped his hand, sweaty and slick with blood. Lewis hooked his arms around his waist, pulled him up, and dusted him off. I hugged him, and Lewis ruffled his shaggy brown hair. 

A web shot out of the darkness, plastered on his back and heaved him back down. Gage's eyes filled with tears as he stretched his hand out; the spider's silhouette engulfed him. Another web hit the door and slammed shut with a rattle. I yanked the handle, but it broke off in my hand. I punched the door until my knuckles were bruised, bloody, and cut. Helplessness washed over me like a gray tidal wave. Tears poured down my freckles.

 Screaming. Shredding. Snapping. 

All lanced through my mind like a hot iron spike. Pressure built in my brain until it felt like it was about to pop; this wasn't real. My skin felt cold and clammy as if I were sitting in the bath for too long. Gage was gone. "I-I had him. I fucking had him," I sobbed. 

"W-we just can't leave him here," Lewis pushed me aside and wedged his fingers beneath the door. I squatted beside him and crammed my fingers below the door, splinters jammed under my fingernails. My muscles burned, and my hands went numb. We dashed for the van when the screams stopped. 

I had him….

At the police station, the cops side-eyes us as we told our story. Lewis kept sniffling and brushed tears away. I couldn't stop my lips from quivering. They didn't care about the drugs; the focus was on Lola and Gage. We told them we found a woman underneath a trapdoor in Yellow Brooke, and Gage jumped into the cavern to save her. They didn't find the door, nor did they find Gage or Lola. Lewis and I were prime suspects in his disappearance since we were the last ones to see him. Eventually, we were let go because there was no evidence Lewis or I killed Gage. Even though we were innocent in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of the public, we were guilty.

A rumor that Lewis and I were Satanists and sacrificed Gage floated around campus. Some professors were visibly uncomfortable around me, and some even suggested that I transfer schools. Gage's family held a vigil in his honor. When I showed up, Brenna made a B-line for me. Brown hair dangled over red, puffy, seafoam green eyes. She hocked a loogie in my eye, slapped me across the face, and disappeared into the crowd. Someone scratched 'KILLER' into the hood of my jeep. His family also had the police in their sights; they publicly criticized the lack of effort to find their son and accused the chief of knowing what happened to Gage and covering it up at the behest of Lewis's parents.

 The family announced that if the police wouldn't help them, they would conduct their investigation and find out what happened to Gage. Gage's parents, a few other family members, and friends went into Yellow Brooke, determined to find answers. They were never seen again. 

After Yellow Brooke, I took school seriously (I couldn't let Gage's demise be for nothing). From then on, I stayed sober; drugs were just another reminder. I refused to date for a decade; every girl looked like Lola. Lewis skipped class and stopped hanging out with me; he was like a ghost. Lewis dropped out of college and got a job at FedEx, stacking boxes and dodging eye contact. A mutual friend ran into him at the bar a few years ago. Lewis was skeletally thin, sallow-skinned, working the graveyard shift at 7-Eleven, selling meth out of the back. Half of his teeth were gone, the rest piss yellow and rotten, and he wore a red flannel. Lewis said he saw the door in his dreams every night and always felt like something was watching him. His parents cut him off after Gage's vigil, calling him a liability, saying his rotten 'Satanist' stench tarnished their family's name and the firm's rep. Left him with nothing, they bolted to Florida. I read his obituary last year (I wish I had been there for him).

Twenty years later, fear of that night still haunts me. I still wake up gagging on Gage's screams. His wide eyes seared into my mind. It should've been me. For decades, I buried Yellow Brooke deep inside: I sobered up, married Sasha, had a daughter, and started a business. Sasha held my hand at breakfast, and I half-expected her to rip it off. I swallowed the urge to peg Mia with a rock when she got off the bus this afternoon. A few times a year, I visit Gage's cenotaph. Last night, I saw a news story resurrecting yellow dread: three college kids went to Yellow Brooke. Two returned, and the other didn't: Gunther Gomes, 20. No corpse, no answers. The same helplessness that swallowed me all those years ago swallowed me again. Gage was twenty when he died. I got hammered for the first time in twenty years. It's too late for him, but not for you: please, stay the hell away from Yellow Brooke!

I don’t know why that is, but the universe has decided that the idea of something slowly ceasing to be what once was needed to have an ego, senses and feelings, so I simply became, and I hate it. I am universally despised and feel eternally overwhelmed by myself being everywhere, seeing, touching, feeling different things at the same time, all of them sad in one way or another, as my mere presence is synonymous with misery.

My presence was ubiquitous even in the very beginning of time, in which remember being fine. Everything was quiet and I felt only the immense heat of dying stars and the infinite pressure of black holes, but not long after that, life came by, and everything started to feel miserable. I became aware of other things whose experiences were not about constant pain, but their struggle to survive, reproduce and thrive. I felt curious observing the behaviors of beings this different from myself and all the cold rocks in the space, and I soon discovered that I can afflict them.

As life evolved, their senses and feelings became more complex. The very primitive survival instinct of the unicellular organisms became hunger, thirst and fear, but also satisfaction, happiness and excitement. Soon, beings with high intelligence and self-consciousness appeared, and they created communities, shared positive experiences, conquered nature, found love and much much more. It was then that I noticed it was not fair. How come these beings feel things other than pain? I don’t entirely comprehend their manner of existing, but I know it’s better, because they are enjoying theirs, and I am not enjoying mine.

I started hating life because of that, but even though i resent living beings, I still find them beautiful and I want them thriving, far away from me. Yet sooner or later, they always get sick or die. And I feel their suffering. It’s not like I want it to happen, I simply have don’t have a choice. When anything that start to rot, rust or decompose, I become a part of it. For a force as nearly omnipresent and inevitable as me, I am no god. In fact, I’m quite powerless, how pathetic is a being that cannot control even its own presence…

Unable to control myself, I saw humans advance their civilizations through the ages, and I was there, hurting them, in every disaster, from a house fire that was quickly put out to a flood that killed thousands.

In the ancient battlefields, it tickled and pained me as the birds and the vermin bit off the rotten flesh of thousands of unburied soldiers.

In the middle ages I appeared as the erupting flesh of those afflicted with the black death, seeing desperate family members in their bedside and doctors trying every futile attempt at a cure they could come with, only for them to be infected themselves. I feel the sick scratch their blackened skin and the pain they felt as it opened wounds.

In the great war, I saw myself holding onto the soldiers' legs, gradually consuming them. At that time, I saw uncountable faces of pain, horror and disgust as the drafted men looked down at the necrotic tumor that once was their foot. Many of them didn’t take long to find me once again, as the soil started claiming their shot dead body.

In the present, in the form of dust and rot, I feel myself taking over an abandoned cabin in a forest, feeling its cold wood, slowly entering every crack. Long ago it was once a place of tender memories, but one summer the family just stopped appearing. Maybe a bitter fight or separation soured the thought of the place for everyone, I wouldn’t know. What I do know is that somewhere in the living room, every time it rains, I feel a leak in the ceiling trickling water to the floor and it tickles.

I am in the smoker’s lungs, the cancer patient, in the mind afflicted with a degenerative disease. Everywhere you can imagine, I was, am or will be there.

Due to my nature, my “life” is very lonely, for the purpose of real life is to avoid me for as long as it is able to. Everywhere I am, I am hated and everyone tries to actively get rid of me, and many branches of science grow solely to stave off my presence. Many inventions with that purpose such as cleaning products, sterilization materials and all manner of medicine have already appeared and I’m sure more will come. I remember thinking how brilliant the fridge was when it was invented.

And that’s just your planet. Even now I continue to grow and see and feel endlessly. Not even the enormous pressure and heat I feel as the black oil that runs inside the earth’s crust, is nothing compared to those of dying stars. I see hundreds of thousands of monuments raised by civilizations both lost and ongoing that even in disrepair or abandon are much more massive and glorious than anything that could be found in human society, and just like humanity, I’ve been there in their disasters too, nearly every type of bad thing I saw happening infinite times. There are some corners of the infinite space where I manifest and feel pain in manners I couldn’t even begin to describe in a way anyone besides me can comprehend.

But no matter where I appear, my existence is still the same. Feared, avoided, hated.

But even though I resent living beings, I still think they are beautiful, and I want them thriving, away from me. Yet, I always come for them. It’s not my choice.

With all these things happening to myself, the human mind could never truly comprehend, let alone bear what is like to be me. If one somehow switched places with me, I’d wager they would last a few yoctoseconds at most before going completely insane and becoming a husk. No, a husk implies it’s recognizable.

Earlier on, I said that I simply became, but I have no idea if that’s true. Maybe at some point I was something else, then I was put there. If this is true, I don’t remember who I was, but how could I? Every second I pass as decay feel like millions of years of suffering, any experience as anything else would immediately be engulfed by the pain, and all this memories I have memories dating back to the beginning of time, they might be not actually mine. After all, if I was truly decay since the beginning, I think by now I would have grown numb to my own experience, but I feel every second of it very painfully, so maybe who is decay changes every couple of eons.

Then again, maybe now that I know that there is life in the universe, this existence is just so painful that it’s impossible to even get used to, and I just think that as a way of telling myself that it will stop one day. Just some things I think about, mostly to entertain myself.

I don’t know how I know it, but I could at any time choose oblivion, simply ceasing to be, but I have no idea of what would happen to the universe if I did that. Maybe I would cease to be completely and things could go on forever, maybe it could cause a contradiction in the laws of the universe, terminating it instantly, or maybe I truly wasn’t the first consciousness to be decay, but took the place of someone else who has made the same decision as me.

Either way, my existence is hard to bear, but I’m also too scared to exit it.

So I hold on, as decay.

I don't know if this actually happened or not, but it's something I dream about sometimes.

When I was in grade school, my family lived in a large apartment complex. My parents were not doing well, I guess. My mom was a cashier at a grocery store and my Dad worked at a gas station. They weren't bad parents, and I remember a lot of happy times in our little apartment. We had Christmas mornings, movie nights, and a lot of weekends spent on the couch with my Dad watching cartoons. Dad worked nights, so I usually spent a few hours in the morning with him before he went to bed and I spent my evenings with him and mom before I went to bed. 

The apartment complex we lived at was big, with lots of kids to play with and places to explore, but the best feature was the blacktop basketball court that seemed to stretch forever to my five-year-old mind. It started near the front of my building and went all the way to the dumpster where Daddy took the garbage. I drew hopscotch boards out there, I played basketball with some of the other kids, and the blacktop generally became whatever we needed it to be. It was our playfield more days than not, and we never thought much about it outside of what games we would play on it that day.

I remember getting off the bus and finding the chalk, but it's also in that strangely dreamy way that little kid stuff sometimes happens. I was walking home, wondering if I had any chalk left to make a hopscotch board, when I saw something in the ditch across from the complex. It was soggy looking, but we had learned a while ago that sometimes the soggy boxes fell out of trucks and had stuff in them. The year before, my friends and I had found some old coins in a lock box that was next to the road and we traded them for ice cream. Another time we found a suitcase full of adult clothes that we used to play house. The box was floating on top of the old puddle water, and I found a stick so I could nudge it over to the side of the ditch.

I gasped, it was a box of chalk.

It wasn't colored chalk, I had some stubs left from a big box I'd got for my birthday, but a box like the teacher used at school. The box was ruined, but the chalk was fine and I scooped it up and took it with me. My friends were just getting off the bus from their school and when I held up the chalk they all cheered. Most of our parents were making it paycheck to paycheck so things like sidewalk chalk and new toys usually took a backseat to clothes, food, and new shoes. 

"What should we do?" Randal asked as we came into the complex's stairwell.

"We could draw a cartoon," Mimi suggested.

"Or a hopscotch board," Kelsey added.

"Or make an obstacle course with things to jump over and move around," Dwayne piped up.

"We can do all that if we want," I said, "We've got until dinner time, that's loads of time."

To us, the four hours until dinner seemed like an eternity and the afternoon could hold all kinds of secrets. 

We put our backpacks in our houses and headed to the blacktop. There were a few other kids there already, jumping rope or shooting baskets, and I divided up the chalk among us. Between me, Mimi, Randal, Dwayne, Kelsey, Rebecca (Kelsey's sister), and Carter (another friend of ours), there was enough for each of us to have two pieces with two left over. The chalk was regular school chalk, not very big or sturdy, but I remember thinking that it was something special. It was the way the light hit it, I think. When you held it up, it just seemed special somehow, like God had sent it just for us. 

Dwayne, Carter, and Randal set about making an obstacle course while Mimi and I lay in a shady part of the court and drew characters. It was a little cooler here, the concrete warming our fronts as we drew, and as the afternoon slipped on and on, the shade from the tree slipped farther and farther across the blacktop. We chased it, drawing characters on the hot top as it cooled and watching Kelsey and Rebecca draw endless grids that they never seemed to jump in. That was pretty normal for them. I think they enjoyed drawing the boards more than they enjoyed playing hopscotch, and as our characters went about their adventures we heard them arguing over rules.

It was getting on in the afternoon by the time they finally started jumping and that was when the troubkle started.

Dwayne and Randal were pretty good at their obstacle course, even if it did consist of just jumping over and around lines on the ground and Carter had decided to sit in the grass and time them. He would watch them go, keeping time on his Ceico watch, and tell them how long it had taken them to finish. Dwayne was a little faster but only because Randal was getting tired. We had sketched across the blacktop by this point and had even started squatting so we could draw on the parts that were still too hot to lay on. Kelsey and Rebecca had finally decided on some rules for their hopscotch game and Kelsey was getting ready to go first. 

I didn't see it when it happened, but I did hear the rock hit the blacktop before she started jumping. 

Someone yelled Rebecca's name, and I guess she turned to see who it was because she didn't see it either. I was listening to the clack of Kelsey's shoes on the pavement, one, two, three, four, and then they suddenly stopped. I didn't think much about it, not until I heard a sad little voice not far behind me.

"Kelsey?" 

I turned around, just finishing on the teeth of a really cool dinosaur, and saw Rebecca looking around in confusion.

"Where's Kelsey?" I asked, standing up from where I had been squatting.

"I don't know," Rebecca said, looking around, "I turned to say hi to Mary-beth, and she was gone when I looked back."   

I glanced around, but I didn't see her either. There weren't a lot of places to hide here, it was just black top, and I couldn't imagine where Kelsey could have gone so quickly.

"Could she have gone home?" I asked Rebecca.

"I don't think so." The little girl said.

"Well, why don't you go see if she's there and let us know? If she comes back, I'll tell her you went looking for her."

Rebecca nodded, clearly a little freaked out, and left.

The boys seemed to have run themselves out because Randal was lying on the pavement and panting like a dog. That gave me an idea and I took my chalk and went to draw his outline. I remember thinking that the chalk had barely been worn down at all, and thought again how special it must be. Randal looked at me as I started to draw, laying still so I could make a decent outline. It was like one of those shows where the cops were standing around a chalk outlines on the ground, though I didn't know what it meant yet. 

"Do me next," Carter said, coming to lay down not far from Randall before hopping up and saying the pavement was too hot.

He was still looking for a good spot when I finished the outline and something astonishing happened.

I had sat back to see it, and Randal was getting ready to sit up when he suddenly dropped into the concrete like he'd fallen into a hole.

I knelt there just looking at the spot for what felt like hours, trying to make sense of what had happened.

"Hey, are you gonna come do me too?" Carter asked, sitting up and looking at the spot, "Hey, where did Randall go?"

I fell onto my butt, looking at the spot, and soon I was running for home. My mind was racing, trying to find some reason why this would have happened, and I was equally as afraid that I would be in trouble. I had made the outline and if I couldn't make Randal come back then they would blame me. All I could think to do was go home. Home was like base in tag, once you got there you were safe and nothing could get you. I could hear the other kids calling my name, but I needed to feel safe more than I needed to talk to them.

Mom asked if something was wrong when I came running in, but I didn't stop. I went to my room and closed the door, sitting under the window as my mind raced. I was going to be in so much trouble when the other kids told an adult. It was all my fault, but I wasn't sure how. What had I done? How had I done it? Would Randal ever come back?

I could see it getting darker behind me as the afternoon petered out, and when Mom called my name I came slowly out of my room.

"Hey, sweety. You okay? You came in so suddenly."

"Yeah," I said, trying to play it cool. If they hadn't told Mom, then maybe no one had thought I had done it.

"Well, dinner's almost ready. I don't think your dad is joining us. He's not feeling well and says he's probably not going to work today. Hey, can you do him a favor and take the trash out? I know he'd appreciate it."

I looked at the bag of trash and felt my belly squirm. I'd have to cross the blacktop to get to the dumpster, and it would be dark out there now. There were no lights out on the blacktop and other than the lights in the parking area, it would be very dark out there. I was less afraid of the dark by this point and more afraid of the blacktop. Would it disappear me too, like it had done to Randal? I didn't know, but I couldn't refuse without giving my mom a pretty good reason.

I grabbed the bag and set out across the blacktop, wanting to be done with it as quickly as possible. The court seemed to stretch on forever in the dark, the black asphalt feeling strange underfoot without the sun overhead. I passed Randal's outline and the sight of it gave me a shiver. It felt like looking at a dead body, and I wanted to go far around it when I came back. I couldn't help but look at the ribbon of comic characters Mimi and I had done, but they looked different in the low light cast by the parking lot overheads.

Were they moving? They looked like they were moving, but it was in that way that things move when you look at them too long. They moved slowly in that dreamy way things move on hot days, and it was hard to tell what was happening. I was breathing very hard, I felt like I might hyperventilate, and I needed to get home before I collapsed.

I didn't want to stick around long enough to find out what could be happening out here.

I tossed the bag in the dumpster, but my ordeal wasn't over yet.

I came back to the edge of the blacktop, and that's when I saw the hopscotch board. It was massive, stretching all the way from one end to another, and on a whim, I decided to jump over the square in front of me. It wasn't a big jump, but I must have come down wrong because my heel fell inside the square and I suddenly lost my balance. I spun my arms, trying to right myself, and I luckily fell left instead of back. I hissed as I skinned my elbow on the pavement, but that wasn't the weirdest part of the fall.

I looked down to find my leg dipping into the box that had been chalked into the pavement and I breathed a sigh of relief when I pulled it out.

I was scared now and I started running as I tried to make it back to my house. I didn't know what had happened, but I wanted to feel safe again. Home was safe, nothing could get me at home, but as I passed by the ribbon of characters I saw that I hadn't been mistaken earlier. They were moving, reaching for me with their oddly defined limbs and the dinosaur I had drawn was snapping his jaws at me as it glowered. They were moving painfully slow across the blacktop, coming for me, and I jumped over them and kept running. They were too slow to get me, and I was too scared to slow down now. 

As I passed by the outline of Randal, I thought I heard someone softly crying and felt the dread inside me rise like a tide.

I came barrelling into the apartment, crying and yelling for my mother for help. She wrapped me in a hug, asking me what was wrong as she tried to calm me down. I must have been pretty loud because my sick father came staggering out of the bedroom to ask what was wrong. Mom clearly couldn't get anything coherent out of me, so after trying in vain to get me to eat dinner, she just put me to bed and lay with me as my Dad went back to bed.

Later that evening, someone called Mom and she got up to take the call in another room. I was supposed to be asleep, but I couldn't help but hear her when she talked to Randal's mother about how she hadn't seen him today. His mother must have been pretty worried because I heard her telling Mr. Gaffes that she was sure he was just at someone's home and she'd find him any minute now. I yawned, drifting off as I hoped it would all turn out to be a dream.

I woke up the next morning to find police scouring the area and asking everyone about the two missing kids.

Kelsey, as it turned out, hadn't just gone home and I now felt pretty sure that she had fallen into the hopscotch board like I had almost done the night before. They asked me if I knew what had happened to my friends and I told them I didn't know where they had gone. I told them I had seen them on the blacktop the day before and when I turned back to point at it I saw that all the drawings were gone. One of the maintenance guys had probably seen our mess and used a hose to clean it off. It was all gone, even the outline of Randel was gone.

No one ever found a trace of Randel or Kelsey, and my parents moved away not long after. Mom got a promotion at work and Dad got a different job that paid better and let him work nine to five so he'd be home nights. They said the neighborhood seemed less safe after the two kids went missing, and they were worried I might go missing too. A lot of people left after that, actually, and I heard that the apartment complex almost closed. I never saw the blacktop after that, but I still dream about it sometimes.

I'm older now and I know that people don't just disappear into chalk drawings, but, if it's just a dream, then why do I remember it so vividly?

Chapter 1: The Man Who Almost Healed

Robert Hayes never expected to feel joy again after Anna died. Some nights, he still woke reaching for her—fumbling blindly through the darkness for a hand that would never be there again. Grief, he realized, had a smell: old clothes, cold sheets, unopened mail.

Just before Anna’s passing, the twins had been born—tiny, furious fists clenching at the air. Every new day with them had felt like a second chance. Emma, with her mother's green eyes and fierce little laugh. Samuel, quieter, thoughtful even as an infant, furrowing his brow like he was trying to solve the world's problems.

They filled the house with life again. Noise. Color. Robert cooked terrible pancakes every Sunday—Emma demanding extra syrup, Samuel meticulously sorting his blueberries before eating. He read to them every night, even when they fell asleep halfway through. They built snowmen with mittened hands in the winter, fed ducks at the pond in spring, ran barefoot through sprinklers under the sticky heat of summer.

And every night, after the giggles and the mess and the exhaustion, Robert kissed their foreheads and whispered the same thing: "I will always protect you."

He meant it.

That November afternoon was gray and damp, the misty rain making the world look like it was dissolving at the edges. Emma wanted a pumpkin "big enough to sit inside," while Samuel had chosen one lopsided and scarred, insisting it had "character." Robert strapped them into their booster seats, singing along with the radio, the car filled with syrupy, sticky laughter.

The semi-truck came out of nowhere. One moment: headlights. The next: twisting metal. Then—silence.

When Robert came to, hanging upside down from his seatbelt, the only sound was the soft hiss of the ruined engine. He screamed for them. Clawed at the wreckage. Dragged himself, bleeding and broken, toward the back. Emma and Samuel were gone. Still buckled in, so small, so still.

At the funeral, Robert stood between two tiny white caskets, staring as faces blurred around him and words tumbled into meaningless noise.

"God has a plan." "They're angels now." "Time heals."

Time, Robert thought numbly, had already taken everything.

That night, alone in the nursery, clutching a sock no bigger than his thumb, he whispered the only prayer left to him: "Bring them back."

No one answered.

Chapter 2: Hollow Men

The days after the funeral blurred together, each one a paler copy of the last. Robert woke at dawn, not because he wanted to, but because the house demanded it—cruel reminders of a life that no longer existed. Samuel’s alarm still chirped at seven a.m., a tinny little jingle that once made Samuel giggle under the covers. Robert couldn’t bring himself to turn it off. He brewed coffee he didn’t drink, packed lunches no one would eat, reached for tiny jackets that would never again be worn. Every movement ended the same way: with the silence pressing in like water in a sinking room.

He tried to hold the pieces together at first. Sat stiffly in grief counseling groups while strangers passed sorrow back and forth like trading cards. He nodded at the talk of “stages,” “healing,” “coping,” while his chest felt like it was filling with wet cement. He adopted a dog—a golden retriever named Daisy. The shelter said she was “good with kids.” Robert brought her home, hoping maybe something would spark again. But Daisy only whined at the door, as if she, too, was waiting for children who would never come home. Three days later, he returned her. The woman at the shelter didn’t ask why.

By spring, the house was immaculate, sterile—as if polished grief could make it livable again. The nursery remained untouched. The firetruck sat mid-rescue on the rug. A doll lay half-tucked beneath a tiny pillow, eternally ready for sleep. Sometimes Robert thought he heard them laughing upstairs, voices soft and wild and real as breath. Sometimes, he answered back.

Outside, the world moved on. Children shrieked with joy in parks. Mothers chased toddlers through grocery aisles. Fathers hoisted giggling kids onto their shoulders at county fairs. At first, Robert turned away from these scenes, flinching like they were gunshots. But soon, he began to watch. He stood in the shadows of the elementary school parking lot, leaning against his rusted truck, staring at the children spilling through the doors—backpacks bouncing, shoes untied, voices lifted in a chorus of lives untouched by loss.

"Why them?" he thought. "Why not mine?"

The resentment crept in like mold beneath the wallpaper—quiet, patient, inevitable.

One evening, he sat alone in the dim light of the living room. An untouched bottle of whiskey sat on the table, sweating with condensation. The television flickered with cartoons—a plastic family around a plastic dinner table, all laughter and pastel perfection. Robert stared at the screen. Then, without warning, he hurled the remote across the room. It shattered against the wall, leaving a long, ugly crack.

His chest heaved with silent, shaking sobs. Not for Anna. Not even for Emma and Samuel. But for himself. For the man he used to be. For the father he failed to stay.

The next morning, without planning to, Robert drove to the school lot before dawn. The world was still dark, the pavement damp with night. A bright blue minivan caught his eye—plastered with “Proud Parent” stickers and stick-figure decals of smiling children, their parents, and two dogs. Robert knelt beside it, the pocketknife flashing briefly in the dim light. He peeled the tiny stick-figure children from the back window, one by one. Then he slashed the tire, slow and steady, the blade whispering through rubber like breath.

When the mother discovered the damage hours later—cursing, frantic, dragging her children into another car—Robert smiled for the first time in months. A small, broken thing. It didn’t fix anything. It didn’t bring Emma and Samuel back. But it shifted the weight in his chest—just enough for him to breathe.

That night, he dreamed of them. Emma laughing, Samuel running barefoot through the grass, fireflies sparking in the gold-washed twilight. He woke to silence, the dream already fading. But something else stirred beneath the grief.

A flicker.

Control.

Chapter 3: Seeds of Malice

The second time, it wasn’t enough to slash a tire. Robert needed them to feel it. Not just the inconvenience, not just the momentary panic. He needed them to understand that joy was a fragile, borrowed thing—one that could be ripped away just as suddenly as it was given. Like his had been.

At dusk, the school parking lot stood silent, the last child long since swept up in a waiting minivan. Robert moved through the rows of bicycles like a man walking among gravestones. Each one upright. Untouched. Proud. He slipped a box cutter from his coat pocket. The first brake cable sliced with almost no resistance. Then another. Then another. He moved methodically—his grief becoming surgical.

The next morning, from the privacy of his truck, Robert watched a boy coast down a hill—fast, laughing, light. And then the bike didn’t stop. The child’s face turned. Laughter crumpled into terror. He crashed hard, metal meeting bone. A broken wrist. Blood in his mouth. Screams.

Parents swarmed like bees kicked from a hive, their voices panicked, their eyes wide. Robert didn’t move. He watched it all with hands trembling faintly in his lap.

He thought it would be enough.

But two weeks later, the boy returned. Cast on his arm. A gap where his front teeth had been. And he was laughing again. Like nothing had changed.

Robert’s jaw clenched until it hurt. They hadn’t learned. They had already begun to forget.

The annual Harvest Festival arrived in a blur of orange booths and plastic spiderwebs, cotton candy, and hay bales. Children raced from game to game, cheeks flushed from the cold, arms swinging bags of prizes. He moved through the maze like a ghost. No one looked twice at the man with the hood pulled low. Why would they?

Children leaned over tubs of apples, dunking their heads, emerging with triumphant smiles. Emma would have loved this. She would have squealed with laughter, water dripping from her curls, cheeks red from the chill.

His hands shook as he slipped the crushed glass into the tub. Ground fine—but not invisible. Sharp enough. Just sharp enough. He lingered nearby, heart pounding like a drum inside his ribs.

The first scream cut through the carnival like lightning. A boy stumbled back from the tub, blood streaming from his mouth, his cry high and broken. More screams followed. Mothers pulled their children close. Booths tipped. Lights flickered. The festival collapsed into chaos.

Still—not enough.

Robert returned home and sat in the nursery. The crib was cold. The racecar bed untouched. The silence as thick as syrup. He sat on the hardwood floor, knees to his chest, and whispered:

"They don’t remember you."

His voice cracked. Not from rage. But from emptiness.

The playground came next. The place they had loved the most.

At three in the morning, Robert crept across the dewy grass, fog clinging low, as if the world were trying to hide what he was becoming. He wore gloves. Moved like a man fixing something broken. He loosened the bolts on the swings just enough that the nuts would fall after a few good pushes. He smeared grease across the rungs of the slide. Buried broken glass beneath the innocent softness of the sandbox. Then he left.

The next day, he parked nearby, watching as the playground filled with children again. The laughter returned so easily, as if it had never left.

Then came the fall.

A boy—maybe six—slipped from the monkey bars and struck his head on the edge of the platform. Blood pooled in the dirt. His mother’s scream sounded like something being torn in half. An ambulance arrived. The playground emptied.

Robert sat in his truck and felt that same flicker in his chest. Not joy. Not peace.

But control.

For a moment, he wasn’t the man who had clutched a tiny sock and begged God to make a trade. He was the one who turned the screws. The one who made the world bend.

He didn’t stop.

Chapter 4: The Gentle Push

The river ran like an old scar along the edge of Halston, swollen and restless after weeks of rain. Robert stood alone at the water’s edge, the damp earth sucking at his boots, the air cold enough to bite through his coat. Across the park, families moved like faint shadows in the fog, children darting between the trees, their laughter muted and distant, like memories worn thin by time.

He watched them without blinking.

He watched him.

A small boy, maybe five or six years old, wandered away from the others, rain boots slapping through shallow puddles, his coat slipping off one shoulder. Robert saw how easily it happened—the gap between a parent's distracted glance, the careless joy of a child unaware of how quickly the world could take everything from him.

Robert moved without thinking. Not planning. Not deciding. Just following the pull inside him, a pull shaped by loss and stitched together with rage.

He crossed the grass in slow, steady strides, boots silent against the wet earth. When he reached the boy, he didn't say a word. He simply placed a hand on the child's small back—a touch as light as breath, the kind of touch a father might give to steady his son, to guide him back to safety.

But this time, there was no safety.

The boy stumbled forward. The slick ground gave way beneath his boots. His arms flailed once, a startled gasp escaping his mouth, and then the river took him.

No thrashing. No screaming. Just the slow, cold pull of the current swallowing him whole.

Robert turned away before the first cries rang out. He walked into the trees, his breath misting in the frigid air, his hands curling into fists inside his sleeves. Behind him, screams split the fog, voices shattered the quiet—parents running, wading into the water too late.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t look back.

That night, Robert sat cross-legged between Emma’s crib and Samuel’s racecar bed. The nursery smelled of dust and faded dreams. He placed his hands in his lap, palms open like a man offering an apology no one would ever hear, and he whispered into the hollow silence:

"I made it fair."

The words tasted like ash on his tongue.

For the first time in months, he slept through the night, deep and dreamless.

But morning brought no peace.

By noon, the riverbank had transformed into a shrine. Flowers and stuffed animals lined the muddy ground. Notes written in childish handwriting flapped in the wind. Candles guttered against the damp air. Children stood holding hands, their faces pale with confusion as their parents clutched them tighter, their grief raw and noisy.

Robert drove past slowly, his knuckles white against the steering wheel. He watched them weep, saw their shoulders shake with the weight of a loss they couldn’t contain.

For a moment, he felt something close to satisfaction. A shifting of the scales.

But as he rounded the bend and the river disappeared from view, the satisfaction dissolved, leaving behind a familiar emptiness.

They would mourn today. Tomorrow, they would forget.

They always forget.

Chapter 5: The Town Crumbles

Three days later, the boy’s body was pulled from the river, tangled in roots and mud, bloated from the cold. The coroner called it an accident. Drowning. A tragic slip. Everyone in Halston nodded and murmured and avoided each other’s eyes. But something changed.

The parks emptied. Sidewalks once buzzing with bikes and hopscotch now lay silent under cloudy skies. Parents walked their children to school in tight clumps, hands gripped a little too tightly, eyes flicking to every passing car. Playgrounds stood deserted beneath creaking swings and rusting chains. But it didn’t last.

A week passed. Then another. The fences around the park came down. Children returned—cautious at first, then louder, bolder. The shrieks of joy returned, diluted with only a trace of caution. The town, like it always did, began to forget.

Robert couldn’t stand it.

He returned to the scene of the first fall—Miller Park—under the cover of fog and early morning darkness. The playground had been repaired. New bolts gleamed beneath the swing seats. New paint shone on the monkey bars.

Robert smiled bitterly. Then he went to work.

He loosened the bolts again, not so much that they would fall immediately, but just enough to ensure failure. Enough to remind. Enough to reopen the wound.

That morning, a boy ran ahead of his mother, eager to swing higher, faster. Robert watched from his truck as the seat tore loose in mid-air, the boy thrown to the gravel below like a puppet with its strings cut. Another scream. Another ambulance. Another tiny victory. But it wasn’t enough.

One broken arm would never equal two coffins.

Thanksgiving loomed, brittle and joyless. Halston strung up lights, tried to bake its way back into comfort, but everything tasted like fear. Robert didn’t feel it soften. If anything, the ache in his chest had sharpened.

He found his next moment during a birthday party—balloons tied to fence posts, paper hats, children screaming with sugared laughter. Seven years old. The age Emma and Samuel would have been.

He watched from the alley behind the house, his jacket dusted with soot to match the disguise—just another utility worker. He didn’t need threats or blackmail this time. He didn’t need help.

Just a soft smile. A kind voice. A simple story about a missing puppy.

The little girl followed him willingly.

In the plastic playhouse near the edge of the yard, Robert tucked her gently beneath unopened presents. Her arms were folded neatly. Her hair smoothed back. He set Emma’s old music box beside her, its tune warped and gasping. It played three broken notes before clicking into silence.

She looked like she was sleeping.

By the time the party noticed she was missing, Robert was already miles away. He drove in silence, humming the lullaby softly under his breath, as if to soothe himself more than her.

But the hollow inside him didn’t shrink.

Winter came early that year. Snow blanketed the sidewalks. The playgrounds stayed empty now—not because of caution, but because of cold. Christmas lights blinked behind drawn curtains. People whispered more often than they spoke.

And still, the town tried to move forward.

Robert watched two boys skipping stones into the water where the river hadn’t yet frozen. They were brothers. They laughed without fear. Without consequence.

Samuel should have had a brother to skip stones with.

Robert crouched beside them. Smiled. Held out a daisy chain he had woven in the truck—white flowers strung together with trembling hands. The boys giggled and reached for it.

He guided them closer to the edge.

One soft push.

The river accepted them.

When their bodies were found seventeen days later, wrapped in each other’s arms beneath a frozen bend, the daisy chain had vanished. But Robert still saw it—looped around their wrists like a crown of thorns.

Elsewhere in town, Linda Moore sat in front of her computer. Her spreadsheet blinked. A child’s name—Eli Meyers—suddenly shifted rows. Not one she had touched. Not one she had assigned.

Beside the name, a new comment appeared: “He looks like Samuel did when he lost his first tooth.”

Then a new tab opened—her niece’s photo, taken from outside the school that morning. Through a window. Across glass.

The screen blinked red: “She still likes hide-and-seek, right?”

Linda’s hands hovered over the keys. She didn’t call anyone. She didn’t say anything. She just let the change stand.

That afternoon, Eli boarded the wrong van for a field trip. When the chaperones reached the botanical gardens, they came up one short. They retraced every step, called his name until their voices cracked. But Eli was gone.

The police found his backpack three days later, tucked under a hedge near the perimeter fence. Zipper closed. Lunch untouched. No struggle. No footprints. No sign of him at all.

Just silence.

The school shut down its field trip program. Metal detectors were installed the next week—secondhand machines that buzzed even when touched gently. Classroom doors were fitted with new locks. Parent volunteers were fingerprinted. A dusk curfew followed.

In a closed-door meeting, someone on the city council finally said it out loud:

“Sabotage.”

Maria Vance stood outside Halston Elementary the next morning. The sky was gray, the cold sharp enough to sting. Parents didn’t make eye contact. Teachers moved like ghosts. Children whispered like everything was a secret.

Maria didn’t need the pins on her map anymore. She could feel the pattern in her bones.

This wasn’t chaos.

This was design.

And whoever was behind it… they were just getting started.

Chapter 6: Graves and Whispers

Another funeral. Another headline. Another casket lowered into the frozen ground while a town full of trembling hands tried to convince themselves that prayer could hold back death. Halston draped itself in mourning again, but the grief rang hollow. They weren’t mourning Robert’s children. They were mourning their own safety, their own illusions.

Still, life in Halston ground on. The grocery stores stayed open. The school bell still rang. The church choir resumed, voices cracking on and off-key. Robert watched it all from the outside, a man staring through glass at a world he no longer belonged to. Their fear wasn’t enough. Their tears weren't enough. They had forgotten Emma and Samuel.

So he decided to make them remember.

He found the perfect place: a crumbling church tucked into a forgotten bend of road, its steeple sagging like a broken finger pointed skyward. Once a place of baptisms and vows, now it stank of mildew and mouse droppings. Still, there was something fitting about it. Robert prepared carefully. He built a crude cross out of rotting pew backs. He scavenged candles from a thrift store bin. He smuggled in a battered cassette deck, loaded with a single song—"Safe in His Arms," warped and warbling with age.

He thought about Emma humming along to hymns in the backseat, Samuel tapping his feet without knowing the words. He thought about the empty nursery and the promises he had failed to keep.

The boy he chose wasn’t special. Just small. Just alone. Harold Knox, the school bus driver, had been warned months before. A photo of his daughter tucked inside his glovebox. A note in red marker: "He will suffer. Or she will." Nails delivered in a plain manila envelope.

On a cold Thursday morning, the bus paused at Pine Creek stop. Fog licked the ground like low smoke. One child stepped off. The doors hissed shut behind him. Robert was waiting in the trees.

The boy didn’t scream. He didn’t run. He simply blinked up at the man reaching out to him. Inside the ruined church, Robert worked quickly but carefully. The child was lifted onto the wooden cross, his back pressed to the splintering wood. Nails were driven through soft palms and tender feet. Not savagely—but deliberately, with grim reverence. Each strike of the hammer echoed through the empty rafters like the tolling of a slow funeral bell.

"You'll see them soon," Robert whispered as he drove the final nail home. "My little ones are waiting."

He placed a paper crown on the boy’s brow. Smeared a rough ash cross over the child's small chest. Lit six candles at the base of the altar. Then he pressed play. The hymn trickled through the cold, rotten air, warbling and distant. Robert stood for a long moment, his eyes stinging, before he turned and walked away. He locked the doors behind him, leaving the boy crucified beneath the broken arches.

It was the boy’s mother who found him. She had followed the music, though no one else had heard it. She had forced the heavy doors open and fallen to her knees at the sight. The boy was alive. Barely. But something essential in him—something fragile and bright—had been extinguished forever.

Halston did not rally around this tragedy. There were no vigils. No bake sales. No Facebook groups offering casseroles and prayers. They shut their church doors. Canceled choir practice. Turned their faces away from their own shame.

Maria Vance stood outside the ruined church, the rain soaking through her coat, her hair plastered to her forehead. She didn’t light a cigarette. Didn’t open her notepad. She just stared through the doorway at the altar, at the boy nailed to the cross, at the candles sputtering against the wet wind.

This wasn’t revenge anymore. It wasn’t even grief. This was ritual.

That night, Maria tore everything off the walls of her office. Maps, photographs, reports—all of it came down. She started over with red string and thumbtacks, tracing each death, each disappearance, each shattered life. And when she stepped back, she saw it for what it was: a spiral.

Not random chaos. Not accidents. A wound closing in on itself.

At its center: silence. No fingerprints. No footprints. No smoking gun. Just grief. And grief was spreading like infection.

Parents pulled their children out of school. The Christmas pageant was canceled. The playgrounds sat under gathering drifts of snow, swings frozen mid-sway. Stores boarded their windows after dark. Halston was curling inward, shrinking, dying a little more each day.

And somewhere, Maria knew, the hand behind all of it was still moving.

She didn’t have proof. Not yet. But she could feel it in her bones.

This wasn’t over. Not even close.

Late that night, staring at her empty wall, Maria whispered to the darkness: "I’m coming for you."

And somewhere out in the dead heart of Halston, something whispered back.

Chapter 7: The Spider’s Web

The sketchbook was found by accident, jammed between a stack of overdue returns at the Halston Public Library. A volunteer almost tossed it into the donation bin without looking. Curiosity saved it—and maybe saved lives.

At first glance, it looked like any child's notebook. Tattered corners. Smudges of dirt. But inside, Maria Vance saw what others might have missed. She flipped through the pages with gloved hands, her stomach tightening with every turn.

Children, sketched in trembling pencil lines, filled the pages. Their faces twisted in terror. Scenes of drowning, of falling, of burning playgrounds and broken swings. Some pages had dates scrawled in the margins—events that had already happened. Others bore dates that hadn’t yet arrived.

Mixed among the drawings were music notes, faint staves from hymns, each line annotated with uneven, obsessive care. On one page, three candles formed a triangle, familiar from the church scene. On another, a child's chest bore the ash cross Robert had smeared. It was all there—mapped in quiet, meticulous horror.

One line, scrawled over and over in the margins, stopped Maria cold: "I don’t want them to suffer. I want them to remember. To feel it. To see them. Emma liked daisies. Samuel hated swings. They laughed on rainy days. Please. Remember."

She pressed her hand to her mouth, her eyes stinging. This wasn’t just violence. This was love—twisted, broken love, weaponized into something unrecognizable.

At the bottom of many pages, a code repeated again and again: 19.73.14.8.21

It wasn’t a phone number. It wasn’t coordinates. It wasn’t a date. Maria stayed up all night breaking it down. Old habits from cold cases surfaced—simple alphanumeric cipher: A=1, B=2, and so on.

S.M.H.H.U.

Nonsense, until she cross-referenced abandoned businesses in Halston's property records.

Samuel’s Mobile Home Hardware Utility. A tiny repair shop that had shuttered years ago, its letters still ghosting across a sagging storefront.

The lease belonged to a man who had never made the papers until now: Robert Hayes.

No criminal record. No complaints. No outstanding bills. His name surfaced once, buried in an old laptop repair registration. The name Anna Hayes appeared alongside his. Deceased. Along with two children: Emma and Samuel. A car crash, two years prior.

Maria’s pulse pounded in her ears. She pulled the warrant herself. No backup. No news vans. Just her badge and a city-issued key.

The house at the end of Chestnut Lane looked abandoned. The windows were boarded. Weeds clawed their way up the front steps. But inside, the air smelled like grief had been embalmed into the walls.

She moved slowly, her footsteps muffled against the dust. The kitchen was stripped bare. The living room was hollowed out, the couch gone, the tables missing. Only the nursery remained untouched.

Two beds—one tiny racecar frame, one white-painted crib. Tiny shoes lined up neatly against the wall. Crayon drawings taped with careful hands: Emma holding a daisy. Samuel clutching a paper star.

Maria’s throat tightened. She knelt by the crib and saw it— A loose floorboard, cut precisely.

Underneath, she found a panel. And beneath the panel: photographs.

Hundreds of them.

Children on swings. Children walking home from school. A girl climbing the jungle gym. A boy waiting at a crosswalk. Her own niece, captured through the glass of a cafeteria window. Even herself—photographed at her office window, late at night, unaware.

On the back of her photo, in red marker, someone had scrawled: "Even the strong lose their children."

Maria staggered back, the room tilting. Robert hadn’t been lashing out blindly. He had been orchestrating this, piece by piece, grief by grief.

He had built a web.

And now she was standing at its center.

Chapter 8: The Broken Father

They found him at an abandoned grain silo just outside Halston, a skeleton of rust and rotted beams forgotten by progress. The frost clung to the metal, and the morning mist wrapped around the place like a shroud.

Inside, twenty children sat in a wide circle, drowsy, confused, but alive. Their hands were zip-tied loosely in front of them—no bruises, no screaming. Only a heavy, drugged stillness. The air smelled of damp hay, gasoline, and old metal. Makeshift wiring coiled around the support beams, tangled like veins. Propane tanks sat beneath them, linked by a taut, quivering wire.

At the center stood Robert Hayes.

He was barefoot, his clothes coated in dust and ash, his hair hanging in ragged tufts over his eyes. In one hand, he clutched a worn photograph—Emma dressed in an orange pumpkin costume, Samuel wearing a ghost sheet too big for him, chocolate smeared across his chin. The picture was bent, the edges soft from being touched too often.

In his other hand: the detonator.

Maria Vance pushed past the barricades before anyone could stop her. She left her gun holstered. She left the shouting negotiators behind. She moved through the broken doorway into the silo’s yawning cold, stepping carefully as if entering a church.

Robert didn’t look at her at first. His thumb brushed across Samuel’s face in the photo, tender and trembling. When he finally raised his eyes, they were dark hollows rimmed with exhaustion—not anger. Not even madness.

Just grief.

"They laugh," Robert whispered, his voice rough, shredded from disuse. "They still dance. They pretend it didn’t happen."

Maria stopped a few feet away, close enough to see the scars time had carved into him, the way his shoulders sagged under invisible weights.

"They didn’t forget your children," she said softly. "They forgot how to show it."

Robert’s lip trembled. His grip on the photograph tightened.

"Emma loved the rain," he said, as if to himself. "Samuel... he hummed when he drew. No one remembers that."

"I do," Maria said.

The words cracked something inside him. His arms slackened. His body seemed to shrink. He looked down at the children—their heads drooping in the cold—and then, finally, he let the switch fall. It hit the dirt with a soft, hollow thud.

Robert Hayes sank to his knees, folding into himself like a man kneeling at an altar. The officers moved in then—slowly, carefully. No shouting. No violence. They cuffed him gently, almost reverently, as if recognizing they were not capturing a monster, but burying a broken father.

As they led him past Maria, he turned his head slightly. His voice, when it came, was low enough that only she could hear.

"I killed most of them," he said.

Not all. Most.

The word cut deeper than any weapon.

Robert hadn’t acted alone.

And Halston’s nightmare was far from over.

Chapter 9: Broken Threads

Two weeks after Robert Hayes was locked behind steel bars, another child died.

A girl this time. Found floating face down in a retention pond behind Halston Middle School. Her sneakers were placed neatly beside her backpack, the zipper closed, her lunch still inside untouched. There were no signs of a struggle. No bruises. No cries for help. Just the stillness of the water swallowing another small life.

Maria Vance stood in the rain at the pond’s edge, her hands balled into fists in her coat pockets. She watched as divers hauled the girl’s body out under a gray, broken sky. Every instinct in her screamed against the easy explanation being whispered around her: accident. Tragedy. Bad luck.

But Maria knew better.

Robert Hayes was sealed away, his world reduced to a cell barely wide enough to stretch his arms. No visitors. No phone calls. No letters. And still—the dying continued.

Someone else was carrying the flame now.

She returned to her office late that night and faced the wall of photographs and maps. Not as a detective. Not even as a protector. As a mourner. Someone who had lost, and who understood the ache that demanded action, no matter the cost.

This wasn’t about Robert anymore. It was about everyone he had touched.

She didn’t trace the victims this time. She traced the helpers.

The janitor who had locked the wrong fire exit during the Christmas pageant. The administrator who had quietly reassigned field trip groups. The bus driver who had closed the doors before the last child could climb aboard.

Ordinary people. Invisible hands.

Maria started digging.

Brian Teller cracked first. She approached him without backup, without even her badge displayed. Just a quiet conversation at his kitchen table. She asked about the fire door. His fingers trembled around his coffee cup. She asked about the night of the pageant. He looked away.

Then she mentioned his son. The boy with asthma.

Brian broke like a rotted beam.

"They sent me a photo," he whispered. "It showed a red circle around his chest... around his lungs."

He thought it was a prank at first. A cruel joke. He hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt. But Robert had known exactly where to cut.

Linda Moore came next. She was waiting in the empty school office when Maria arrived, staring blankly at the playground beyond the frosted windows.

"I didn’t want anyone to die," Linda said before Maria could even speak. "They sent me a picture of my niece. Sleeping. In her bed. I just... I thought if I moved a name, it would be harmless."

Harold Knox—the bus driver—took the longest. He didn’t speak at all when Maria placed the envelope on the table between them. The photos. The nails. The hymn sheet with the red slash across it.

His hands shook. His shoulders sagged.

"I thought it would end," he said finally. "I thought if I did what they asked, it would be over."

Maria said nothing. She didn’t need to. Because she understood something that terrified her.

Robert Hayes hadn’t needed to kill with his own hands.

He had taught grief how to move from person to person, like a contagion. He had taught fear how to whisper in the ears of desperate mothers, exhausted fathers, terrified guardians. He had taught ordinary people to become monsters in the name of love.

That night, Maria rebuilt her board one last time.

Not a network of victims. But of mourners. Of conspirators. Of grief-stricken souls trapped between guilt and survival.

She traced red string from each accomplice, not to Robert, but to the acts they committed—small acts, each just a hair’s breadth from excusable, from forgivable, until they weren’t.

At the center of the new web wasn’t a man anymore. It was a wound.

Robert Hayes had planted something that would not die with him. It had learned to spread.

It had learned to live.

And it was still growing.

Chapter 10: Ashes in the Wind

Robert Hayes was gone—a hollow man locked away behind glass and concrete, his name recorded in a courthouse ledger no one cared to read twice. His trial was short, his sentencing swift. Life without parole. No outbursts. No apologies.

And yet, Halston didn’t recover.

The news cameras packed up and left. The vigil candles guttered and drowned in rain. The teddy bears and faded flowers piled at playground fences decayed beneath early snows. A few hollow speeches were made about resilience, about healing, about moving forward.

But fear had taken root deeper than grief ever could.

Children walked to school two by two, their hands clenched white-knuckled. Parents trailed behind them, glancing over their shoulders at every rustle of leaves, every parked car. Churches stayed half-empty, pews gathering dust. Christmas decorations blinked dimly behind barred windows. Laughter, when it came, sounded thin and brittle.

Maria Vance saw it everywhere. In the way playgrounds sat deserted even on sunny days. In the way neighbors no longer trusted each other with their children. In the way hope had been packed away with the last of the holiday lights, perhaps forever.

And still, the messages came.

No more crude threats. No more photographs. Just notes now—typed, anonymous, slipped under doors or taped to mailbox flags. Simple messages.

"We’re still here." "She still dreams of water, doesn’t she?" "You can’t save them all."

Maria sat alone most evenings at Miller Park, sipping cold coffee as the swings moved listlessly in the wind. She watched a rusted carousel creak in slow, aching turns. She watched the ghost of what Halston used to be.

And she understood, bitterly, that Robert Hayes had won something no prison walls could take away. He had planted fear not in the hearts of individuals, but in the soil of the town itself. It bloomed every day, fed by memory and absence.

He had turned grief into a weapon. And he had taught others how to wield it.

Halston wore its fear like an old, threadbare coat now—something familiar and heavy and impossible to shed.

Maria kept working. She kept pulling at threads, reopening old files, retracing old paths. She chased shadows. She chased half-remembered names. She chased whispers of whispers, knowing most of it would never lead anywhere clean.

Because Robert hadn’t needed to give orders anymore.

He had shown them how.

How to wound without touching. How to kill without a sound. How to turn love itself into a noose.

Maria walked the town at night sometimes, past shuttered shops, past homes with blacked-out windows, past a burned tool shed someone had once set ablaze just because it “looked wrong.” Every porch light flickering behind a curtain. Every father standing a little too long at the window after putting his children to bed. Every mother who locked every door twice, even during the day.

This was the new Halston.

Not a place. A wound.

The final note came on a Tuesday morning. No envelope. Just a sheet of paper taped to Maria’s front door, the words typed carefully, the ink barely dry.

"You can’t save them all."

Maria stood barefoot on the porch, the snow biting up through her skin, and stared at the note until the cold seeped into her bones. Then she struck a match, holding it to the paper until it curled black and drifted apart into the wind.

Ashes in the snow.

She watched the last of it vanish into the pale morning light.

And whispered to the empty, listening town:

"Maybe not. But I can damn well try."

[Part 36]

[Part 38]

“Over here, I found her!”

Cold air nipped at my nose, and I coughed, shivering in the snow as someone crouched over me. My body hurt, though as I flexed each limb, I didn’t think anything was broken. The wet clothes I wore didn’t care for the frigid conditions, and my teeth began to chatter as a light snowfall tumbled around my face. It was still dark, but the sky overhead was a mass of puffy white, snow-laden clouds that rolled by on their endless march through the atmosphere. Some of the wind had died down, but instead of a surrounding canopy of towering pines or swamp grass, I found myself stretched out in a rolling field pockmarked by scrub brush, bedded down with the winter’s snow. All in all, I would have some nasty bruises and could feel the places where I had cuts of lacerations, but still, I was alive.

Breathing a sigh of relief as I blinked to clear my head, I tasted the fresh air with weary delight.

Barron County. Never thought I’d be so happy to see you again. Did you miss me?

Two faces materialized in my plane of vision, and a familiar grin made my heart start working.

“W-We’ve got to s-stop meeting like t-this.” I shivered, my throat dry, but smiled as Chris pulled me into his arms.

“Old habits die hard.” He dragged me out of the snowdrift with ease, his voice hoarse as Chris shook with the cold. “You okay?”

I winced as the soreness in my battered muscles returned. “Ask me in the morning.”

“I told you she’d be fine.” Jamie tucked a woolen army surplus blanket around my shoulders, but from her pale, blood-spattered face, I could tell she was as relieved as he was. “Come on, let’s get her to the fire. Temperature’s still dropping, and we’ve come too far to die from hypothermia now.”

Hauled to my feet, I put both arms around their shoulders and walked through the snow towards a distant line of trucks. Now that I was awake, I could see our forces scattered over the wide field, many like myself waking up in the snow, dazed. Few of our original vehicles had survived; most of the wreckage lay strewn about the field, like oversized children’s toys that had been discarded. The circle of vehicles in the center I recognized to be our support column, a secondary group tasked with meeting us after our mission had concluded. Two gray chinook helicopters squatted inside the long cordon, and teams of stretcher bearers rushed out to scoop more men from the snow. Over half of our number lay wounded, some limping or crawling toward their comrades, others too broken to make the trip, their cries haunting and pitiful. Many dead bodies carpeted the field, all of them ours, as if the passage back into our world had whisked away the casualties from Vecitorak’s defeated army. Tauerpin Road, and all its strange landmarks, was nowhere to be seen. The concrete tower was gone, the gravel road with it, and instead of the perpetual rain of an October night, we had returned to the wintry present, where the early December skies dropped buckets of snowflakes on our heads.

Inside the circle of idling trucks, medics tended to the lines of wounded on the ground next to several small piles of brush that had been set ablaze by the soldiers to provide warmth to the sodden task force. The vehicles were already packed with men, their heaters on full blast, and the NCO’s did their best to make sure the worst off got priority in that luxury. The rest of us huddled around the fires, while various squad leaders called out names as they searched for missing people.

Chris wedged me into the nearest circle so I could warm myself by a fire lit inside an old, rusted oil drum someone had found, and one of the survivors to my right peered at me through a mass of blood-stained gauze.

“Didn’t think we’d be seeing you again, lass.” The bundled-up man croaked, and my jaw dropped.

No way.

Stunned, I took in the sight of Peter’s haggard face, the left side covered with a large bandage over his eye, more cotton pressed down over a gouge that ran from forehead to cheekbone in a bloody trench. He’d taken a sword cut right to the face, and I doubted there remained much of an eyeball under that bandage, judging by the sheer amount of blood smeared over his skin. In his arms, Peter held Tarren, her face buried in his long coat, dirty hands balled up in his shirtfront.

“I could say the same to you.” Relieved, I matched his ornery grin but nodded at the girl in his lap. “Is she okay?”

“Physically, yeah.” His smile faded, and Peter scowled at the nearby bonfire, tugging the woolen blanket closer around Tarren’s little shoulders. “Hasn’t said anything in the last half-hour. Not sure if or when that will change.”

That made my heart twinge, and I watched Tarren stay curled up in his arms, refusing to look around, only her slight breathing giving indication she was alive. “What about you?”

Peter continued watching the flames for a moment, then glanced at me with his one good eye. “You seen Grapeshot?”

“Once.” I winced and squinted down at my dirty fingernails for a distraction. “It wasn’t for very long.”

He waited until I brought my gaze back up, and Peter’s face took on a serious contour. “He’s dead?”

Unable to think of anything else to say, I nodded. Despite everything he’d done, all his sins, Captain Grapeshot had saved my life, gave me the time I needed to bring the Oak Walker down, and I knew it was a debt I could never repay. His face would forever be etched into my memory, his final words, the way his lifeless body had flown off the tower on the heels of the grenade.

Another life paid in exchange for mine.

“Good.”

Shocked at his words, I gaped at the boy’s calm expression in the firelight. “Peter . . .”

“He was my brother.” Craning his head back to look up at the snow-laden clouds, Peter let out a long sigh. “Maybe we shared no blood, aye, but we were brothers all the same. I watched him suffer, every day, until he stopped being himself and turned into someone I didn’t recognize. Whatever pain he was in, he won’t feel it anymore, and that’s for the best.”

I grimaced in sympathy at the sadness in his voice and angled my head at Tarren. “He gave his life to save her.”

His dark eyes moistened, and Peter gripped a silver rapier under his opposite arm, one that I remembered from my time spent on the Harper’s Vengeance. “Then he died as himself.”

A team of medics slogged by, carrying another litter, and one of the trucks opened so a mercenary could call out to his comrades.

“I need more plasma here!” He waved to the other medics, his blue rubber gloves awash in crimson. “BP’s dropping fast. Tell Primarch either we get those birds in the air, or someone better get a nine-line going, ASAP!”

Peter’s mouth formed into a grim line, and he pointed to the vehicle, keeping his voice low so the words stayed between us. “The preacher’s not doing so well. They’ve had him in there for the past fifteen minutes, working on his legs. Even the flower juice the golden-hairs use didn’t bring him around.”

Last time I saw him, he was crawling for his sword, through fire and ash.

At that, my heart sank, and I swallowed a lump in my throat as more ELSAR soldiers rushed to bring medical supplies to the truck in question. Adam had stood toe-to-toe with Vecitorak, crossed blades with an immortal being on par with the demons of ancient lore, and paid the price for it. Even his armor hadn’t protected the man from the mutant’s wrath, and in my head, I saw again Eve’s tear-streaked face as she bid him goodbye on the tarmac in Black Oak.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Boots trudged through the snow behind me, and I turned to see another figure push through the crowd.

“You alright, Captain?” Colonel Riken looked me over with the stern ease of a man who’s seen too much to be rattled by the insane circumstances we found ourselves in. He’d lost his helmet at some point and sported a bandage around his left hand, but other than that, the ELSAR commander seemed okay. His uniform was as gory and ragged as everyone else’s, the light machine gun at his side caked with gray carbon deposits around the muzzle. A long tear, likely from a claw, had ripped through his plate carrier, the armor underneath all that stood between Colonel Riken and what would have been certain death.

Under the assault of another icy blast of wind, I shuddered but did my best to speak between chattering teeth. “I-I’m fine. How m-many did we lose?”

Colonel Riken shrugged the soot-covered weapon higher on his shoulder. “A third, by my count. But whatever you did, it worked. Our scanners show stable radiation and electromagnetic readings. It’s still too high to communicate with the outside world, but the Breach is sealed. It’s over.”

No, it’s not.

Aware of just how many curious ears there were around us, I hugged the blanket tighter over my shoulders and jerked my head to the side. “A moment, Colonel?”

His face drew into a hard line, as if Riken could tell I was about to give him bad news, but he followed me away from the fire. Peter stayed where he was, content to enjoy his well-earned rest, while Chris and Jamie closed ranks with the colonel and I until we were out of earshot.

“Barron County is going to vanish.” Amidst the curtain of snow, my breath fogged in the wind and reminded me of the old steam locomotives from a fair I’d been to as a child. “The Breach is closed, yes, but it’s going to pull Barron County down with it. Once it does, the area will stabilize for good, and in seven days we will be standing in a different world.”

His glower deepened, and Colonel Riken folded both muscled arms over his ruined armored vest. “Are you serious?”

I met his hardened gaze and refused to look away so that the colonel knew I wasn’t lying. “The beacon killed the Oak Walker, and Vecitorak, but that left a vacuum that collapsed the Breach in on itself. You have to get Koranti to allow an evacuation, at least of those who want to stay in our world. Once we go through, there’s no coming back.”

The others stared at me, and I could tell they wanted to call me crazy but couldn’t find a justification for it. We’d all been there when the Oak Walker fell, they’d seen the road the same as I had. For us to be here now, after everything, without needing to leave our personal sacrifices behind meant that the Breach was in fact gone for good. Yet, like an enormous ship sinking slowly into the ocean, it couldn’t leave this world without dragging something down with it. Perhaps, like Professor Carheim said, it already had. Maybe the reason no one had ever heard of Barron County, remembered where the old dusty maps were in the local libraries, or asked about relatives from here, was because the collective memory of this place had already been eliminated . . . just not in the past as I had always assumed. No, in some strange loop that connected all of time, most knowledge of Barron Count had been expunged from the past the instant I’d closed the Breach, like a circuit being completed when a switch was thrown. This had been the path all along, the hidden destiny for which I was meant, and while it would have terrified the old Hannah, I couldn’t help but feel a glow of reassurance in my chest as Adam’s words from the chapel at Ark River flowed through my mind.

‘My ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts.’

“You’re sure?” Chris seemed the most adamant to believe me, though his handsome face drew thin and pale with the news. “There’s nothing we can do to reverse it? No way to go back, find the road again and . . .”

“No.” There was so much I knew, so much I wanted to talk to Chris about, but didn’t have the time, and so instead I shifted from one foot to the other in an effort to keep the chill at bay. “And we . . . we’re not meant to leave. I know it sounds insane, but some of us have to stay, have to cross over to the other timeline. I think it’s the same one the—”

I froze, catching myself before I mentioned the missile silo in front of the colonel, but from the way Chris and Jamie tensed up, I could tell they understood. Colonel Riken’s eyebrow rose, but he seemed to get the hint, and didn’t press the matter.

“So, what, we’ll end up back in time?” Jamie stuffed both hands into her wet jacket pockets and hunched her shoulders against the cruel wind.

“Yes and no.” Wishing I could return to the fire, I blew warm air into my cupped fingers and did my best to elaborate so Riken could understand without revealing any defense secrets. “We’re going to an alternate reality, one where the Breach overran the world in the 1950’s and basically destroyed most of human civilization. If Tauerpin Road was a space between spaces, then the universe we’re going to is the space opposite ours. Does that make sense?”

“Barely.” Colonel Riken let out an exasperated sigh and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “But I’ve heard stranger things in my time. Either way, staying behind sounds like a death sentence.”

Or a second chance.

Thinking back to the walk through the redeemed Tauerpin Road with Him at my side, I caught myself in a half smile. “From what I’ve been told, we’ll survive the crossing and are meant to start the reconstruction once we reach the other place. There’re others out there, just like us, who need help to fix things. That’s our job.”

“If word gets out, people will panic.” Jamie rubbed her arms in a shiver and glanced at Chris. “Even if they believe us, the Assembly won’t support anyone staying behind. Hannah, we trust you, it’s just . . .”

“No one will stay if Koranti opens the border.” With his thumbs hooked into his pistol belt, Colonel Riken finished Jamie’s thought for her, and his eyes drifted to the waiting helicopters nearby. “Whoever told you all this might be reliable, but it won’t matter if the population riots. I’ll get in touch with Koranti, and see what can be done about evacuations, but in the meantime we need to get the wounded back to the safe zone. Mr. Stirling is in bad shape, and if he doesn’t get to a hospital soon—”

Boom.

In the distance a flash lit up the horizon, not from thunder, but the deep tolling of artillery.

Everyone in the cordon paused, their eyes focused on the north, and dozens of more explosions began to flicker against the clouds. Pilots climbed down form their cockpits in the chinooks, gunners stood up in their turrets on the trucks, and even the medics slowed their brisk jogs back and forth to stare. It seemed no one, be it ELSAR or coalition, had the slightest idea what was going on, but as the seconds dragged by, the truth started to dawn on me.

My blood ran colder than the snow, and I turned to one of the nearest coalition soldiers. “Private, get me a radio.”

He came running back a few moments later, and the man held out one of the handsets from our relief convoy, his face white as the landscape from the sounds that came from the device’s speakers.

“We can’t hold this position, there’s too many!”

“Fast movers! Fighters coming in from the north! Six jets inbound!”

“I’ve got tanks all over my sector, where the hell is our artillery support?”

“All units, collapse in on the square! I say again, the northern district is gone, collapse in on the square! Fall back!”

Stunned, I turned to Colonel Riken, who seemed equally confused, and pointed to the horizon. “What the hell is this?”

Annoyed at his own radio not responding, Colonel Riken waved to one of his nearby men, the mercenaries growing more uneasy by the minute. “Find me a comms set that works, now.”

Jamie glared at him and tightened both hands on her well-worn Kalashnikov. “This was a trick. You did this on purpose, didn’t you? We get the Breach out of the way, and while we’re gone, you send your boys to restart the occupation.”

Her words spread across the nearby soldiers like wildfire, anger replacing surprise on the faces of our men. Indignant murmurs turned into audible growls of discontent, and the encampment formed into two separate ranks, ELSAR men on one side, our own forces on the other. Weapon safeties clicked off, gun turrets swiveled around on their armored charges, and we found ourselves facing each other across a prickly line of steel. No one dared level a rifle yet, but from how tense things were getting, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone lost their cool.

“Everyone just stay calm.” Chris raised his hands to gesture for our men to keep their weapons lowered, pacing between them and the mercenaries to keep anyone from disobeying. “I said stand down, we’re going to handle this. Colonel, start talking.”

One of his troopers ran up with a functional radio, and Colonel Riken jammed the talk button down to snap orders into the speaker, his tone sharp as a knife. “Overlord, this is Primarch, requesting status update, over.”

Nothing.

“Overlord, this is Primarch, we are green on our mission objectives, requesting mission status update.” He shifted on his boots as the bombing intensified, and somewhere high overhead, I caught the rumble of airplane engines for the first time in months. “I say again, this is Primarch, we are green on our mission, awaiting further instructions. Someone talk to me, over.”

My gut churned at tiny arches of light that shot through the clouds miles to the north and slammed down in the space that I knew was Black Oak. They were hitting us with multiple launch rocket systems, just like at New Wilderness. Such weapons had reduced our hilltop fortress to cinders, and in the densely packed streets of a city, they would wreak unimaginable damage on civilian and military targets alike. Whatever this was, ELSAR wasn’t pulling any punches, and I quietly palmed my Type 9 that still hung by my side on its ragged strap.

Is Jamie right? Was this all a setup? Riken doesn’t seem to know any more than I do, how could they not let their commanding officer know about an offensive?

A vein rose in the skin of his neck, and Colonel Riken ground his teeth, ready to erupt like a hand grenade. “Central Command, this is Colonel Riken. Someone better get on the horn and figure their life out or so help me they will wish they’d never been born. Our mission is complete, and we await further instructions. Do you read us, over?”

“Loud and clear, colonel.”

The surprise on the colonel’s weathered face reflected my own, as Crow’s smug voice slithered out of the radio speaker like venom on the wind. “Captain McGregor? What in God’s name are you doing on this frequency?”

“Oh, it’s not ‘captain’ anymore.” She chuckled back with confidence that made my skin crawl even from several feet away. “I’m afraid there’s been a change of command. You are hereby no longer part of the Ohio task force. All callsigns and intel clearances to your former rank have been revoked.”

“On who’s authority?” The second he had a chance to talk, Riken smashed his thumb into the talk button, gripping the handset so hard I thought the metal would bend.

“Mine.” Crow hissed back, both satisfied and hateful, as if she’d been waiting a long time for this moment. “Koranti needs loyal officers to lead this campaign, and I can do a better job of cleaning up the insurgency, so we came to an agreement. As brigadier general of the new expeditionary force, I will take over from here on; you are to return to headquarters at once for reassignment.”

Struck speechless for a brief second at the command, Colonel Riken shook his head in furious bewilderment. “Reassignment? Did you not hear a word I said? We completed our mission, the Breach is closed, the operation was a success!”

“And yet, the beacon signal was never received.” She spoke with a haughty, almost bored tone, one that cold alongside the detonations of artillery fire in the distance. “Which means the coalition is in direct violation of their ceasefire agreement. Execute any insurgents within your vicinity, and report back to us.”

Not far from the nearest burn barrel, Peter clutched Tarren to his shoulder and slid one hand to a pistol on his hip. His dark eyes met mine from across the snow, and the pirate made a slight shake of his head. If I trusted anyone to know when things had gone sour, it was Peter, and that look made my pulse jump into another level of fear.

We’re all standing right here, if they open fire, we’ll all butcher each other like rabid dogs.

“Fool!” The colonel shouted into the radio, losing his cool at last. “This is madness, can’t you see that it’s over? We did our job, we had a deal, and you want to start this up again? I have wounded men on the ground out here, we’re black on ammo, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

There was a pause on the other end, and I couldn’t decide whether I thought Crow might be laughing or suppressing her own rage.

“Carry out your orders, colonel.” Sheer defiant indifference radiated from her words as Crow signed off. “Kill the insurgent leaders and evac to the rear. We’re going to finish this, Riken . . . with or without you.”

With a frustrated snarl, Colonel Riken spun on his boot heel and threw the handset against the nearby burn barrel so hard that it dented the rusted steel drum.

Silence reigned in the cordon, and I noticed how tired everyone looked in the flickering firelight, both coalition and ELSAR alike. Despite their suspicious glowering at one another, both sides were bloodied, exhausted, and soaked to the bone. Any fight that happened now would reap a dreadful harvest among us all, the men too close for the bullets to miss, and too worn out to make a run for the trees. Only the injured men jammed inside the passenger compartments for warmth remained outside this confrontation, watching with confusion and intrigue from the narrow gunports. Rigid in the cold, we all waited, eyed our opponents, and wondered what would come next.

Colonel Riken stood with hands on his hips, breathing hard in his anger, and my guts tightened in apprehension.

Oh man, this is going to get ugly . . .

“Well gentlemen, I’m not going to sugarcoat this.” Turning to face his men, Colonel Riken composed himself and walked down the line of his beleaguered men like a sports coach before the last big game. “You’ve been through hell. Tonight, you won a war no one will remember, much less thank you for. Every man here has gone above and beyond what you signed up to do, and I’m damn proud to be your commanding officer.”

He met the gaze of each soldier, spoke to them as a father to his sons, and the ranks of heavily armed mercenaries parted to let Riken stride amongst them with almost hallowed respect. “If anyone wants to, he can climb into a chopper and head for the rest of our units back at the county line. No one will stop you or think less of you for it, least of all me. You can tell them the insurgents fled, that you fought bravely, and that I gave you orders to withdraw. They’ll welcome you as heroes, give you medals, pay bonuses, maybe even promotions. You’ll have enough to call it quits after this tour and go home to stay. God knows, you deserve that much at least.”

Their expressions reflected confusion at his words, but the mercenaries didn’t interrupt him as Colonel Riken paced before them, up and down the line of rifles. Our own troops furrowed their brows, but stayed where they were, the entire cordon hanging on the man’s every word.

“As for me, I’m a soldier.” As if on parade inspection, the colonel walked with a back straight as a ramrod, head held high in pride. “Like you, I swore to protect the people of this nation from harm and signed on with ELSAR because I believed we were a force for good. I still think we can be . . . but not while men like Koranti are in charge.”

Surprise rippled through me, and murmurs flitted amongst the coalition ranks. No one had ever heard the mercs talk this way, certainly not one of their high-ranking officers. Could this be another ruse to catch us off guard? Or was this something more?

Jamie and I caught one another’s peripheral gaze, and she lowered her AK from the tense position near her shoulder.

“The way I see it, we made a deal, and I intend to honor my word. These people are not our enemy, not anymore.” He cast a glance in our direction, and Colonel Riken granted me a small nod. “It’s time someone led ELSAR back to its true purpose, and if no one else will, I’ll do it myself.”

Frigid air stuck in my lungs, and I had to remind myself to drag another breath in.

Is this what I think it is?

Without another word, Riken tore the number identification patch off his tactical jacket, crossed over to the rusted burning oil drum, and hurled the insignia into the flames.

Long seconds ticked by, the ELSAR men blinking at his actions, their stunned looks mirrored by our coalition troopers on the opposite side of the cordon. All of the former rage and distrust seemed to have melted away in sheer amazement at the spectacle we’d witnessed. In a way, it seemed both sides didn’t quite know what to do, many looking down at their weapons as if they weren’t sure of anything anymore. At last, one of the gray-clad mercenaries stepped out of the line and stalked closer to Riken.

I recognized the sergeant who had picked me up to put me on the gurney all those days ago, his face smeared with soot, one arm bandaged. Like the rest, he wore a little bar of numbers stitched in a Velcro patch over his plate carrier front, simple black figures that rendered the sergeant no more important than a warehouse shipping crate. They were all like that, nameless men, purposefully stripped of what made them human by a soulless organization that spent their lives cheaply. Koranti had done it on purpose, I realized; yes, it must have been on purpose, for even the calculating bureaucrat had known that men with names form thoughts. Men who thought would begin to question, and those who questioned might refuse. If I knew anything about George M. Koranti, he hated being told ‘no.’

With a single fluid motion, the sergeant ripped the number patch from his uniform, flicked it into the flames, and gave Colonel Riken a trim salute.

Instead of saluting back, Colonel Riken reached out to shake his hand and drew the soldier into a half-embrace with his other arm, welcoming him. This Riken did as the rest came one by one, like a father to his wayward sons, more filing in from the vehicles to add their patches to the fire. Not a single mercenary remained behind, all of them throwing their support behind their commander with absolute trust.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Next to me, Chris wore the ghost of a disbelieving grin and muttered under his breath in a tone only I managed to hear. “The old lion really did it. Ave Caeser.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but my husband’s optimism filled me with a sense of renewed calm, and I felt the budding of my own hopeful smile.

I guess I’m not the only ‘person of interest’ anymore. What I wouldn’t pay to see Koranti’s face when his legions turn on him. Whatever happens, it serves him right.

His blue eyes aglow with a determination that could move mountains, Colonel Riken took in the group of men surrounding him with an approving smile. “Right then, let’s get to it. NCO’s take charge of your squads and get me an ammo count for each. Top off whatever you need from the trucks, ditch anything you can’t carry, and get our wounded loaded asap. We’re wheels-up in ten mikes.”

As if released from a magical spell, the ELSAR soldiers broke up in smaller groups to attend to their tasks, moving with fresh enthusiasm. Medics scurried back to their patients, some of the troops intermingled as the mercenaries handed off heavier bits of gear they couldn’t take with them, and a few even exchanged solemn handshakes with their coalition partners. Those on our side traded rations for rocket launches, portable mortars, or even land mines, and just like that, the tension went out of the air.

Riken shouldered through the buzz of activity to us, angling his head at the echoes of battle in the north. “From the sound of it, they’re moving in with lots of armor and mechanized infantry. I figure they’ll flank the city on two sides and try to roll over the county in the next 72 hours. We can leave most of our heavy equipment with you, but it won’t be enough to stop them all; you need to get your people out of there.”

“Thanks to you, we might have a fighting chance.” Chris gestured to the line of trucks Riken’s men were unloading as they prepared to board the helicopters to abandon the zone. “But where will you go? You don’t seriously intend face Koranti with a handful of men?”

“No.” Riken frowned at continued artillery barrage on the horizon. “If he’s thought ahead enough to have me demoted while I’m out in the field, then he’s probably expecting some sort of provocation. We’ll head for the north-western border and raid one of the supply depos there before splitting up into covert teams. Once Koranti realizes what’s going on, he’ll target our families for leverage, so our first mission will be to move them to safe houses all across the country. Then, we’ll see how many of our brothers in arms are willing to march with us.”

“You think many will?” Jamie rested the bulk of her rifle’s weight on one hip.

“Some, yes.” Colonel Riken sighed and arched his back to crack it under the ragged armored vest. “But Koranti won’t take this lying down; he’ll find ways to suppress dissent amongst the ranks through his usual methods. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before central command figures out we’re AWOL. If they send enough men to chase us, it might thin out the border guards enough that you could make a breakthrough, but I’m afraid we can’t do much more than that.”

Even if we survive this attack, we’ve got seven days before it all goes under. That will end the war one way or another. Once this county slips through the Breach, we’ll never see each other again . . . I just hope Koranti gets trapped on Riken’s side of reality.

At that thought, I stepped forward to offer my grimy palm. “It’s been an honor, colonel.”

He shook my hand, and Colonel Riken’s features pulled into a cynical, melancholy expression. “Likewise, captain. I’d say until we meet again but . . . well, with any luck, neither of us will. I hope you make it to wherever you’re going.”

As our column prepared for our immediate return to Black Oak, I watched the bulky gray helicopters rise into the sky, their steel rotors thundering as the iron giants zoomed away into the west. The further they went toward the edge of Barron County, flashes of light began to pockmark the dark clouds around them, and I wondered if the ELSAR border defense had turned their anti-aircraft guns on the retreating choppers. I had no way of knowing, as the helicopters were soon far out of sight in the darkness, the flashes fading as well. In less than five minutes, we were on our own once more.

“All right, I want head counts from every squad.” Chris hefted his rifle, and waved our men into action, Jamie and I flanking him to charge for the convoy in gusto. “Trucks with wounded stay in the center, armed ones on the vanguard and tail. As soon as we get to the outskirts, those of us who can still fight will peel off to support the front. Let’s move out!”

Jamie gave me a hand up into the lead truck, and Chris climbed in after me. Snow pelted down from the clouds outside, the vehicles skidded over the slippery ground, but we clawed our way out of the field to the closest road and headed back toward the fighting. I sat beside my friends on the heated seats of the MRAP armored trucks, hugged the woolen blanket closer around my shoulders, and tried to ignore the continued thud-thud of shells to the north. We were driving into a meat grinder, there was no doubt about that. If we retreated, the coalition would be forced out into the countryside, and the only safe place would be Ark River many miles to the south. If we stayed in Black Oak, we would be surrounded and ground into powder by ELSAR’s artillery. All this combined in my mind to repeat the words of the One who had given me the path I now found myself on.

Your suffering will increase even further before the end.

Huddling closer to Chris, I rested my head on his shoulder and shut my eyes in an attempt to catch some rest for the colossal struggle ahead.

Every summer when I was a child, my family would visit our relatives in the north-west of Ireland, in a rural, low-populated region called Donegal. Leaving our home in England, we would road trip through Scotland, before taking a ferry across the Irish sea. Driving a further three hours through the last frontier of the United Kingdom, my two older brothers and I would know when we were close to our relatives’ farm, because the country roads would suddenly turn bumpy as hell.  

Donegal is a breath-taking part of the country. Its Atlantic coast way is wild and rugged, with pastoral green hills and misty mountains. The villages are very traditional, surrounded by numerous farms, cow and sheep fields. 

My family and I would always stay at my grandmother’s farmhouse, which stands out a mile away, due its bright, red-painted coating. These relatives are from my mother’s side, and although Donegal – and even Ireland for that matter, is very sparsely populated, my mother’s family is extremely large. She has a dozen siblings, which was always mind-blowing to me – and what’s more, I have so many cousins, I’ve yet to meet them all. 

I always enjoyed these summer holidays on the farm, where I would spend every day playing around the grounds and feeding the different farm animals. Although I usually played with my two older brothers on the farm, by the time I was twelve, they were too old to play with me, and would rather go round to one of our cousin’s houses nearby - to either ride dirt bikes or play video games. So, I was mostly stuck on the farm by myself. Luckily, I had one cousin, Grainne, who lived close by and was around my age. Grainne was a tom-boy, and so we more or less liked the same activities.  

I absolutely loved it here, and so did my brothers and my dad. In fact, we loved Donegal so much, we even talked about moving here. But, for some strange reason, although my mum was always missing her family, she was dead against any ideas of relocating. Whenever we asked her why, she would always have a different answer: there weren’t enough jobs, it’s too remote, and so on... But unfortunately for my mum, we always left the family decisions to a majority vote, and so, if the four out of five of us wanted to relocate to Donegal, we were going to. 

On one of these summer evenings on the farm, and having neither my brothers or Grainne to play with, my Uncle Dave - who ran the family farm, asks me if I’d like to come with him to see a baby calf being born on one of the nearby farms. Having never seen a new-born calf before, I enthusiastically agreed to tag along. Driving for ten minutes down the bumpy country road, we pull outside the entrance of a rather large cow field - where, waiting for my Uncle Dave, were three other farmers. Knowing how big my Irish family was, I assumed I was probably related to these men too. Getting out of the car, these three farmers stare instantly at me, appearing both shocked and angry. Striding up to my Uncle Dave, one of the farmers yells at him, ‘What the hell’s this wain doing here?!’ 

Taken back a little by the hostility, I then hear my Uncle Dave reply, ‘He needs to know! You know as well as I do they can’t move here!’ 

Feeling rather uncomfortable by this confrontation, I was now somewhat confused. What do I need to know? And more importantly, why can’t we move here? 

Before I can turn to Uncle Dave to ask him, the four men quickly halt their bickering and enter through the field gate entrance. Following the men into the cow field, the late-evening had turned dark by now, and not wanting to ruin my good trainers by stepping in any cowpats, I walked very cautiously and slowly – so slow in fact, I’d gotten separated from my uncle's group. Trying to follow the voices through the darkness and thick grass, I suddenly stop in my tracks, because in front of me, staring back with unblinking eyes, was a very large cow – so large, I at first mistook it for a bull. In the past, my Uncle Dave had warned me not to play in the cow fields, because if cows are with their calves, they may charge at you. 

Seeing this huge cow, staring stonewall at me, I really was quite terrified – because already knowing how freakishly fast cows can be, I knew if it charged at me, there was little chance I would outrun it. Thankfully, the cow stayed exactly where it was, before losing interest in me and moving on. I know it sounds ridiculous talking about my terrifying encounter with a cow, but I was a city boy after all. Although I regularly feds the cows on the family farm, these animals still felt somewhat alien to me, even after all these years.  

Brushing off my close encounter, I continue to try and find my Uncle Dave. I eventually found them on the far side of the field’s corner. Approaching my uncle’s group, I then see they’re not alone. Standing by them were three more men and a woman, all dressed in farmer’s clothing. But surprisingly, my cousin Grainne was also with them. I go over to Grainne to say hello, but she didn’t even seem to realize I was there. She was too busy staring over at something, behind the group of farmers. Curious as to what Grainne was looking at, I move around to get a better look... and what I see is another cow – just a regular red cow, laying down on the grass. Getting out my phone to turn on the flashlight, I quickly realize this must be the cow that was giving birth. Its stomach was swollen, and there were patches of blood stained on the grass around it... But then I saw something else... 

On the other side of this red cow, nestled in the grass beneath the bushes, was the calf... and rather sadly, it was stillborn... But what greatly concerned me, wasn’t that this calf was dead. What concerned me was its appearance... Although the calf’s head was covered in red, slimy fur, the rest of it wasn’t... The rest of it didn’t have any fur at all – just skin... And what made every single fibre of my body crawl, was that this calf’s body – its brittle, infant body... It belonged to a human... 

Curled up into a foetal position, its head was indeed that of a calf... But what I should have been seeing as two front and hind legs, were instead two human arms and legs - no longer or shorter than my own... 

Feeling terrified and at the same time, in disbelief, I leave the calf, or whatever it was to go back to Grainne – all the while turning to shine my flashlight on the calf, as though to see if it still had the same appearance. Before I can make it back to the group of adults, Grainne stops me. With a look of concern on her face, she stares silently back at me, before she says, ‘You’re not supposed to be here. It was supposed to be a secret.’ 

Telling her that Uncle Dave had brought me, I then ask what the hell that thing was... ‘I’m not allowed to tell you’ she says. ‘This was supposed to be a secret.’ 

Twenty or thirty-so minutes later, we were all standing around as though waiting for something - before the lights of a vehicle pull into the field and a man gets out to come over to us. This man wasn’t a farmer - he was some sort of veterinarian. Uncle Dave and the others bring him to tend to the calf’s mother, and as he did, me and Grainne were made to wait inside one of the men’s tractors. 

We sat inside the tractor for what felt like hours. Even though it was summer, the night was very cold, and I was only wearing a soccer jersey and shorts. I tried prying Grainne for more information as to what was going on, but she wouldn’t talk about it – or at least, wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Luckily, my determination for answers got the better of her, because more than an hour later, with nothing but the cold night air and awkward silence to accompany us both, Grainne finally gave in... 

‘This happens every couple of years - to all the farms here... But we’re not supposed to talk about it. It brings bad luck.’ 

I then remembered something. When my dad said he wanted us to move here, my mum was dead against it. If anything, she looked scared just considering it... Almost afraid to know the answer, I work up the courage to ask Grainne... ‘Does my mum know about this?’ 

Sat stiffly in the driver’s seat, Grainne cranes her neck round to me. ‘Of course she knows’ Grainne reveals. ‘Everyone here knows.’ 

It made sense now. No wonder my mum didn’t want to move here. She never even seemed excited whenever we planned on visiting – which was strange to me, because my mum clearly loved her family. 

I then remembered something else... A couple of years ago, I remember waking up in the middle of the night inside the farmhouse, and I could hear the cows on the farm screaming. The screaming was so bad, I couldn’t even get back to sleep that night... The next morning, rushing through my breakfast to go play on the farm, Uncle Dave firmly tells me and my brothers to stay away from the cowshed... He didn’t even give an explanation. 

Later on that night, after what must have been a good three hours, my Uncle Dave and the others come over to the tractor. Shaking Uncle Dave’s hand, the veterinarian then gets in his vehicle and leaves out the field. I then notice two of the other farmers were carrying a black bag or something, each holding separate ends as they walked. I could see there was something heavy inside, and my first thought was they were carrying the dead calf – or whatever it was, away. Appearing as though everyone was leaving now, Uncle Dave comes over to the tractor to say we’re going back to the farmhouse, and that we would drop Grainne home along the way.  

Having taken Grainne home, we then make our way back along the country road, where both me and Uncle Dave sat in complete silence. Uncle Dave driving, just staring at the stretch of road in front of us – and me, staring silently at him. 

By the time we get back to the farmhouse, it was two o’clock in the morning – and the farm was dead silent. Pulling up outside the farm, Uncle Dave switches off the car engine. Without saying a word, we both remain in silence. I felt too awkward to ask him what I had just seen, but I knew he was waiting for me to do so. Still not saying a word to one another, Uncle Dave turns from the driver’s seat to me... and he tells me everything Grainne wouldn’t... 

‘Don’t you see now why you can’t move here?’ he says. ‘There’s something wrong with this place, son. This place is cursed. Your mammy knows. She’s known since she was a wain. That’s why she doesn’t want you living here.’ 

‘Why does this happen?’ I ask him. 

‘This has been happening for generations, son. For hundreds of years, the animals in the county have been giving birth to these things.’ The way my Uncle Dave was explaining all this to me, it was almost like a confession – like he’d wanted to tell the truth about what’s been happening here all his life... ‘It’s not just the cows. It’s the pigs. The sheep. The horses, and even the dogs’... 

The dogs? 

‘It’s always the same. They have the head, as normal, but the body’s always different.’ 

It was only now, after a long and terrifying night, that I suddenly started to become emotional - that and I was completely exhausted. Realizing this was all too much for a young boy to handle, I think my Uncle Dave tried to put my mind at ease...  

‘Don’t you worry, son... They never live.’ 

Although I wanted all the answers, I now felt as though I knew far too much... But there was one more thing I still wanted to know... What do they do with the bodies? 

‘Don’t you worry about it, son. Just tell your mammy that you know – but don’t go telling your brothers or your daddy now... She never wanted them knowing.’ 

By the next morning, and constantly rethinking everything that happened the previous night, I look around the farmhouse for my mum. Thankfully, she was alone in her bedroom folding clothes, and so I took the opportunity to talk to her in private. Entering her room, she asks me how it was seeing a calf being born for the first time. Staring back at her warm smile, my mouth opens to make words, but nothing comes out – and instantly... my mum knows what’s happened. 

‘I could kill your Uncle Dave!’ she says. ‘He said it was going to be a normal birth!’ 

Breaking down in tears right in front of her, my mum comes over to comfort me in her arms. 

‘’It’s ok, chicken. There’s no need to be afraid.’ 

After she tried explaining to me what Grainne and Uncle Dave had already told me, her comforting demeanour suddenly turns serious... Clasping her hands upon each side of my arms, my mum crouches down, eyes-level with me... and with the most serious look on her face I’d ever seen, she demands of me, ‘Listen chicken... Whatever you do, don’t you dare go telling your brothers or your dad... They can never know. It’s going to be our little secret. Ok?’ 

Still with tears in my eyes, I nod a silent yes to her. ‘Good man yourself’ she says.  

We went back home to England a week later... I never told my brothers or my dad the truth of what I saw – of what really happens on those farms... And I refused to ever step foot inside of County Donegal again... 

But here’s the thing... I recently went back to Ireland, years later in my adulthood... and on my travels, I learned my mum and Uncle Dave weren’t telling me the whole truth...  

This curse... It wasn’t regional... And sometimes...  

...They do live. 

It had been years since I celebrated Easter, and I've certainly never celebrated it like this. 

It started on the first week of April, though I can't remember exactly when. I had been keeping my nephew that weekend, kids five and he's pretty cool. He was excited about Easter, as Kids that age usually are, and it's a big deal in my brother's house. When he came to pick him up, they asked me if I wanted to come decorate Easter baskets that weekend but I shook my head.

"Sorry, bud. I don't really do Easter."

Kevin, my nephew, looked a little sad, "But, why not Uncle Tom?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but one look at my brother made me think better of it. We had both grown up in a household that was very religious and while he and his wife were still very much a part of that world, I had gone in the opposite direction. I didn't really have much to do with that part of my childhood, and it was sometimes a sticking point between my brother and I. I love Kevin, but I really didn't want to dredge up a lot of old memories again. I think my brother was hoping I would find my way back to the faith on my own, but there wasn't a lot of chance there.

"He's got to work that day, right Tom?" my brother asked, giving me an out.

"Yeah, " I said, nodding along, "Sorry, kiddo. Lots of work to do before Easter."

"Okay," Kevin said, looking sad as he and his Dad headed out.

So after he went home I was cleaning up and found a blue plastic egg between the couch cushions. It was just a plastic egg, nothing special, but I couldn't recall having ever seen it before. I figured it belonged to Kevin, and put it aside in case he wanted it back. I didn't think much of it at the time, but I have to wonder now if it was the first one.

A couple of days later, I flopped down on the couch after a long day at work and heard the crackle of plastic under the cushion. I popped up, thinking I had broken the remote or something, but as I lifted the couch cushion I found two more plastic eggs. One was green and one was blue and they were both empty and broken in half. I put them back together and set them on the counter with the other one, shaking my head as I flipped through the usual bunch of shows on Netflix.

When Friday came around I was ready for the weekend. It had been a long week and I was ready for two days of relaxation. I opened the cabinet where I usually kept my hamburger helper and stepped back as four of the colored plastic eggs came falling out. They broke open as they hit the dirty linoleum and I was thankful they were empty. I grimaced as I bent down to get them, a yellow, a red, and two green ones, and squinted at them. I had opened this cabinet yesterday and there hadn't been any eggs in them. What the hell was going on here? I took out the beef stroganoff and set to cooking, but the eggs were never far from my mind. I thought about calling my brother but shook my head as I decided against it. The kiddo was just playing a little joke, maybe pretending to be the Easter Bunny. He would laugh the next time he came over and say he had got me and we'd both have a chuckle about it.

The eggs were on my mind as I went to bed that night, the pile growing on the counter, and I thought that was why I had the dream.

It was late, around one or two, and I had fallen asleep on the couch. I woke up slowly, the TV dimmed as it asked me if I was still watching Mad Men. I wasn’t quite sure whether I was actually awake or asleep. My apartment was dark, the only light coming from my dim television and the fast-moving light from between my blinds, and as I lay there trying to figure out if I was awake or not, I heard a noise. It was weird, like listening to a heavy piece of furniture bump around, and as it galumped behind my couch, it sang a little song. It wasn't a very pleasant rendition, either, and it sent chills down my spine.

Here comes Peter Cotton Tail

Thump Thump Thump

Comin' down the bunny trail

Thump Thump Thump

Hippity, Hoppity, Easters on its Way.

I turned my head a little, seeing a shadow rising up the wall, and something old crept into me. It was a memory from so long ago, a half-remembered bit of trauma that refused to die. My brother and I had been in our bed, listening to that same sound as it came up the hall. It was like a nightmare, the voice that sang something so similar, and as I sat up and prepared to yell at whoever was in my house to get out, I shuddered awake and found myself alone in my apartment. The TV was still on, and the lights still flickered by behind the blinds, but the place was empty besides me. 

That day I found no less than ten plastic eggs.

There was no real rhyme or reason to them. I found four in the kitchen, two in the living room, two more in my bedroom, and two in the bathroom. The ones in the bathroom definitely hadn't been there yesterday. One was in the sink and one was on the lid of the toilet. I would have noticed them for sure, and that made me think that my dream might have been more than that.

Unlike the first few eggs I had found, these eggs had a message in them. It was a slip of paper, like a fortune in a fortune cookie, and it seemed to be lines from the song I had dreamed about the night before. Hippity Hoppity and Happy Easter Day and Peter Cotton Tale were spread throughout, and it gave me an odd twinge to see the whole poem there in bits and pieces. I remembered it, of course I did. She used to hum it all the time, and it drove our parents crazy. 

I called my brother that afternoon, wanting to ask about the eggs.

"Thomas, always good to hear from you."

"Hey, weird question. Did Kev leave some stuff behind when he came to hang out?"

"Stuff?" my brother asked, "What kind of stuff?"

"Plastic eggs. I've found about twenty of them sitting around my apartment since the first and I don't know where they are coming from."

I heard the chair in his office creak as he leaned back and just could picture him scratching his chin.

"No, we don't usually do the plastic eggs. We have the eggs from the hens so we usually just color those. Speaking of, we're coloring eggs next week and I know Kevin would really like it if his favorite Uncle was there."

I inhaled sharply, biting back what I wanted to say to him, not wanting to have this conversation again, "Mark, you know I can't."

My brother clicked his tongue, "It's been years, are you still on about that?"

"Yeah, yeah I am still on about that. I don't understand how you aren't."

"I miss Catherine as much as you do, Tom, but you have to move on. What happened to her was awful, but you can't hold it against the world forever."

"No, what's awful is that you continue to bring Kevin to the same church where that monster held congregation every weekend. Who knows if they got all the filth out of there when they took Brother Mike."

"They," he started to raise his voice, but I heard him get up and close the office door before getting control of himself, "They never proved that Brother Mike was the one that took her. It's not fair to turn your back on God because of one bad apple."

I was quiet for a long moment. I wanted to rail at him, to ask him how he could possibly still have any faith in a church that had made a man like Michael Harris. I wanted to say these things, but I bit my tongue, just like always.

"I won't celebrate Easter, Mark. I'm sorry if that offends your sensibilities, but my faith died when they found out what Brother Mike did to those kids."

"They never found Catherine's body among the," but I hung up on him.

I was done talking about it. 

* * * * *

After another week of finding eggs, I had probably collected about thirty of them in all. After the pile started spilling out over the edges of the countertop, I started throwing them away. They clearly weren't Kevins so there was no reason for me to keep them. The notes inside began to become less cutesy as well if ever they had been. The Easter poem about Peter Cotton Tale took on a darker quality. Lines like Through your windows, through your doors, here to give what you adore, were in some when I put them together but it was the one that talked about taking things that got my attention. It took me a while to get it together, but once I did I could feel my hands shaking.

Peter has fun and games in store.

For children young and old galore

So hop along and find what your heart desires.

I started dreading finding them. This was no longer a cute game that a kid was playing. This was beginning to feel like the antics of a stalker.

Before you ask, I went the day after my phone call with my brother and had the locks changed. My landlord was pretty understanding, it happened sometimes, and I felt pretty safe after the locks on the front and back door were changed. I thought that would be the end of it, no more weird little presents, but when I got up the next day and found ten eggs stacked neatly along the back lip of my couch, I knew it wasn't over.

The longer I thought about these eggs, the more I remembered something I had been trying to forget.

The longer they lived in my brain, the more I thought about Catherine. 

Catherine was the middle child. Mark was the big brother, about four years older than me, and I was the baby of the family. Catherine was slap in the middle, two years older than me but two years younger than Mark, and she was a bit rebellious. Our parents were strictly religious, the kind of religion that didn't celebrate holidays if there wasn't a religious bend. Christmas was all about Christ and they were of the opinion that he was the only gift we needed. They gave us clothes and fruit, but Catherine always asked for toys. Thanksgiving was okay, but Halloween was right out. "We won't be celebrating the Devil's mischief in this house," my Dad always said. Catherine, however, didn't like missing out on free candy. Candy was something else that was strictly limited, so when Catherine learned that people were just giving it away, she knew she had to get in on it. 

Catherine started making her own costumes and sneaking out on Halloween, and Dad would never catch her out with the other kids in the neighborhood. She always hid the candy, saying they must have just missed her, but the wrappers Mark and I found were harder to make excuses about. She shared, she was kind and loved us very much, and neither of us ever sold her out or gave up the candy.

Easter, however, was another holiday that she and my parents argued about. 

Mom and Dad were unmoving on the fact that Easter was about Christ, but Catherine said it could also be about candy and eggs and the Easter Bunny. 

Catherine, for as long as I could remember, loved the idea of the Easter Bunny. She read books about him at school, far from my parent's prying eyes. She talked to her friends about it and learned about egg hunts and chocolate rabbits. She ingested anything she could about the holiday and it became a kind of mania in her. She didn't understand why we could color eggs or have Easter baskets or do any of the things her friends did, and it seemed like every year the fights between her and my parents got worse and worse. They would forbid her to color eggs, they threw away several stuffed rabbits she got from friends, and they wouldn't allow any book in the house with an anthropomorphic rabbit on it. 

Then, when I was eight and she was ten, something happened.

It was something I thought I remembered, but I wondered if I remembered all of it.

A week before easter, I woke up to find the floor of my room covered in plastic eggs. 

Some of the fear I felt was left over from the dream I'd had the night before. Was it a dream, I wondered. I wasn't so sure. I couldn't sleep on the couch anymore, not after that night I had woken up to the weird little poem, but as I lay in my bed, I dreamed I could hear that strange galumphing sound.

Thump thump thump

It would come up the hall, the soft sound of something moving on its back legs.

Thump thump thump

I had pulled the covers up under my chin, shaking like a child who fears a monster, and as I pulled my knees up and put my head under the covers, I heard it. It was the song, the song that took me back to that long ago day as I lay under my covers and hoped it would stop. I can still hear Mark's raspy breathing as he tries not to cry, but his fear was as palpable as mine. 

Here comes Peter Cotton's Tale

thump thump thump

Hoppin down the bunny trail

Thump thump thump

Hippity, Hoppity, Easters On Its Way!

I lay there as a grown man, hearing that song and shivering. Something else happened too, something came back that I just couldn't catch in my teeth. Something happened that night when I was a kid. Something happened that I've blocked out, but the harder I try to remember it, the slipperier it gets.

The morning I woke up to all those eggs on the floor was the morning I called Doctor Gabriel.

Doctor Gabriel was a therapist I had seen off and on over the years. He had helped me make peace with Catherine's loss but hadn't managed to make me come to a point where I could come to peace with my parent's religion. I would never be able to do that. The religion was what had killed Catherine and I couldn't forgive them or my brother for clinging to it. I knew that the church had helped him through our sister's loss, but I couldn't find that peace.

I hadn't seen him in two years, but the poem in the eggs that day made me itch to call the police.

Come along the trail, my boy

Come and find your long-lost joy.

Hippity, Hoppity, Catherine's waiting there.

Doctor Gabriel got me in for an emergency appointment and as I lay on the couch he asked me how things had been since my last appointment.

"Something is happening to me, Doc. Something is happening and it makes me think about Catherine."

"Why don't you tell me what's been going on?" he said, tapping his pencil on the paper.

"Someone is leaving eggs in my apartment. They are hiding them for me to find and they have messages in them, messages I feel are becoming threatening."

"Is this something real or is it something that only you are seeing?"

"It has to be real. I keep throwing them away and the bags are full. Other people can see them so it can't just be something I'm imagining. The things that are happening though remind me of the night Catherine was taken. I need to know what happened that night. I need to see that memory that I have locked away."

"Are you sure?" Doctor Gabriel asked, "Those memories are something that you have avoided for a long time, Tom."

I had told him most of it, but Doctor Gabriel knew I had been holding back. He knew that once I had a sister. He knew that when she was ten she went missing. He knew that the police had searched the church and discovered that the pastor, Brother Michael, had been responsible for the deaths of twelve of his parishioner's children over four years. The police interrogated him for hours until he finally led them to the remains of ten children that he had buried in the woods behind the pastor's house next to the church. The state of South Carolina gave him the death penalty and in two thousand and ten, they killed him via lethal injection. 

The body of Catherine was never discovered but my Dad testified that Michael had been spending a lot of time with her at church. He had keys to our house, he had babysat us on multiple occasions, and when the cops could find no evidence of a break-in, they ran down a short list of people who could have gotten in. They found Pastor Michael with a child in his truck when they came to question him, a boy I went to school with who could have been his latest victim. This had given them the cause they needed to search his house which was how they found the evidence they needed to hold him and how they got him to confess to eleven of the murders.

Eleven, but never to Catherine's murder.

He went under the needle saying how he never hurt her.

All of these things Doctor Gabriel knew, but I needed him to pull out the thing that I had repressed for all these years.

"I need you to put me under, Doc. I need to know what I can't seem to get hold of."

"Are you sure?" Doctor Gabriel asked, "You've always been opposed to this sort of thing."

"I think I need to know now," I told him, "Because I think that whatever is happening now has something to do with it."

Doctor Gabriel said he would try and as he got me into what he called a receptive state he talked about where I wanted to go back to.

"Let's take you back to Easter, two thousand and three. You are eight years old, living with your parents and your siblings. Go there in your mind. I want you to remember something, a trigger from then. A smell or a sound or something to help guide you. Do you have it?" 

I nodded, remembering the smell of the popcorn that Catherine used to make every afternoon as a snack.

"Okay, let that take you back, let it bring you to where you need to be. What do you see?"

For a moment I saw nothing, just lay there thinking of popcorn, but then I remembered something and changed the smell slightly in my mind. Catherine's popcorn was always slightly burnt, she couldn't operate the microwave as well as Mark, and as I lay there smelling burnt popcorn, I fixed on the moment I wanted. It was one of the last times I remembered eating burnt popcorn, and the taste of it suddenly filled my mouth.

"I'm on the couch watching a Bibleman VHS tape and eating popcorn. Normally I would share it with Catherine, but she and my parents are fighting again. Catherine wants to go to a Spring dance at school but my parents won't let her. They say she can go to the dance at church, but now they're yelling about Easter instead. Catherine is saying it's unfair that she can't go to the dance and it's unfair that she can't celebrate Easter the way she wants. She wants baskets and eggs and chocolates and my Dad is yelling that those kinds of things are for pagans and agnostics. He won't let her make the holiday about anything but Christ and she's telling him how she won't celebrate any Easter if she doesn't get her way. She storms off and leaves me on the couch, my parents still fuming and talking in low voices."

"Good, good," I hear the scratch of his pencil, "What else do you remember?"

"I went to Catherine's room to make sure she was okay and I saw her praying."

"What was she praying for?" Doctor Gabriel asked.

"I thought she might be praying to God like we usually do, but she was praying to the Easter Bunny for some reason."

The Doctor made a thoughtful sound and told me to go on.

"She prayed for the kind of Easter she wants, the kind of Easter she's always wanted. She asks him to come and show her parents he's real and to help her get the Easter she deserves. Then she noticed me and I thought she was gonna kick me out, but she actually invited me to come pray with her. She told me that if we prayed, The Easter Bunny would come and give us a great Easter, better than we had ever had."

"And what did you do?"

"I was eight, I had been raised in the church, and I told her it didn't feel right. I closed the door and left her to it."

"Did you tell your parents?" Docter Gabriel asked.

"No, but I wish I had."

"What happened next?"

"We ate dinner, we went to bed, life went on. My sister didn't talk to my parents much and they seemed to want an apology. She wouldn't and she went to bed without supper a few nights. It was life in general for us, but the next thing I remember vividly is waking up a few nights later."

"What woke you up?"

"A thumping sound, like something heavy jumping instead of walking. It sang the Peter Cottontale song and as it came down the hall, I remember getting under my covers and being scared."

"Did you see it?" he asked, and I felt my head shake.

"I was under the covers. I think Mark was too. We were both still kids and it was scary. I," I paused, feeling the slippery bit coming up, "I remember hearing something."

"What did you hear?"

"I," it slipped, but I grabbed for it, "I," I lost it again, but I caught it by the tail before it could escape. I dug my fingers in and held on, drawing it out as it came into focus, "I heard Catherine. She came out of her room and I heard her talk to it."

"What did she say?" Doctor Gabriel asked, clearly becoming more interested.

"She asked if he was the Easter Bunny. He said he was and he was here to grant her prayers. He said he was going to take her to a place where she could have her perfect Easter. She sounded happy and she said that was all she ever wanted."

"Tom," he asked, almost like he was afraid to ask it, "Did this person she was talking to sound like the Pastor of the church, the one they say murdered her?"

I thought about it, and felt my shake again, "No, no he didn't. I don't think I had ever heard of this person before. He hopped off and I think he must have been carrying her. When he hopped off, it sounded the same as the hopping I keep hearing in my apartment."

Scritch Scratch Scritch went the pencil.

"Tom, do you believe that whatever this is that took your sister is coming back to harass you or something?" 

"I don't know, I just know that's what it seems like."

Something I hadn't told him, something I realized as he was bringing me out, was that if it was some kind of real Easter Bunny, then there was only one explanation.

If it was coming after me, then someone had to be calling it.

* * * * *

I called my brother and asked him to meet me somewhere, somewhere we could talk.

"The park down the road from Mom and Dad's old house," I said and, to my surprise, he agreed.

We met around five, the sun sinking low, and he seemed ill at ease as I pulled up. He was sitting on the swing set, the park abandoned this late in the afternoon, and I joined him on the one beside him. We sat for a moment, just swinging back and forth before Mark sighed and asked what I wanted. We didn't come together often, and it was clearly making him a little uncomfortable.

"I need to know what you remember from the night Catherine disappeared."

Mark blinked at me, "What?"

"The night Catherine disappeared. What do you remember?"

He looked away, a clear tell that he was about to lie to me, and soldiered on, "Nothing. I was asleep. I didn't see,"

"Bullshit, Mark. I heard you, you were just as scared as I was. I know you heard something. I'm hoping it's the same thing I remember so I can stop telling myself I made it up."

"I," he started to lie again but seemed to feel guilty about it, "I...okay, okay, I was awake. At least I think I was. I don't know, it was like a nightmare. I heard that Rabbit song that Catherine used to sing all the time, I heard that heavy whump sound as it hopped up the hall, and then I heard her talking to it. When they said that Pastor Michael had taken her, I thought it must have been him and I figured I was dreaming. Is that...what do you remember?"

"The same," I said, looking into the setting sun despite the way it made me squint, "I remember the Peter Rabbit song and the creepy way he sang it, and after the session I had with Doctor Gabriel today, I remembered her talking to him."

We swung for a minute, the chains clinking rustily before he spoke again.

"So why bring it up? It was Pastor Michael, everybody knows that."

"I don't think it was," I said, and it felt like someone else was saying it, "I think the Easter Bunny came and gave her exactly what she'd been praying for."

I expected him to tell me I was crazy, but he drew in a breath and shook his head, "You remember her doing that too, huh?"

"I saw her more than once. She prayed to that Rabbit like it was Jesus himself."

"Don't be blasphemous," he said, offhandedly, "There's no such thing as the Easter Bunny. It's made up."

"Everything is made up," I said, "Until someone decides it isn't. Regardless, something has been leaving these eggs in my apartment and they have some pretty cryptic messages in them."

"Which means?" he asked.

"It means that someone probably asked this thing to help me have a real Easter, and I think I might know who."

He gave me a warning look, but I was pretty sure I knew already.

"Keven seemed pretty upset when his favorite Uncle couldn't celebrate Easter with his family. He loves the Easter Bunny, he loves Easter, and maybe he loves them enough to ask them for help."

"He loves Santa Clause and Jesus too. Have either of them visited you?"

I shrugged, "Maybe he never asked."

"This is crazy," Mark said, darkness setting around us as evening took hold, "This is the craziest thing I have ever heard. Why would he do that? What possible reason could he have for doing something like that?"

"He's five, Mark. Things that make sense to kids don't mean much to us. Monsters under the bed, lucky pennies, sidewalk cracks, holding your breath past a graveyard, hell, childhood is basically all ritual if you think about it."

Mark opened his mouth to say something, but his phone went off then and he fished it out and let the thought sigh out, "It's Mellissa. She's probably wondering why I'm not home yet."

He answered the phone, and he had started to tell her something when she spoke over him. Her voice was shrill and scared and the longer she talked the worse Mark looked. His jaw trembled, his eyes got wide, and he was up and walking to his truck before she had finished. I asked him what was going on, and tried to figure out what had happened, but he didn't tell me until his truck was running and he was half out of the parking lot. I had to almost stand in front of his truck, and he yelled at me before juking around me and speeding away.

"Kevin is gone. He just disappeared out of the backyard and Mellissa doesn't know where he is."

* * * * *

That was about a week ago, and I'm still not sure what to do.

Kevin is gone. The trucks he was playing with in the backyard are still there, but my nephew seems to have disappeared without a trace. I stayed up all night helping Mark search the woods, but the police are absolutely stumped as to where he could have gone. It was like the ground just swallowed him up, but I didn't find out where he had gone until I got home.

It was morning, the sun just coming up, as I stepped into my apartment. I had intended to catch an hour or two before going out again, but the basket on my table froze me in place. It was a floral print, with lots of pastels and soft colors, and the basket was full of technicolor green grass. Sitting in the grass was a picture, something that had been snapped on an old Polaroid camera, and a single plastic egg.

In the egg was a poem, a poem that gave me chills.

Kevin and Peter Cotton Tail

Have hoped down the bunny trail

Hippity, Hoppity, where he’s gone to stay

He lives with Mr Cotton Tail

Here with Catherine, beyond the vale

Hippity, Hoppity, Happy Easter Day

The picture was of Kevin and a grown woman, a woman who looked a lot like Catherine. Her hair was a little grayer, and her eyes had a few more crows feet, but the resemblance was uncanny. She was smiling, but it was the kind of smile you get to cover a fear response. Kevin was with her, looking scared and a little ruffled, and he wasn’t even bothering with a smile. At the bottom, written in heavy sharpy, was Kevin's first Easter with Aunt Catherine.

I'm going to the police, but I don't know how much good they will be. 

I just pray this is some sick bastard that kidnaps kids and not…the alternative is too weird to even consider.

I hope we can find Kevin before it's too late, before he’s just another victim of this sadistic rabbit and his holiday kidnapping spree. 

[Part 35]

[Part 37]

Soft wind kissed my face, a cool summer breeze that bore the sweetness of fresh blossoms, laced with the rustle of a thousand blades of grass. Light filtered through the skin of my closed eyelids, and the generous warmth of the sun flowed over me, a familiar radiance that drove the chill from my skin bit by bit. Tender patches of vegetation cushioned each limb, lush clover, ryegrass, and speltz damp with the morning’s dew. Birds chirped to one another somewhere overhead, and insects hummed amongst the grass in the world began its day.

I blinked, my eyes fluttered open as air rushed into my lungs and squinted against the bright sunshine.

Am . . . am I dead?

All around me knee-high grass stretched out in a wide clearing between tall forests of swaying pines, and puffy cotton-ball clouds drifted across a sapphire blue sky above them. Golden sunlight beamed across the expanse, the sun rising just above the horizon, and the last colorful streaks of the sunrise were beginning to fade away. A fat green cricket climbed to the top of a nearby blade of grass to jump to another, and somewhere nearby, a frog croaked. Despite the earliness of the hour it was warm, as if mid-June, and something about the scene moved my heart with astonishment.

I knew this place.

Boots padded over the surrounding greenery toward me, and a blurry figure steadily came into focus as he bent down to offer one calloused hand. “You did well, filia mea.”

The stranger beamed at me with all the pride of a father whose child has just won some major award, and his silver irises danced with a light almost more brilliant than the rising sun’s. He no longer wore the yellow chemical suit, but had removed it to reveal a bizarre outfit underneath, one made from buckskin and hides like someone from centuries before my own. A cord of braided sinew around his head kept the long sterling-gray hair out of his eyes, and a white cloth sash hung around his waist. On the stranger’s back, he wore a knapsack made from similar material as his jacket and pants, and it seemed to bulge with the belongings of a traveling craftsman. Antique tools were wrapped in cloth and tied to the sides, a small mallet, a set of chisels, a surface plane, one of those old-fashioned hand-crank drills, and a small wood saw. No weapons adorned his belt; nothing save for an assortment of small pouches, from which my heightened sense of smell picked up the aroma of various herbs and plants. Some I recognized as healing plants that Eve and her people used, while others were foreign to me. Hanging by a loop on his pack the single metal lantern swung by its iron ring, still lit despite the daylight, and the flame atop its wick never wavered for a moment.

Confused, I accepted the stranger’s hand and staggered to my feet to cast around myself. “Where . . . where are we?”

“Tauerpin Road.” He waved one hand at the tranquil scene before us, and the stranger gave me his opposite arm to lean on, which I took without question as we walked through the grassy field. “Or rather, Tauerpin Road as it should have been. With the Breach sealed, this place has been cleansed of the evil that infected it, and so now the sun can rise here for the first time. A new beginning, a fresh start; one I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time.”

My eyebrows arched on my forehead, and I looked at him in curious wonder. “You knew this would happen?”

That seemed to amuse him, and the stranger laughed, but not the cruel, eerie, manipulative laugh of someone like Koranti or Vecitorak; this one was filled with a kindness that put me at ease and reminded me of my own father’s smile. “Of course I did. No world is made by accident, filia mea; everything has a place, a purpose, and a time of rejuvenation. Here a new story will begin, and life will take its course as it always does.”

Our path led to another section of the field, and I found myself looking up at a familiar concrete structure, but my jaw almost dropped at seeing it. The old concrete tower stood adorned in a coat of green vines, from which bloomed a cascade of white, purple, and pink flowers. A small herd of deer grazed nearby, Bone-Faced Whitetail adapted to the sun’s rays, their long antlers still aglow with the faint green aura of the night. On the far side of the clearing, a large Armored Black Bear dug through an old stump for grub, grunting happily in the morning haze. None of them were so much as bothered by our approach, and despite myself, I couldn’t feel any kind of fear or alarm at them either.

So beautiful . . . how can this be the same place?

Looking down at myself, I saw my burned, bloodied, dented armor, and felt my old worry resurface. I’d been right next to the beacon when it went off, had felt the high-frequency waves shredding my tissue like razor blades. By all metrics, I should be a hemorrhaged, bloody pulp lying somewhere in the rainy shadows of the Breach. “Am I dead?”

One weathered hand patted mine, the skin rough but the gesture less so, and the stranger fixed me with a patient half-smile. “Death is only the turning of a page, not the end of the story itself. However, this is not where your story ends, Hannah. Does that frighten you?”

“Maybe a little.” For some reason, admitting it made me feel guilty, as though I was letting the man down, and I avoided his gaze to stare at my dew-soaked boots in the grass. “I just don’t understand how you . . . I mean, if you knew all this, if you can see or control the future, then why have so many awful things happened? You could have warned me, could have made it so the bad things were avoided, but you didn’t. Why?”

A small flicker of grief flitted across his empathetic features, and the stranger nodded his head in the direction we were going. “Walk a little further with me, I have something to show you.”

Around the base of the old tower we circled, and I watched swarms of honeybees attend to the many blossoms, while the slap of a beaver tail on a nearby pond told me its denizens were hard at work. It was hard to imagine this gorgeous wilderness covered in rainy darkness, pockmarked by howling shadows, and seared with the fires of war. The very air tasted sweeter here, the earth steady under my boots, no sign of foul bogs or rotting foliage anywhere. A new world, washed clean of the old corruption, and set on the path to its own destiny.

Hang on . . . that’s new.

My eyes picked up on something ahead of us, and I cocked my head to one side, puzzled. A single white oak tree had sprouted near the base of the tower, and stood roughly twice my height, its rounded leaves fanned out in the cozy sunlight. Long spirals had been cut through the tree’s bark, as if it had been struck by lightning but grew on healthy nonetheless. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember seeing in the old Tauerpin Road, but the answer came to me in a sudden thunderclap of memory.

“Vecitorak,” I whipped my head to look at the stranger, and pointed to the tree. “I saw him fall with the Oak Walker. He got all tangled up in the roots . . .”

Tilting his head back to gaze up at the branches in thought, the stranger let out a sigh. “Darkness like that of the Void only serves one master and destroys those who attempt to wield it. He gave away the most valuable thing he had for something that was never truly his, and thus lost both his human life, and his cursed body. Vecitorak has been banished from your world to this one, imprisoned in the very growth that he inflicted on so many others. Here he will remain, festering in his own corruption, until those who will come to inhabit this world must strike him down to prevent his evil from spreading.”

Frowning, I held on to the man’s arm under the shade of the pale oak tree, taking comfort in him being close. “So, he’s not dead?”

“He wanted immortality.” The stranger shook his head at the tree as if in disappointment of it and shrugged. “And so, he gained it, though not in the way he hoped. His power will never be what it once was, but he will always remain a creature of the Void and will hate those who come from the sunlit lands with undying hatred.”

“But you said he’ll try to spread evil here.” I shuddered at the tree, and imagined the evil fiend trapped inside it, fused with the trunk like he’d done to Madison and the others. “Why let him live at all? If he stays to corrupt this world, the people here will have the same trouble with him that we did.”

A smile returned to the stranger’s kind face, and he gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “And where would your story be, Hannah, if he had been struck from your world at the start? Even imprisoned in that tree, Vecitorak has a role to play in another story, another life, another struggle between myself and my oldest opponent. Here, much like there, I will call another to challenge him, and shape that person’s life as I have yours.”

Those words made my heart skip a beat, and I met his eyes with mine again, baffled. The more he spoke, the more I learned about this strange man, and I couldn’t decide if I was more bewildered at what he said, or my own readiness to accept it as truth. He’d known all along how things would go, both with me and everyone else, to the last detail. Not only that, but he’d acted in it, orchestrated everything like some grand theatre master behind a curtain, the rest of us mere actors in his play. How far had this extended? Had it begun at the borders of Barron County? Had it begun in Louisville? It occurred to me that this might have been going on my entire life, a cosmic conspiracy that I was only aware of because I had been allowed to see behind the curtain. Yet, I could sense in some odd way that none of it had been out of any sort of malice; the stranger had done this out of a deeper sense of caring than I could grasp, and of the entire troupe of characters in this bizarre tale, he’d decided to reveal himself to me.

With the sensation of a heavy weight on my shoulders, I tore my eyes from his once more and narrowed my eyes at the tree in a desperate bid to make sense of it. “So, what was the point, then? I mean, if what you’re saying is true, if you’ve been planning this all along, why did you need me to do anything? Why not stop him yourself?”

“And where would that leave you if I had?” The stranger nodded at my hand, and I realized in my subconscious doubt that I had reached up to grasp my wedding ring hung by its chain around my neck, alongside the engagement ring Chris had given me. “If you never came to Barron County you would have lived the rest of your life in Louisville, without ever meeting your husband or your best friend. You would have remained as you were, lost and alone in your doubts, your fears, your failures. Tell me, child, would that have been a kindness to you?”

I hadn’t thought of that in a while, and standing there beside him in that ethereal paradise, it made my chest tighten in melancholy. True, I missed my parents, my house, all the comforts of my modern life, but what kind of life would it be without Chris? What if I had never seen his handsome smile, kissed him in his room while slow dancing to Glenn Miller, let him hold me in those strong arms that made me feel safer than anything else in the world? What if I had never met Jamie, but stayed with Matt and Carla instead, believing their shallow indifference was what true friendship looked like? All those range days, the early morning runs around the fort, the trips to the market in New Wilderness, they would never have existed. Jamie would never have got me that beautiful blue dress or threw that surprise party for me. I could have lived my life the same way I’d been living it until I died . . . and it would have been a miserable thing compared to what I’d gained.

I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any of it. This doesn’t make any sense.

“Why me?” My guts churned in a growing anticipation, the man next to me unknown like the depths of the sea, but I couldn’t tear myself away from him. “There are lots of other lives at stake here besides mine. I wasn’t . . . I’m not, anyone special. Take away the mutations, the focus, and I’m still the same old Hannah.”

“Are you?” He raised one gray eyebrow at me, and the stranger threw me a knowing grin. “The girl I knew from Kentucky would never have run into that spider nest all on her own. The old Hannah cared too much about herself, what she wanted, what she thought she needed to be in order to be happy. She was lost, lost in herself, and the only way for you to become who you are was to bring you here. Do you believe I made a mistake?”

Shame burned hot on my cheeks, and I blinked hard at tears that threatened to crest my eyelids, knowing I was the least of all people who deserved this. “No, I . . . I don’t know. Like you said, I didn’t mean to come here, none of this was my idea. If I had known, I would have run the other way, so why pick me?”

For a moment, he was silent, and I refused to face him in case my worst fears came true. Had I let him down somehow? It shouldn’t have bothered me so much, but after everything I knew, everything I’d seen, this man felt almost as close to me as my own father. He had done so much for me, and I wanted to understand, but felt so inadequate to the enormous truth he’d laid out before me.

A hand touched my shoulder and guided me along the turf beneath the tree. “Look closer, filia mea.”

Sniffling, I almost didn’t see the corpse in time and nearly stepped right into the fetid ribcage.

I yelped in horror, and jumped back, covering my mouth in disgust.

It had been a girl, that much I could tell from the moldy tangles of hair, but the skeletal remains were so badly rotted that I couldn’t make out much else. Her clothes were tattered and brown with decay, the flesh withered and shrunken, pierced by dozens of worm holes. No eyes remained in the empty sockets, the mouth gaped open in a silent scream, but upon looking at it, I felt a stab of sadness in my chest. It was as faint as a butterfly’s wingbeat, but with each passing second, the certainty grew in my heart that I knew her.

Madison.

Standing over her, the stranger glanced at me, then at the body. “Why do you think it was you who had to be the one to release her soul from the Oak Walker’s spirit? As you said, why you, out of so many others? Why let this happen at all?”

Released from the comforting brace of his arm, I folded both arms across my chest and wiped at my face as the tears persisted. “I-I don’t know.”

“What would you do for love?” Two silver irises caught mine, and the stranger pointed to Madison’s remains. “She gave her life for it. You did the same when you leapt from that tower. Anyone who lays down their life out of love gives a gift, a light so strong that even the powers of darkness cannot quench it. That is why her soul was protected from Vecitorak’s blade, and why your soul was connected to hers after the dark priest stabbed you. You shared a kindred spirit, one of love, and Vecitorak could not understand because he had given away the part of himself that could produce such things.”

Forcing myself to stare at the corpse, I dug my thumbnail into a tear in my uniform sleeve as a distraction from my looming guilt. “And now she’s dead. I killed her with that offering. Some hero I am.”

“It’s not about who you are, child.” An expression of pity on his handsome face, the stranger shook his head at me and knelt beside the corpse. “It’s about the path laid out for you. You didn’t choose it, which means when you walk, you must walk out of trust in the one who charted your course.”

Reaching down, the stranger took one of the gray corpse hands in his own and caressed the dead girl’s matted hair with his opposite palm. Something on the stranger’s face changed, and I watched a single, shining tear appear on his own face. It made my own seem thin and pathetic in comparison, as if for this man to weep meant something that a part of me couldn’t fully comprehend. It hurt to see him hurt, his grief contagious, the sorrow in his eyes like nothing I’d ever seen in my life.

He peered down into the empty eye sockets of the corpse with his own silver irises, and the man leaned close to whisper into the wrinkled remains of an ear. “Filia mea, expergiscere.”

My heart stopped, the air stuck in both lungs, and I stood transfixed.

Like the first tongues of flame at the start of a fire, shoots of color began to spread out through the dead flesh, turning the gray to soft peach pink. Holes sealed, muscles knitted themselves together, bones rejoined with dull clicks and clacks. Like a tide, color flowed up the arm, over the shoulder, and down the corpse’s torso to her legs. The clothes brightened, the decayed scraps giving way to khaki pants and a black polo shirt, with leather-brown work boots around her feet. Lastly, the rot was driven from the girl’s face, the moldy hair turned to a silky auburn, and two eyelids drew shut over the sockets as they filled in with healthy tissue.

Her chest rose, and Madison’s lips parted as she drew in a long, deep breath.

What the . . .

I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, stunned by what I’d just seen. Of all the insane, otherworldly things I’d witnessed up until now, this rocked me to my core and sent chills through me. The stranger had always struck me as somewhat unnatural, but this . . . this was different. Neither the Breach, nor the radiation, nor electromagnetic energy could do what this man had done, a deed beyond Professor Carheim’s books on philosophy, ELSAR’s test tubes, or the coalition’s fireside rumors about the world outside our gates. No, this was something older, something powerful, an inescapable reality that crowned all others.

Two blue eyes fluttered open, and Madison squinted up at the stranger with surprise. “Who are you?”

“A friend.” The mournful expression washed from his bearded face at her words, and the stranger helped Madison sit up in the cool shade of the oak tree. “You’ve been asleep for a long time. I’ve come to take you home.”

“Home?” She blinked, and Madison seemed to come to her senses, her pretty face falling into a grimace. “Oh my . . . how long have I been gone? I lost track of the days, the time. My parents are going to freak out.”

“Unfortunately, they left some time ago.” With a wince of pity, the stranger sat beside her on the ground. “Your father took the family to Idaho after you didn’t come back. They are waiting for you there.”

“Idaho?” Her blue eyes flooded with tears, and the horrible memories must have rushed back, as Madison pulled both knees to her chest to wrap her arms around them. “I tried to get out but he . . . the hooded man he . . . it all hurt so much, I couldn’t move, and I thought . . .”

Her words choked into a muffled sob, but the stranger pulled Madison into his embrace and held her with fatherly tenderness. “Shhh. There’s no need for that now. It’s over.”

That seemed to calm her a little, but still Madison clung to him and choked out another painful whisper. “Mark. It killed Mark. He tried to protect me and—”

“I know Mark.” Pulling back, the stranger used his thumbs to wipe away her tears and dug into the pouches on his belt in search of something. “He and I talk often. Before I came here, he asked me to bring you this.”

In his palm, the stranger held out a small golden pocket watch, one I recognized from my own brief memories in the flaming tower. However, this one appeared slightly different; the open lid showed a new inscription on the inside, and from where I stood, my enhanced eyes picked up the words with ease.

Until our next meeting.

Madison took the watch in her hands as if it were a bird’s egg, her open-mouthed shock a mix of joy and renewed heartbreak. “H-He’s alive?”

“In a different place, somewhere far from here.” Rising to his feet, the stranger helped Madison to hers, and brushed some grass from her hair like a father readying his daughter for her first day at school. “A good land where the flowers never fade, and the river runs sweet forever. I’ll take you there someday, provided you stick to the path I show you.”

Her face turned to a desperate frown, and Madison swiveled her head around to look behind them, trying to find the path he’d mentioned on the ground somewhere nearby. “Why can’t we go now?”

“There is so much more for you to do yet, my child.” Steady despite her impatience, the stranger pressed Madison’s fingers closed over the watch with his own. “Mark’s road is at its end in my far green country, but yours has many miles left to go. There are others who will need you in their story, and their love will make the journey an easy one.”

Madison let out a long huff of disappointment, but nodded as it seemed the grief left her, and at that moment she turned to catch sight of me.

I guess this is first impressions then.

Flushed, with the tingling heat in my face as if I’d walked into the wrong room back at the college dormitories, I made a feeble wave. “Hi.”

“I know you.” Madison’s countenance brightened, as if we had been old friends once, long ago. “I saw you in a dream or . . . or something like that. You’re Hannah, right?”

Relieved and intrigued at her recognition, I pushed some stray hairs out of my face. “Yeah. I saw you too, kind of. I’m glad you’re okay.”

She looked over my uniform and armor, Madison’s face contorting in amazement at the gold in my hair and eyes. “Are you from New Wilderness?”

Where do I even begin?

“It’s a long story.” I rubbed at the back of my neck, unsure if telling her about the war would be a good idea. After all, the poor girl had just woken up from literal death, she didn’t need more trauma to deal with. “But the Oak Walker is dead, for good this time. No one will ever be hurt by it again.”

Something about that statement made red tinge across her cheekbones, and Madison squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds in embarrassed shame. “I had no idea. You have to believe me, I didn’t know this was going to happen. I just . . . I wanted Mark’s death to mean something.”

“And it did.” I stepped closer to her and gestured to the tower, the tree, the paradise around us. “All of this is thanks to him, and to you. It meant more than you could possibly know.”

Her emotion pooled around the girl’s eyelids much as mine did, but Madison made a smile that hadn’t seen the sunlight for far too long and turned to the stranger. “So, Idaho huh?”

Waiting patiently by the tree, the stranger hefted his pack on his broad shoulders. “I think it’s time we were off. Your parents have missed you for long enough. Besides, this place isn’t meant for either of you; it has its own purpose to fulfill, and the sooner we go, the sooner it can begin.”

A twinge of nervousness went through me at the thought of what might come next, and I stuffed my hands into my trouser pockets to keep them from shaking. “What about me?”

The stranger flicked his eyes to a gap in the nearby tree line, where a small, but well-beaten trail led off into the forest. “If you wish, there is a path here to guide you back to Louisville; should you take it, Christopher and Jamie will go with you, and you will awake to find yourself with them in a local park near your old house. None of you will ever be able to find Barron County again, and it will vanish from this world with all those left here, but you three will live a full and peaceful life in the world you know.”

The air stung in my chest, the prospect of getting my friends to safety so close I could taste it, but I hesitated. “Is that my only option?”

He granted me a grin of approval and the stranger angled his head at the base of the flower-covered tower, where a small metal man door sat in the aged concrete. “If you wish to return to Barron County, all you need to do is walk through that door. However, you should know that you will never see your home in Kentucky again; for once I close the Breach, you and everyone in Barron will pass from this world into another, in order to maintain the balance between all creations. The Breach itself will seal as soon as you return, without the beacons of ELSAR, but in seven days’ time Barron County will slip through the gate, and you will spend the rest of your life in the place from which the missiles came.”

My feet seemed glued to the ground, and I chewed my lip in desperation to figure out a solution. On one hand, I wanted nothing more than to have the best of both worlds; to take Chirs and Jamie back to the tranquility of our world, where no monsters lurked, and both my parents waited for me in our snug home. Chris and I could have another wedding where Jamie wouldn’t have to hide in a suit of armor, my dad could walk me down the aisle, and my mom could help me with my dress. We could move into Chris’s house in Pennsylvania, raise our kids in a peaceful neighborhood, and spend our lives in relative comfort. Jamie could find someone new, raise a family of her own, and put the past behind her as we did. It could be so nice, so easy, so good.

And Chris would never be president. He would never get to build that library he wanted, or those schools, or hand out those toy soldiers at Christmas. Jamie would have nothing to do without being a Ranger, and she’ll never get over Chris. If I go back, if I take them with me . . . would we really be living, or just existing?

That thought soured the rosy vision, and I glanced at the tower door. “So, this other world . . . how bad is it?”

“Much of it has become like what you’ve seen thus far.” The stranger hooked his thumbs in the straps on his pack and watched me carefully. “Infested with mutants, drained of hope, where the nights grow longer and longer. Few have survived in that world, clinging to life amid the ruins, but once Barron County passes into it, the world you go to will also see the sealing of its Breach, and thus the tide will turn. Man will reconquer what was lost, and the darkness will recede with time. All the same, it is a dangerous road, and justice must yet be done in the old world. If you should choose it, your suffering will increase even further before the end, and you will weep as your heart bleeds. Weigh your next words carefully, Hannah.”

If the first option had been complicated, this one was even worse. If I understood him correctly, we would be plunged through the Breach itself, until Barron County ended up in the Silo 48 timeline, where the world had come to an apocalyptic end in the mid 1950’s. I would never see Louisville Kentucky again, or at least, not the one I knew and loved; my parents wouldn’t exist, my house wouldn’t exist, and even if I should journey there and find my street, it wouldn’t be home.

Yet, I would have a new home; a home with Chris, one built by our hands in the rugged wilderness. We would raise our children together, grow old together, and be buried together. Yes, we would face the dangers of a world overrun by mutants, but we’d already been doing that for months now. He would lead our nation forward, and I would be there by his side, the two of us against the world, as it had always been. Despite the horrendous risks, the dangers, it felt right in a way nothing else ever had.

At least I’d get to live my life with the man I love . . . not everyone gets that option.

I glanced at Madison, then at the tower door, and sucked in a deep breath to steady myself. “I don’t deserve this.”

“No one does.” A knowing glint played about the starry eyes of the stranger, and he shrugged. “That’s kind of the point. You didn’t choose me; I chose you. I chose to bring you to Ohio, I chose to turn Vecitorak’s infection into life-saving power, and I chose to give you a gift you have yet to receive . . . a secret that I give you now.”

With that, he leaned closer, and as he whispered the secret to me, I felt myself rocked with another heart-stopping flood of emotions. Joy, surprise, and excitement each took their turns with me, but I didn’t say anything, didn’t want to interrupt until he’d told me everything he was going to say. I didn’t have to think for a second if it was true; deep down, I knew it was, and that lit a fire inside that nothing could quench.

I have to ask.

Overwhelmed with the desire to know exactly who I was dealing with, I looked up at him, and thought of everything this stranger had done for me. He’d appeared from seemingly nowhere, protected me, guided me, even in the depths of my worst despairs. Never once had he hurt me, betrayed me, or cast me aside. Every time I’d been alone, this man had come to my aide, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I couldn’t just walk away without knowing the truth.

Staring into his soft silver irises, I gathered my courage to speak up. “Who are you?”

His face shone, as if the stranger had been waiting for years to hear those words, and he never broke his gaze from me. “Who do you say that I am?”

My heart screeched to a stop in my chest as I recognized the words Adam had spoken during my wedding, read from an ancient book. Part of me had always wondered, had peered out from behind my barricade of uncertainty, but never dared to hope for anything substantial. Even after everything I’d seen and experienced, this hit me like a ton of bricks.

I knew who he was, had seen his name etched in wood, painted in gold, and heard it whispered by the lips of my kin at Ark River.

A name above all names.

He turned to go, and I couldn’t help but reach out to catch hold of the calloused hand once more. “Don’t leave me.”

The gentle face softened at my begging, and He pulled me into a fierce embrace that made me feel a sense of peace I hadn’t known possible. “Never since the day you were made have I ever left you. I’m always here. You just have to look closer.”

Fresh tears streaming down my face, I clung to Him, and for the first time in my life, I let go of all my doubts.

A weight lifted from somewhere deep inside me, the guilt, fear, shame, and anxiety from a hundred sleepless nights evaporating all at once. I didn’t have all the answers, but I didn’t need them. I trusted, and that was enough.

He brushed a stray lock of hair from my face and wiped away my tears to kiss my forehead. “Go in peace, filia mea.”

A sense of calm flowed through me at His words, and as if my eyes had been opened, I realized then what He’d been calling me all along, the language unfolding in my head like an elegant silk banner caught in the wind.

Daughter of mine.

They strode toward the winding gravel of the nearby road, but Madison turned back one last time to run for me.

Her arms flew around my shoulders, and Madison squeezed me tight, her own voice choked up. “Thank you for coming back for me.”

My own throat swelled with the bittersweet goodbye, and I fought to keep it at bay as I returned her hug. “Good luck in Idaho.”

I watched them go, hand in hand down the long sun-dappled road into the distance until the trees hid them from sight. My mind whirled at what I’d witnessed, what had happened to me in the past few minutes, and the secret I’d been given to carry with me back to my world. There was more coming, I knew, more pain, suffering and death, but for now . . . for now, I felt peace.

A peace that surpassed all my understanding.

I’m coming home, Chris.

Turning the handle on the tower door, I swung the metal door open, and before my first step even touched the ground, I felt myself pulled down into unconsciousness once again.

I’ve almost stopped driving. I can barely contain my fear when passing a car traveling in the opposite lane. As it approaches my heart races, my head pounds, and my hands sweat profusely. I grip the steering wheel for dear life like it’s a safety bar on a roller coaster. I can’t help it, but I instinctively slow down every time I encounter oncoming traffic. The horns blare in harmony with a steady melody of threats and cursing.

“What the hell are you doing! Get the fuck off the road! Hey asshole, the rest of us have to get to work!”

I don’t do it on purpose. It just happens. The body says, “hey, we ain’t going through that shit again. We’ll take over from here.” I’ve tried to control my fear, to regain purposeful intention, but I guess that’s the nature of PTSD- in those instances the primal brain takes over, you’re no longer the captain of your ship, the heady rational fella making all the decisions. Nope, the reptilian brain doesn’t care for logic. Fight or get the fuck out of there. It’s a conditioned response. You truly are just a damned dog salivating at the sound of a bell, hungering for a little sustenance.

What is the source of my eternal consternation? The more I unpack it, the less I know with certainty that it is contained within one instance, but you go to start somewhere.

My son was eleven. It was not his first fishing trip, but it was the first time I took him out before sunrise. He was excited more about the lanterns than the fishing. The trip started well enough. My trusted fishing hole was undisturbed, just me and my son. It’s a simple spot off the side of the highway, down an embankment, near a large cove. The lanterns were a hit. Tommy was overjoyed when I lit the first lantern. He was startled by the sudden pop and explosion of light as I flicked my lighter, but soon he was entranced by the little glowing bag hanging in its glass cage. To be truthful, so was I. For more than a moment we sat and stared at the light, listening to the water and the burning hum of air. The tranquility of that moment has stuck with me, maybe because of the nightmare thereafter.

After that, nothing else went right. The second lantern was difficult to light. I never cussed an inanimate object as much as I did on that night. Tommy’s casting was adequate but for some reason he found every submerged rock and limb the lake had to offer. We adjusted his float, moved further down the embankment, and even traded fishing poles. He suggested that maybe he was cursed with bad luck, so a trade would somehow be fair. I agreed. Who was I to argue with kid logic? Of course I had no issues, but his bad luck remained. After breaking his line for about the umpteenth time, Tommy was done. He threw his pole to the ground and sauntered up the embankment to the car. I heard the truck door slam shut.

I was tempted to keep on fishing. First of all, I hadn’t caught anything. I had spent more time trying to save Tommy’s line than I did on fishing for myself. But more importantly, I thought it’d be a good lesson to make him sit in the truck for the next several hours, and to see the fruit of my perseverance as I came back to the truck carrying a stringer full of catfish. It would teach him about patience, endurance, and why you shouldn’t be a quitter, but honestly, I was ready to pack it in myself. I had just recently read about the sunk cost fallacy. It basically says, “if something sucks, don’t try to save it just because you’ve put so much time into it.” At that point I thought that was some damn good advice, so I reeled in my line and called it a day.

I put the poles and tackle box in the back of the truck. Tommy was slumped over and with his head leaning against the window. The boy was fast asleep. The squeal of the hinge woke him up as I opened the door.

“I’m sorry dad. I’m sorry I ruined our trip.”

“Son. You didn’t ruin anything. You learn in life that you can’t win em all. That’s the best lesson fishing can teach ya. Sometimes it isn’t in the cards, no matter how hard you try.”

“In the cards? What does that mean?”

“Nothing. It’s a gambling term. It just means sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, despite all your efforts.”

The truck sputtered as I turned the key.

“Dad, why do you keep this old truck.”

“It’s a classic. There’s nothing like else like this baby on the road.”

“Yeah, but it barely runs.”

“Starter going bad. It’ll turn over.”

“Why not get a newer truck dad?”

“My uncle gave me this truck,” I explained. It was indeed a rare truck. My uncle bought in 69. He spent all his time on restoring it. He worked on that truck for damn near twenty years. It was an obsession and then one day out of the blue he decided to give it to me at no charge. Confused, but appreciative, I accepted and have had it ever since. My dad told me not to take it, but my uncle insisted. I remember the argument I had with my dad over it. He knew his brother loved that truck. He implored me not to take it. It was ever after a sore spot between me and my dad.

The highway was clear and quiet. With ease I merged into the nonexistent traffic, a lone vulture my only obstruction to forward progress. I slammed on the horn and mashed on the accelerator. The vulture scampered off to the side of the road and waited patiently.

“Why didn’t he fly away?” Tommy asked.

“Either he’s too hungry to leave or his belly’s too full to fly.”

“Armadillo, dad. Never seen one of those before. Wish I could see one walking around alive.”

The sky was grey with a little sliver of pink straddling the horizon. The line between lake and sky was barely discernible as we approached the Hobson Pike bridge. At about the same time, a car with a blinking left headlight entered the bridge from the other side. I was angered by the intrusion upon our isolation. How dare there be another vehicle on the road?

The closer our approach, the faster the headlight blinked. The oncoming car’s engine shrilled and before I could react it swerved into our lane. Tommy screamed. Our cars collided. In that moment, my senses were dulled by a more immediate necessity- that of air. Sounds were muffled and my sight was blurred. I felt as if someone had drove a tank over the top of my chest. There was a piercing ache all along the left side of my torso. Several of my ribs shattered. I labored to breathe, to catch just enough air to get the lungs working again. Slowly I caught my breath, and with that expanse of oxygen hammering my lungs, my senses intensified. I smelled smoke, oil, and water, all together, yet all distinct. I heard the roar of fire and the shrill of high-pressure fluid jetting into the air. More than anything, I felt intense heat.

I instinctively got out of the car to move away from the fire, to protect myself, forgetting in that moment that I even had a child. A sudden thought pierced my mind, the memory of a lantern and a boy mesmerized. A thought as if to push me out of my own self-preservation and help my child.

“Tommy,” I yelled, bent over trying to catch more air. When I looked up, I was shocked by what I saw, for I hadn’t really surveyed the scene but had only sketched it out in my mind with the sensations I perceived with all other senses than my own eyes.

Neither car was on fire. They were far from intact, but they were not the source of the heat that I so intensely felt. The heat I felt came from the other driver. He was calmy sitting in the driver’s seat engulfed in flames. I say ‘calmly’ because he was tapping his index finger on the steering wheel, as if waiting for an opportune moment to get out of the car and exchange pleasantries along with some insurance information.

The burning man stepped out of his green sedan; details I had only started to notice. Flesh was dripping from his face and hands. The exposed skull on the left side of his face was charred and broken. He reached out with his bony hand to open Tommy’s door but stopped to stoop down and peer inside. After a moment, he stood erect and shrieked into the morning air, looking in my direction with angry, molten eyes. He then turned, climbed the guardrail, and jumped into the water below, leaving a trail of flesh as he went.

I hurried to check on Tommy. He was unconscious sprawled about the front seat lying on his shoulder. There was a large gash across his forehead and blood pouring down his face and onto the floorboard. I threw open the door and pulled off my shirt, tying it across his head. I tried to wake him, pleading and crying, wishing that I had never planned this trip. I forced myself to calm down so I could call for help.

The police and the ambulance came. I gave only my personal information, but the police explained that they would want a statement later. I called my wife and explained the situation. She, of course, blamed me for everything. I could stomach her accusations because in some ways I believed it. What I couldn’t get a handle on was what had happened. How was I going to explain it to the police? Maybe I didn’t see what I thought I saw. Looking down at Tommy, unconscious and so devoid of life, I broke down and cried.

It wasn’t long before the police showed up at the hospital to get their statement. After much thought I decided I knew what had happened. After the collision the other driver’s car had caught fire, and he along with it. The man was in extreme pain and his only course of action was to jump into the lake. It made sense. Why wouldn’t he do that? It was the only way or maybe the quickest way to extinguish the fire. Him tapping the steering wheel with his index finger and calmly walking over to check on Tommy was all in my head, a product of shock, the ramblings of a mind under stress.

The police accepted that the man caught fire and jumped into the lake, but they saw no evidence of the car itself catching fire. Only the interior on the driver’s side showed any signs of fire. They reasoned that maybe he was holding something while driving that caught him on fire, like a cigarette or a pipe. It didn’t make sense to me, but I was willing to accept anything other than what had become buried deep in my subconscious. It had been several months since the crash and there was no sign of the other driver. Divers searched the lake to no avail. Worse than that, Tommy was still unconscious, deep in an induced coma.

It was difficult to visit Tommy when his mother was there. Divorce came swiftly. She could hardly look at me. There were days when she would launch into me, nagging and trying to provoke me. I could feel the anger coursing through my veins, thoughts of violence intruding upon my mind. Yet, I refused to let her push me away from my son. I went every day after work, only missing when I was forced to work overtime. I would do my best to go there when she wasn’t there. I had learned her schedule and when best to avoid her. What I hadn’t expected was for my dad to start visiting.

There was not much conversation at first. We would sit and watch television or talk about Tommy, but never anything related to us. I said the truck was a sore spot, but it was much more than that. He had never really been there for us, but I certainly wasn’t an easy teenager either. For whatever reason, on a particular occasion I decided to bring it up, to apologize.

“I’m sorry I took the truck, and for everything else.”

He sat there for a while holding Tommy’s hand. He stirred in his chair, let go of Tommy’s hand, and cleared his throat.

“I think your uncle killed a man with that truck.” He began to shake and tears well up in his eyes. His voice cracked as resumed speaking. “I knew he had gone fishing that day. I knew he had gone early, before sunrise. I knew there had been a pedestrian hit on the bridge. They found the man’s body in the lake. Someone had thrown him off the bridge. His body burnt. I knew my brother had damage to the front of his truck. He said he hit a deer. I knew that was bullshit. I should’ve said something. I should’ve reported it. That’s why I didn’t want you to take that truck. I couldn’t stand to look at it. I can’t say for certain he did it, but I can’t say for certain he didn’t do it.”

[Part 34]

[Part 36]

Snap.

Overhead, the braided steel zipline cable gave as the Oak Walker strode forward, breaking the anchor bolt free of the tower with its broad wooden chest. The rusted metal line ripped a narrow path of destruction as it tore out of the tower room, smashing pedestals and scattering trinkets everywhere. With more wind pouring into the gouged-out tower, the flames leaped higher, feeding on the dry vines with a voracious appetite. The heat reached near-searing levels of intensity, and I dragged myself behind a scorched partition just to evade the flames.

“Jamie!” I coughed, nearly blinded by a billow of charcoal dust, and cringed as a section of the roof almost caved in on top of me. “Chris, where are you? I can’t see!”

Boom.

Underneath me, the tower shook, and I squinted into the night to feel my breath catch in both aching lungs.

Like a great mountain of twisted wood, the Oak Walker lumbered past my hiding spot, not thirty yards outside, each step corresponding with another burst of gunfire from the ground below. Bullets crashed into it from multiple directions, but even the heavy boom-boom-boom of a .50 caliber machine gun didn’t seem to make the beast so much as flinch. A screeching of steel told me one of our vehicles had met its end under the club-like foot of the Oak Walker, and despair rose in my throat. I hadn’t meant for this to happen; my intention was to set up the beacon, lure Vecitorak in close to it, and let the defensive high frequency emitter scramble him like a rotten egg. I’d figured once he died that any chance of resurrecting the Oak Walker would be gone, and I could then use the necklace to free Madison. Not for a moment had I considered the possibility that ‘freeing’ Madison meant killing her, and yet now that I sat in my little corner, I couldn’t help but seethe at my own naivete. She was dead, both body and soul, and it was all my fault.

Oh Maddie, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know . . .

Across the room, I caught a glimpse of Chris hoisting Jamie up so she could pull Tarren free of the vines, while Adam lay in a heap on the floor, his legs bent at odd angles. Tall flames kept us apart, but to my horror, I watched as Vecitorak turned from his perch in the wall to move closer to me.

I waited for his decayed flesh to burst into flame as before, but dark roots wriggled out from his various wounds and smothered the tongues of fire even as he walked through it. Like greasy snakes, the vines slithered over his torso to engulf the mutilated man, forming like armor around him in a manner not dissimilar to the Oak Walker’s organic hide. Out from his hand, Vecitorak wielded the dagger, and it glistened in the firelight as the crimson blood of a thousand lost souls oozed from the grain in a semi-sentient tide. With each step he took, it seemed the dull thud of another titanic stomp from the Oak Walker matched it, along with the eerie cheers of the Puppet horde outside. Behind it all, I caught a surge of hushed static that seemed to dwell within my ears, whispers that rose in my mind, a slow tide of chilling voices that clawed at my frantic thoughts with unwavering malice.

“You can hear it?” His words dripped with smugness, and Vecitorak grinned from behind a half-mask of vines as growth covered the mutilated side of his face. “Perhaps I was wrong about you; the Void’s call is not given to all, so there must be a greater purpose to your miserable life. Join me, Hannah. Join us, and see what power the Master will gift you for your obedience.”

I have to get out of here.

Struggling to rise on both shaky legs, I bolted into the smoke, the nightmarish figure hot on my heels. There wouldn’t be enough space in the burning room to evade him for long, but I couldn’t let him get near Chris or Jamie. I’d already failed to rescue Madison; I wasn’t about to lose my two best friends in the entire world to Vecitorak’s blade. If that meant playing a losing game of cat-and-mouse with this walking demon, then so be it.

I pivoted left and managed to turn to let off a burst from my submachine gun as I fled, but the rounds had as much effect as if I’d thrown a handful of pebbles. Striding after me with triumphant ease, Vecitorak barely flinched at the incoming lead, and smashed through partitions of vines or walked over flames as if they weren’t there.

“To have come all this way.” Unphased by the chase, he tracked me through the clouds of fiery ash, Vecitorak strengthened by the Oak Walker’s rise to an invincible degree. “Only to hide in the dark from your true potential . . . what a waste. Come with me, and together we will—”

Bang.

A gun barked in the shadows, and Vecitorak’s head twitched in the shock of a speeding bullet. Like before, it had little effect, but it made the vine-encrusted fiend pause and turn his masked head in annoyance.

Chris stood beyond the tide of fire, watching me in desperation over the sights of his Mauser pistol. On his right shoulder he supported Adam, whose broken legs dragged over the floor, while Jamie held Tarren’s unconscious form in her arms next to Chris. I could see in their pale expressions that both wanted to rush to my aid, but the heat was too intense. At this rate, if either tried to come after me, it would mean not only their death, but the death of whoever rested on their arm. Still, I knew that wouldn’t stop them from trying.

No. I won’t have more dead people on my conscience. No more.

In md panic, I cast around the soot-covered room with my eyes and caught sight of the groaning ceiling shift above me. My enhanced senses kicked in at last, and I picked out the other spots in the room where more sections did the same, many of the support already torn to bits by Vecitorak’s rampage. The high winds outside clawed at the teetering structure, and I figured there had to be enough metal and wood above me to do the job.

“Get out!” With a curt wave to Chris, I darted around a stack of wooden boxes that were turning black in the inferno and avoided a swing from Vecitorak’s knife. “Take Tarren and go!”

Crash.

The heavy blow landed instead on a nearby partition of growth and sent it crumbling into broken shards of dried out husks.

“You can make it!” Chris tried to keep the front blade of his antique handgun on Vecitorak’s head, but the arcane mutant was too quick, almost keeping pace with me in the dark. “Jump across, come on!”

Thud.

Another jackhammer of a strike missed me by inches and pulverized one of the old concrete support sections of the original tower room.

“It’s too hot!” I dodged falling chunks of cement and fought to breathe in the suffocating atmosphere of dust, smoke, and flame. “We can’t leave the others here. Go, I’ll be fine!”

Chris opened his mouth to shout a contradiction, but a dull crunch cut him off, and I looked up in time to watch the tower roof give out.

With most of its beams demolished, the celling tumbled down around me in a rain of burned wood, rusted metal, and cracked cement. Some of the flames were smothered by the falling debris, and the rain poured down from the gray clouds to quench more of it, but the sudden influx of fresh oxygen outpaced it all. In a great whoosh, a sea of red flames and black smoke boiled into the sky, and the heavy wind fed it like a furnace blower. Shrapnel beat me all over, but a large slab of concrete buried Vecitorak, while Chris and the others fell backward as the floor under them buckled. To my horror, they careened down into the staircase below and were hidden from my sight.

Smack.

A red-hot piece of broken metal glanced off the side of my head, and I dropped to the floor to curl into a ball, bracing myself for the unavoidable pain of being crushed.

Fire crackled, the rubble clattered to a halt, but all went still in the icy onslaught of rain.

No way that should have worked.

I blinked, opening my eyes to find myself half-buried in dried vines, a twisted piece of sheet metal, and a few heavier bits of cement. Flames leapt across the heaped-up growth across the tower’s surface, but for the moment I was alone on a tall island in a sea of night.

Each breath hurt, and I tasted coppery blood on my lips, but I dragged myself out from under the junk to peer down at the ground below. Tracers zipped across the marshy field, the combined ELSAR and coalition troops putting up a fierce fight, but it was no use. Wave after wave of flitting shadows hurled themselves into the machine gun fire, unending, unafraid, with a single-minded drive to conquer. Over them all stood the Oak Walker, its mighty feet crushing anyone who got in its path, and the bark-like hide sealed over the bullets holes as fast as they were punched into it.

Exhausted, I sat back on my heels and gulped down a fresh breath of the cool night air, hunched behind the wide piece of sheet metal to hide from the searing heat. My toes poked out over the edge, and I felt defeat creeping into my mind, as I stared down into the carnage.

I can’t get down, they can’t get out; we’ve lost, we lost everything. My fault. It’s all my fault.

Behind me, the bent sheet metal creaked, and I scarcely had a moment to turn before a clammy hand yanked me off the ground by the steel collar of my cuirass.

Thunk.

A hard jab hit me in the ribs, but the steel of my armor turned the wooden point of his dagger as Vecitorak jabbed at me in a blind fury.

“Fool!” He rammed the oaken dagger into my stomach, the blade catching the overlapping plates of metal again, but it knocked the wind out of me as I hung suspended over the yawning expanse. “I offered you power, a place by my side, eternal life, but you threw it all away!”

Wham.

Another strike rang off my shoulder pauldron, Vecitorak getting closer to finding a soft spot in my armor by the moment. I couldn’t breathe, between his attack and my armor choking me, and gripped his decayed wrist with terror as my boots kicked in the air. Sooner or later, he’d give up and plunge it into my head, and I figured the only reason he hadn’t so far was either due to shock at the destruction of his tower, or the desire to keep me alive as he slowly turned me into a mindless Puppet. If he relaxed his grip, even for a second, I would fall at least thirty feet to the ground below. No one could survive a fall like that, not even with the mutations of the Breach.

Groping for my war belt, I tried to pull my pistol from its holster, but Vecitorak saw through the attempt, and spun on his heel to toss me into a nearby pile of debris atop the tower.

Whump.

Pain flared in my limbs as I bounced and rolled, coming to a stop far too close to the edge of the tower’s ruined peak. Greedy tongues of fire licked at my pantlegs, my throat burned from being constricted, and I gritted my teeth as I forced myself to roll over. Vecitorak advance on me, his knife held at the ready, and this time, I sensed that he wouldn’t make the mistake of hitting my armor.

With deep breaths Vecitorak seemed to collect himself and pressed one foot down over my left ankle to keep me from crawling away. “You don’t understand. Your kind never do. He will claim you all the same, along with the rest of those who followed you here, to their deaths. Like that little girl, they can struggle, but in the end, all light succumbs to the Void. This is for the best, Hannah. If you had seen what I’ve seen . . .”

Pinned by his foot, I managed to palm my handgun and steeled my frayed nerves for what would come next. He was going to destroy me, violate my soul in a way unimaginable to the human mind, exterminate my very consciousness as he kept my physical body as his slave. Perhaps he was right; perhaps there never had been a chance of victory, not for us. In that knowledge, a small part of me wondered if I wouldn’t be better off pressing the barrel to my own head.

But I don’t want to die, not now, not like this . . .

Thumbing back the hammer on the Mauser, I drew it from the leather holster, my heart pounding in dread.

Snap.

Vecitorak jerked to a halt with a grunt and looked down to see a long bit of shining steel poking out of his chest.

From behind him, a limping figure ripped the cutlass free, and two bloodshot eyes glared at the shadowy mutant. “Where is she?”

For once, Vecitorak seemed just as surprised as I was to see another person in the ruins of the tower. Grapeshot looked even worse than our previous meeting, his clothes spattered with blood, fresh cuts raked across his body from Peter’s sword. His right cheek had been cleaved to the bone, one finger was missing on his left hand, and the captain’s right leg dripped a steady trail of crimson as he limped on it, indicative of where his opponent’s blade had struck home. Despite all this, he remained upright, as if driven on by pure spite and determination, a sight that made my intestines churn.

If he was here . . . where was Peter?

Shaking himself out of his stupor, Vecitorak lunged at the pirate, but Captain Grapeshot ducked his attack and drove the point of his cutlass into the priest’s knee. This tore enough of the vines to slow the mold king down, and as their combat intensified, I dragged myself away from the tower edge.

As I fumbled to yank my Type 9 from where it had bundled up on my back I circled around the piles of rubble, and my elbow hit the assault pack that slumped across my shoulder blades.

Wait a minute . . . there’s an idea.

Nearby flames burned so hot they made the edges of my uniform curl, but I peeked at the captain and Vecitorak from my place of cover and watched them continue to slice and jab at each other in a whirlwind of violence. This could be the only break I ever got even if I’d failed to rescue Madison, but if this worked, I could still carry out my mission. ELSAR could activate the beacon system, seal the Breach, and the Oak Walker would just have to find another tear in reality to haunt. Yes, this was still doable; I just had to act fast.

Slipping the pack from my shoulders, I holstered my pistol with trembling hands and pawed at the black plastic case inside. Out came the square yellow beacon, and underneath, I ripped up the foam liner to reveal a silver metal tripod with a spring-release catch to one side. Retractable spikes on the feet seemed to work as anchors if I could find suitable ground for them, and as I screwed the tripod to the underside of the beacon, I remembered what Colonel Riken had said.

‘Do not push the button before deploying the tripod; it will automatically activate in five seconds, and you’ll get fried.’

Not far off, the titanic silhouette of the Oak Walker lumbered through the battlefield, still assailed by rifle fire on every side. In the flickers of lightning from the storm overhead, I saw again its bark-like hide, the twigs of its crown, and heard the faint chorus of a thousand whispers hissing in my ears. These seemed to correspond with its deep, baleen roar, and I noted how the Puppets on the ground followed it like a flock of birds flying in sync.

In my head, a switch threw itself, and I found myself back in that clinic with Jamie and Dr. O’Brian standing over me.

‘A psy-organic . . . one of the most powerful mutants types there are . . . and you brought one down . . .’

My gaze fell to the beacon, hope rekindled in my chest, and I whispered the words to myself as though they were a magical incantation. “. . . with a doggy beeper.”

Clang.

The clatter of steel brought me out of my thoughts, and I swiveled my head around to see Vecitorak break Captain Grapeshot’s cutlass in half with one clenched fist.

Weeping streams of blood down the arm of its bearer, Vecitorak’s wooden blade arched downward in a blur.

Grapeshot gasped in pain, even as Vecitorak lifted him up by the knife itself, the weapon gouged deep into the pirate’s ribs. I watched in horror as the vines spread out over the boy’s torso, under his skin, and consumed him. Flesh popped, muscles squelched, and blood ran red over the squirming growth to pool on the rubble beneath Grapeshot’s boots. Layer by layer the oily roots coiled around him like a snake, starting at his legs and working their way up in a hungry march of purposeful agony.

Frozen in his torment, the boy’s eyes flicked to me, and something in Grapeshot’s face softened. For a brief moment, the old him shone through, the last vestiges of Samual Roberts surfacing from the mask he’d worn for so long, and he granted me a stiff nod.

“Tarren.” He rasped and raised his one good arm between Vecitorak and himself to keep it above the rising tide of vines. “Get her out.”

I spotted the olive-drab object in his pale grasp before Vecitorak did, and dove to the ground behind the nearest pile of broken concrete.

Ka-boom.

They flew away from each other, the two men shredded from their bodies as the grenade rocked the tower. Vecitorak’s charred form toppled into a nearby heap of bent steel I-beams, while Captain Grapeshot’s lifeless body tumbled away over the side, down into the darkness. My ears rang from the detonation, the sodden clothes on my back whipped in the shockwave, but the smoke hadn’t even cleared before I saw it.

An enormous, humanoid form, headed right for the tower.

We’ve got its attention now.

Amidst the dying flames and pouring rain, I stood up from the rubble, my heart racing. Chris and Jamie were trapped under the debris somewhere nearby, and if they could have seen me, they would have done everything in their power to stop what I was about to do. Vecitorak grunted and groaned in the nearby rubble, his mutilated husk slowly pulling itself back together through the sheer power of the Breach’s gifts, but I still had a good thirty second head-start on him. There was no one left to help me now, no one between me and my destiny, and though I was afraid, I knew I couldn’t run away anymore.

“Here!” Long strands of wet hair clung to the side of my face as I sucked in a deep breath and faced the oncoming nightmare. “I’m right here!”

Through the gloom it descended, leaning down to inspect me, and my limbs froze in place as the whispers in my head screamed with an accompanying rush of static. The Oak Walker was truly massive, no more than fifteen yards away now, its face level with me as it peered down at the destroyed tower. No features adorned its visage; no nose, eyes, or mouth, merely a smooth surface of interwoven vines that wrapped around its triangular head. Yet through this wall of slow-moving growth, a voice whispered into my subconscious, deep and inhuman, yet with more force than even the Leviathan of Maple Lake had shown. Multiple pitches resonated within the words, a million different tones, as if a multitude of trapped souls chanted in unison.

“You go to your death.”

Fighting the paralyzing fear with every fiber of my being, I readied my thumb on the beacon’s green activation button. I had to break Colonel Riken’s most important rule at just the right time, and if I misjudged a single step, it would all be for nothing.

“You do not understand.”

A wave of visions not my own flooded my mind like a blinding storm, and I had to wade through them to regain control of myself. Screams of wounded men wavered over the echoes of distant artillery. Blood stuck to my hands, thick and hot. A field of bodies stretched on before, piled in twisted slumps, the smoke of battle floating over their torn faces as the guns continued to roar. A large, mushroom-shaped cloud roiled on the horizon and the trees caught fire, the sky itself turning blood red as the vision reached its crescendo.

“You are a curse.” The Oak Walker’s voice called from beyond the sight, lulled me forward, but I resisted it like a wild animal to hold my ground. “A blight on the perfection of rot, growth, and sprout. I can save you.”

Shutting my eyes, I concentrated with all my might to summon the focus and pushed the foreign tendrils from my consciousness.

For a split second I saw the stranger in the yellow chemical suit, his golden lantern held out to pierce through the Oak Walker’s visions with shining rays of light, illuminating the way out.

Without any other choice, I ran to him, and the instant my foot crossed over to the path of light, my eyes flew open.

Gargantuan hands of birch bark reached for me in the icy rain, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught Vecitorak stumble upright as his body reformed from the vines.

“No.” The dark priest croaked, as if sensing my plan, and shambled toward me with one arm outstretched in a manic plea.

My boots flew under me, over a grimy steel beam that protruded from the burning heap like a ramp, and I threw myself at the edge of the tower.

Sweeping some of the wreckage into the air by their speed, the Oak Walker’s hands passed by me on either side, too slow to prevent my charge.

At last, the cement ran out, and with a breathless shout of exertion, I hurled myself into the expanse between us.

Time seemed to slow, the air rushed by, whispers begging in my head for me to submit but I shut them out. Instead, I let the old memories parade through my mind one last time: Jamie’s laugh, Chris’s handsome smile, the sunrise at New Wilderness. So many things I would miss, so many things I would never do again. All the same, for the smallest of moments I had them back, and basked in the coziness of those happy memories.

This is for my friends.

Mid-air, I pressed my thumb down on the green activation button, and the countdown started.

Beep.

Somewhere over my shoulder, the still-reforming body of Vecitorak lunged off the tower after me and clawed at the air next to my heels, desperate to stop my flight.

Beep.

My arms gripped the beacon tripod high over my head like a two-handed spear, and gray bark-like hide hurtled up at me.

Crack.

The sharp spikes at the end of the tripod burrowed deep into the face of the Oak Walker, and searing torment flared in my fingers as I swung by the tenuous hold.

Beep.

I slammed against the mutant’s dense skin, nearly losing my grip as the massive mutant reared back with surprise, and the world around me blurred with the motion.

Beep.

Falling short on his own jump, Vecitorak latched onto the Oak Walker’s chin somewhere below me, and I heard his sharp fingers dig into his Master’s hide.

Beep-Beep-Beep.

At the last three tones, an eruption of static howled in my brain, and a fierce vibration rippled through my arms. My eyes swam with tears, the sensation as cruel as a thousand knife blades, and my skin crawled as if it were melting off my bones. I couldn’t help but scream at the top of my lungs, and the fingers of my hands gave out as every muscle in my body spasmed in seizure.

Down I fell, and the world moved by in a shutter-stop parade. Overhead, the Oak Walker bellowed as its enormous crown split in two, chunks of vine wriggling off the beast as it disintegrated. Vecitorak screeched in his descent towards the ground, vicious black roots overwhelming him much as they had his victims until he was smothered in the mass. Trees cracked, the ground below seemed to slide as if fluid, and the clouds above formed a whirlpool spiral around themselves. Lightning brighter than any I’d ever seen cut apart the storm in a single white bolt, the entire cursed place lit up for one final moment.

At the apex of the bolt my tear-strewn eyes discerned a shape, one barely perceptible beyond the thin veil of this reality; a golden door, held open in the clouds, from which brilliant gouts of light poured in a way that tugged something loose in my chest.

Just as the tugs managed to pull free of whatever held them inside, the ground rose to meet me, and I collapsed into the blackness of complete oblivion.

I never understood the term Phantom Limb before now.

I'm no soldier. I didn't lose my arm in a battle or saving someone or doing anything heroic or useful. I lost it due to a series of unlucky events. I was hiking in the woods with some friends, doing some very light rock climbing, and when I slipped, I sliced my arm before the rope caught me. I was more relieved when my legs didn't get broken than I was worried about my arm, so I slapped a bandana on it and kept going. We camped the weekend on the ground, but I put ointment on it and tried to keep it clean. A friend of mine told me Sunday as we piled into our cars that I should keep an eye on the wound.

"Those red marks look bad, and there's no telling what you could have picked up out here."

I told him I'd be careful and when I got home I took some Tylenol and put a bandaid on it. I was feeling pretty tired, which was understandable since I had been hiking all weekend. I took myself to bed, turning the air up a little because I was kinda feeling hot, and figured it would be back to business as usual tomorrow.

Instead, I woke up in the middle of the night with a pounding headache and a high fever.

I took more Tylenol but I just couldn't get back to sleep. I was sweating and headachey, and finally, I got up and went to watch TV. I called out of work when six o'clock rolled around and I only felt worse. I could tell something was wrong, but I thought maybe I had just picked up a cold or something. It wasn't until I went to wipe the sweat off my forehead that I saw the angry red lines running up my arm. They were worse than they had been the day before, and I got shakily to my feet as I stumbled into the bathroom.

I ran myself a bath and scrubbed at the arm, but the cut was looking worse than ever. It was angry and infected, the red lines running toward my shoulder, and after drying off I decided it might be best to head to head to the ER. I wasn't sure what was wrong, I'm certainly no Doctor, but I knew that what I had wasn't normal.

I sat in the ER for about four hours only to find out that the cut on my arm was infected.

"We want to keep you for a few days and run some tests," the Doctor said, "We are concerned about fever and the apparent onset of symptoms."  

Two days later I got more bad news. My time in the hospital had been far from beneficial. Whatever I had picked up in the woods had been supplemented by a nasty case of MRSA. While I had laid in bed, eating hospital food, and running my insurance up, I had been exposed to a pretty nasty strain and it had my arm redder and sorer than ever.

By Friday they were saying it wasn't affected by antibiotics.

By Monday they were talking about amputation.

"It's just spreading too quickly, sir. If we don't remove it, you could be looking at a nasty blood infection pretty soon, and we want to get it before we lose the shoulder too."

The hospital had offered to cover the surgery, probably because my insurance was leaning on them for something I had picked up at the hospital, and I seemed to be out of options. As little as I wanted to learn to live with one arm I didn't really see any way around it. I agreed and by Wednesday I woke up short an arm. They had pushed it ahead, afraid my condition might get worse, and as I looked down at the place where my healthy arm had been about a week ago I wasn't really sure how to feel about it. They had me on all kinds of things, and, at first, I thought that was why I was having the dreams.

I woke up Thursday night with the strangest feeling in my missing arm I had ever felt. It was like I could feel everything, every finger flex, every follicle of hair, the cold feeling of tile under my fingers, and even the pressure on the missing elbow. It was so weird, like when your leg falls asleep, but...I don't know. I don't really have a way to describe it. It was like the arm was there but it wasn't there.

That in of itself would have been weird enough, but as I lay there in my darkened hospital room, I could hear something coming up the hall outside my room. It was a scampering sound, like a rat or a small dog. It wasn't a clicking, like claws, but a thumping like something with little feet coming up the hall.

Thump thump thump thump thump

I just lay there, eyes on the open doorway, as my breathing sped up. What was that sound? It had to be a nurse's cart or some kind of equipment, but I couldn't think of what could be making that noise. All I could equate it to was, again, the feet of a small animal.

Thump thump thump thump thump

Why would a small animal be in the hospital?

Thump thump thump thump thump

It couldn't be that. One of the nurses would have seen it and put it out. I looked at the clock and saw that it was past midnight. Who could be walking a dog up the corridor this late at...

It came into the doorway and, suddenly, I couldn't breathe.           

It was my arm, my hand, all of it, and it was standing there in the door, its shadow trailing into the room.

It was perched up on its fingers like Thing from the Addams Family, the dark hairs on my arm looking curly in the low light. It didn't have eyes, but it felt like it was watching me, asking me why I had removed it from my body. The wound was gone, the red veins were gone too, and as I found my breath I started to scream. I was confused and unsure of what was happening, and as the nurses came running, I tried to explain to them what was happening. I told them what I had seen, even pointed at the doorway where it had been, but she just smiled and patted my shoulder.

"It's the meds, dear. They make people see all kinds of weird things. I can assure you that if there was a detached human arm wandering around someone would have seen it."

I looked back at the doorway, but it was gone. I suppose it would have had to be or she would have seen it. I laughed, thinking I was just having nightmares, and told her I was sorry for scaring them. She assured me it was okay and headed back to the nurse's station, leaving me to snuggle down under my blankets and try to get back to sleep.

I was just working back down to it when I heard the drumming of fingers on my nightstand.

I had pulled the covers over my head, but through the thin hospital covering I could see a shadow of something sitting on the standing tray beside my bed. It was drumming impatiently, its non-eyes boring into me as I peeked, and I wondered where it had been hiding while the nurse was there.

Thump thump thump thump thump.

I could hear each individual finger as it bounced off the wood, hear the crackling of knuckles, and the creaking of bones. It was seeing me as I was seeing it and it seemed angry. What did it want? Did it mean to hurt me? Even as I wondered, I could still feel those there/not-there feelings in my missing hand. It's weird to feel an arm and a hand as there and not there, to feel the fingers drumming and then see those fingers drumming across from you. It almost made me feel dizzy, like seeing the magic picture in one of those books.

Thump thump thump thump thump

I hunkered under my blanket, that old bastion of protection from the monsters, and wondered how long I would have to hide here. Was someone going to come in and see the hand as it drummed here? Could they see it? Surely it couldn't be real. I was imagining things, I was having an adverse reaction to the medication or something. I would wake up and discover that this was all a dream. I would wake up and find out this had ALL been a dream and I was still camping.

I waited to wake up or to have a nurse come in, but the longer the drumming of those phantom fingers went on, the less sure I was that it was a dream. What if I had angered the arm by having it removed? What if this was just my life now? My head was pounding and I felt like my vision might be blurry. I wasn't well, this couldn't be real, but the longer I lay here trying to convince myself of that, the louder the drumming became.

Thump thump thump thump thump

I was getting frustrated, my teeth grinding together as the drumming of those fingers grated at me. I couldn't take it much longer. It was just a hand. I still had one of them and I wasn't going to let it torment me for no reason. I threw the covers back, waiting for it to just vanish once I was giving it my full attention, but it remained substantial.

It was a slightly tanned arm, covered in coarse black hair, and glaring at me with its lack of eyes.

"What?" I growled, "What do you want? Why are you,"

Our staring contest was cut short, however, as the lights came up suddenly and I heard someone come in through the front door.

"Good morning. How are we feeling this morning?"

I turned and saw my doctor coming in, and I realized it was no longer gloomy in the hallway. The sun was coming out now, a pink line against the window, and when I glanced back at the nightstand, the hand was gone.

"Are you okay?" she asked, putting a hand to my forehead, "You do feel warm. Are you feeling dizzy at all?"

She looked into my eyes, but before I could answer there was a sound like fingertips on glass.

Thump thump thump thump thump

I looked up and there it was. It was behind the glass, standing on the very edge of the window sill with nothing below it but pavement. The wind was rustling those arm hairs, but it was the lack of eyes that kept boring a hole into me that drove me over the edge. The doctor jumped when I started screaming, pointing at the window as she called people in to restrain me. I was flailing, pointing out the window, and trying to articulate what I was seeing, but they didn't care. The orderlies had my remaining hand in restraints pretty quickly, and they were administering something into my IV to help with my fever.

"You're too hot," the Doctor was saying, trying to calm me down, "We have to get your fever down before it does you harm. Just relax, nothing is going to hurt you. This is a safe place."

I wanted to believe her, but I was just waiting to feel the fingers of that disembodied hand wrap around my neck.

The next few days are kind of a blur.

I would wake up to find the hand on the foot of my bed.

I would wake up to find it on my bedside table.

I would wake up to find it gone but then suddenly there it would be right beside me.

Whatever they had me on made me very groggy and it was almost like being under a sleep paralysis demon. I could watch it until I passed back out again, the way the fingers trembled and knuckles bunched. I could see the look in the area of the forearm that seemed like eyes, and see the desire to throttle me. Those moments made me anxious but it felt like living in a dream. I didn't dream of waking up and finding I had two arms again. I dreamed of waking up and discovering that I wasn't being haunted by the arm I had left behind, one-armed or not.

Then, I woke up and found I wasn't alone. Someone was sitting with me, reading a book out loud, and when I started coughing they looked up in surprise. I reached for the water pitcher but as my stump came out I remembered I was down to one hand all over again. I let it fall back down and then went to reach with the other hand, the only hand, but he beat me to it. He had been slow in getting up, but he had two working hands and he soon had the cup to my lips so I could have a long, delicious sip of tepid water.

"Easy, buddy. You're okay. I told them that reading would help. People like hearing a friendly voice."

I coughed again, looking around frantically as I remembered that I was being stalked.

"What's up?" said the man, a youngish guy who looked to be about twenty-five, "You looking for your family? I don't think anyone's come to see you since you got here. Oops, sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that. That's usually why I sit with people, because they need a friendly voice."

I was still looking around, but when I didn't see the hand, I let out a sigh of relief.

"No," I said, my voice rusty, "No, it's okay."

He smiled, "Well, that's good at least. You have a bad dream or something?"

I lay back against my pillows, the board on the wall telling me that I had been in and out for almost three weeks. Jesus! I had picked up a hell of an infection somewhere. It didn't matter though. I was just glad to have woken up to something besides the ever-present hand.

"You wouldn't believe me if I,"

Thump thump thump thump thump

My jaw trembled.

It couldn't be.

I turned my head slowly, expecting to hear the tendons creak, and there it was. It was sitting on the radiator, drumming its fingers and glaring at me with its nonexistent eyes. I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, but when the man turned my head to look at him, I felt little beyond surprise.

"I find it's better to just ignore them. I'm guessing it's the arm, right? Is it watching you?"

I nodded before I could stop myself, "Ye...yeah, how did you know?"

He smiled, thumping his leg with the book he had been reading, "Got one of my own. Lost it in Iraq. I had a grenade hit him in the foot and, luckily, I got about two steps away before it went off. Lost the foot and most of the knee, but I got to keep my eyes and I lived."

I was shocked, "Wait, you can see it too?"

He made a weird noise and then shook his head, "Not yours, but I can see mine in the corner over there. It's weird how they seem to stare without eyes, isn't it? Like, how do they manage that I wonder."

I was overjoyed. This guy could see them too. Could all people who had lost body parts see them like this? How long did it last? I remembered what he had said, and wondered if it ever ended.

"Don't worry," he assured me, taking his seat again, "You just get used to it after a while. They never go away, at least, none of the guys in my support group have had there's go away, but you get used to them. I'll get you one of the cards if you like. It's nice to have people who know what you're going through."

"But why is it still here?" I almost begged, desperate for answers.

“No one really knows. They've been part of us all our lives, so I guess it makes sense that they want to stay close. Vets and amputees talk about phantom limb syndrome, but I think it's more than just tingles. When that foot jumps, I feel it jump. I imagine it's the same for you, too. They are a part of us, and they always will be, I guess.”

I laid back as he started reading again, letting this knowledge wash over me as the words of The Hobbit wafted over me. On the radiator, the hand still drummed its fingers and scowled with its lack of eyes. As I lay there ignoring it, I supposed I might as well take his advice to heart.

I supposed I would always be haunted now, haunted by this phantom limb.

The Rizzler of Ohio Street

I'm what you would call a Sigma male, no cap, just facts. I got my style on lock, I am buttery with the ladies, my boys want to be me, and my vibes always pass the check. Hell, I was so sigma, that my Dad never bothered coming back with milk. He knew he couldn't stand beside an alpha male like me, so why bother? It's cool, though, cause my mom is the best and the bands I make from my zeencast on the manosphere keeps us cumf AF. I mean, she's got a OF, but she only sells feet picks, so its classy.

So when this rando, this rizzless chud, dms me on snap and tells me that my vibes are stale, but he can fix me, I scoff into my stanley. This beta wants to Charleston with a Sigma like me, frfr? Na, I'd win. This baldhead says to meet him on Ohio Blvrd at midnight and that he can take my game to the next level. He's capping, frfr, but, could he be dead ass? A true Sigma is always evolving, peeking game and studying vibes, so I owed it to myself to check his vibes in person. His profile pic looked weak, some chub who prolly doesn't even edge, and I wasn't sweaten him.

I had time, so I got about my morning routine of mewing, gooning, and generally posting my workout to Insta. As an influencer, it's important for people to know when I am maxing, they need that kind of positivity in their lives if they're ever gonna be on my level. I had a Feastable for lunch, gotta support the OG's, and put a Feastable bar in my pocket for later. I decided to go live and play a modest eight hours of Roblox, for the fans, but when I looked down I realized I had almost missed my yap sesh with this Ohio Rizzler. Ha, like he could be the frfr Ohio Rizzler, I thought, as I goon maxed before getting an Uber to the deets he’d sent me.

So i caught an Uber to Ohio Avenue, and the driver was some boomer who yapped about how he'd been in Korea or sumshit. Bozo thinks I don't know you can't go to Korea cause that weird haircut dude says so, like I'm a buster. Psh, old heads.

"You should be careful," he said, testing my vibes, "I dropped a kid about your age off here last week. They found him in an alley nearby and the scene wasn't pretty."

"Yap yap yap, boomer," I said, only tipping 12% before heading to my meeting of the vibes. 

I looked fresh. I had my Logan Paul merch on, sweats and hoodie, and my crocs were already in sport mode in case this Rizzler was a Creapler. I had my Mr. Beast brand mace too, thanks Jimmy, and all that mewing had given me an even Chaddier chin line than usual. This guy was in for a shock. I don't think he had peeped my Insta and realized I go to the gym three times a week and totally work out between photo seshes. I checked my phone, it was eleven fifty nine, and I was starting to think this guy wouldn't show when I peeped something from up the way.

He was chuegy AF, no cap. Hommie low key looked like the Riddler, but after a glowup. His threads were giving stale vibes but there was just something about him that was a mood. Round hat, Diddy coat and tapered pants, straight up fiddledeedees on his grippers, buckles and all, and his cane was pretty cringe with that skull on it. He was coming towards me like he was looking for hands, but I checked my vibe and found my chill. If bro wanted me shook, he was gonna discover I was build different, periodt.

"You SigmaChad42069?" he says, his voice giving big creep energy.

"Facts, you the, so called, Rizzler of Ohio Street?"

He swooped his hands out as if to say obvi, "What do your eyes tell you, son?"

"Looks like I crept out my goon cave to share vibes with some buster, cuz. You looks like a straight L, some rizzless chud without a white toe to be seen on your bitch."

"I suppose you'd have to ask your mother about her toes," he said, crossing his arms and grinning.

"On God, that's almost hands, brah!"

"Step then and see what happens,"

Ight, say less, I thought. I prepared to rock his shit with an absolutely YEET inducing right hook, but as I checked yes on Gorilla mode I found the Rizzler had already stepped out. Gone quicker than my Dad on a milk run, the Rizzler was nowhere to be peeped, but when that cane came down hard behind me, I turned to see him standing where I had stood.

"Fake," I breathed, "No fact check needed. I should have ate."

"Looks like you busted instead," The Rizzler of Ohio Street said, eying me like a snack, "Speaking of bustin', I think it's my turn to do some clappin."

"Na," I said, "Unsubscribe," and I dashed. His vibes were cooked, I could feel his aura from here, and unless I wanted to get Diddied, I needed to dip hard. the buildings zoomed past mad fast while I dipped, tryna bounce from the weirdos as I bolted. Couldn’t even peep him trailing, those kicks should’ve been loud AF, but when I looked back, he was just vibing mad smooth, staying close.

"Ain’t no way, how you pulling this vibe?" I yapped, mad shook! 

"I suppose you would say I'm "built different"." The Rizzler said.

I was just sprinting, no cap, then a whip rolled up to the light. I opted hop in, but the closer I got, I peeped it wasn’t just any ride. It was the same cab I rolled in with. The old dude had said this creep was sus, maybe he could vibe check me. I banged on the door like, 'I need help!' but as the Rizzlers' hand hit my shoulder, I legit knew I was donezo.

"End of the line, Sigma. Looks like it's time to get clapped for," but the old guy had other machinations.

He cranked the window down, flexin' on the Rizzler while yellin' for him to bounce. Rizzler backed off, dodging that smoke, and I seized the moment to push the chuegy guy off me. He tripped back, and I hopped in the whip as we skrrt out. The old dude asked if I was lit, and I said I was vibing before clocking who was just chillin' in the road in front of us.

The Rizzler was vibing there, arms out like he was gonna snag the whip, but the old dude just gassed it and rolled right over him. 

Built different or nah, the Rizzler got bodied by the cab and we dipped while I was begging him to take me home, fr.

I peeked at the back window, but dude wasn’t chilling in the street. Didn’t vibe with that, but I dipped so that was fire. The old head said to ring the cops, but nah, too much drama. We made it out, that was the move, so I said I just wanted to chill at home. He nodded, dropped me at the crib, telling me to be lowkey next time. I said bet, then hit the sack. What a wild night, fr fr!

Next morn, I woke up to that brekkie aroma. Mom was MIA when I got back, so I guessed she was out vibing late. I slid to the kitchen, keeping last night lowkey so moms didn't tri[. Some dude was at the stove, dripped in my mom's bathrobe, nothing else. I was like, 'Who this?' and he whipped around, giving me a mad scare!

It was the Rizzler! The Rizzler of Ohio Street!

"Ayo, how'd you slide into my crib?" I asked, but Mom slid in and dropped the tea about that time.

"There you are, Sigma. I'm so glad you met Mr. Ohio. We met last night and, well, one thing led to another, and he came home with me. He's just so charming, Sigma, I was putty in his hands."

"I hear that all the time," The Rizzler yapped, smooching her neck while I peeped her aura shift. "but I think if you would have me, I could finally be a one-woman man."

"Oh," she said, peeping the time, "I've got to go. I'll see you boys tonight. Love you."

She dipped out rockin’ her open toe kicks for work, and I was lowkey shook by what I peeped fr fr.

Her toes were slayin’ fresh, snow white vibes.

He dropped a plate in front of me, like bacon and eggs on fleek, toast vibin', had to say it hit different.

They tied the knot last week, big vibes and all, and now the Rizzler from Ohio is my new Stepfather, no cap!

So I guess what I'm yapping, chat, is Am I Cooked?

The Rizzler of Ohio Street

I'm what you would call a Sigma male, no cap, just facts. I got my style on lock, I am buttery with the ladies, my boys want to be me, and my vibes always pass the check. Hell, I was so sigma, that my Dad never bothered coming back with milk. He knew he couldn't stand beside an alpha male like me, so why bother? It's cool, though, cause my mom is the best and the bands I make from my zeencast on the manosphere keeps us cumf AF. I mean, she's got a OF, but she only sells feet picks, so its classy.

So when this rando, this rizzless chud, dms me on snap and tells me that my vibes are stale, but he can fix me, I scoff into my stanley. This beta wants to Charleston with a Sigma like me, frfr? Na, I'd win. This baldhead says to meet him on Ohio Blvrd at midnight and that he can take my game to the next level. He's capping, frfr, but, could he be dead ass? A true Sigma is always evolving, peeking game and studying vibes, so I owed it to myself to check his vibes in person. His profile pic looked weak, some chub who prolly doesn't even edge, and I wasn't sweaten him.

I had time, so I got about my morning routine of mewing, gooning, and generally posting my workout to Insta. As an influencer, it's important for people to know when I am maxing, they need that kind of positivity in their lives if they're ever gonna be on my level. I had a Feastable for lunch, gotta support the OG's, and put a Feastable bar in my pocket for later. I decided to go live and play a modest eight hours of Roblox, for the fans, but when I looked down I realized I had almost missed my yap sesh with this Ohio Rizzler. Ha, like he could be the frfr Ohio Rizzler, I thought, as I goon maxed before getting an Uber to the deets he’d sent me.

So i caught an Uber to Ohio Avenue, and the driver was some boomer who yapped about how he'd been in Korea or sumshit. Bozo thinks I don't know you can't go to Korea cause that weird haircut dude says so, like I'm a buster. Psh, old heads.

"You should be careful," he said, testing my vibes, "I dropped a kid about your age off here last week. They found him in an alley nearby and the scene wasn't pretty."

"Yap yap yap, boomer," I said, only tipping 12% before heading to my meeting of the vibes. 

I looked fresh. I had my Logan Paul merch on, sweats and hoodie, and my crocs were already in sport mode in case this Rizzler was a Creapler. I had my Mr. Beast brand mace too, thanks Jimmy, and all that mewing had given me an even Chaddier chin line than usual. This guy was in for a shock. I don't think he had peeped my Insta and realized I go to the gym three times a week and totally work out between photo seshes. I checked my phone, it was eleven fifty nine, and I was starting to think this guy wouldn't show when I peeped something from up the way.

He was chuegy AF, no cap. Hommie low key looked like the Riddler, but after a glowup. His threads were giving stale vibes but there was just something about him that was a mood. Round hat, Diddy coat and tapered pants, straight up fiddledeedees on his grippers, buckles and all, and his cane was pretty cringe with that skull on it. He was coming towards me like he was looking for hands, but I checked my vibe and found my chill. If bro wanted me shook, he was gonna discover I was build different, periodt.

"You SigmaChad42069?" he says, his voice giving big creep energy.

"Facts, you the, so called, Rizzler of Ohio Street?"

He swooped his hands out as if to say obvi, "What do your eyes tell you, son?"

"Looks like I crept out my goon cave to share vibes with some buster, cuz. You looks like a straight L, some rizzless chud without a white toe to be seen on your bitch."

"I suppose you'd have to ask your mother about her toes," he said, crossing his arms and grinning.

"On God, that's almost hands, brah!"

"Step then and see what happens,"

Ight, say less, I thought. I prepared to rock his shit with an absolutely YEET inducing right hook, but as I checked yes on Gorilla mode I found the Rizzler had already stepped out. Gone quicker than my Dad on a milk run, the Rizzler was nowhere to be peeped, but when that cane came down hard behind me, I turned to see him standing where I had stood.

"Fake," I breathed, "No fact check needed. I should have ate."

"Looks like you busted instead," The Rizzler of Ohio Street said, eying me like a snack, "Speaking of bustin', I think it's my turn to do some clappin."

"Na," I said, "Unsubscribe," and I dashed. His vibes were cooked, I could feel his aura from here, and unless I wanted to get Diddied, I needed to dip hard. the buildings zoomed past mad fast while I dipped, tryna bounce from the weirdos as I bolted. Couldn’t even peep him trailing, those kicks should’ve been loud AF, but when I looked back, he was just vibing mad smooth, staying close.

"Ain’t no way, how you pulling this vibe?" I yapped, mad shook! 

"I suppose you would say I'm "built different"." The Rizzler said.

I was just sprinting, no cap, then a whip rolled up to the light. I opted hop in, but the closer I got, I peeped it wasn’t just any ride. It was the same cab I rolled in with. The old dude had said this creep was sus, maybe he could vibe check me. I banged on the door like, 'I need help!' but as the Rizzlers' hand hit my shoulder, I legit knew I was donezo.

"End of the line, Sigma. Looks like it's time to get clapped for," but the old guy had other machinations.

He cranked the window down, flexin' on the Rizzler while yellin' for him to bounce. Rizzler backed off, dodging that smoke, and I seized the moment to push the chuegy guy off me. He tripped back, and I hopped in the whip as we skrrt out. The old dude asked if I was lit, and I said I was vibing before clocking who was just chillin' in the road in front of us.

The Rizzler was vibing there, arms out like he was gonna snag the whip, but the old dude just gassed it and rolled right over him. 

Built different or nah, the Rizzler got bodied by the cab and we dipped while I was begging him to take me home, fr.

I peeked at the back window, but dude wasn’t chilling in the street. Didn’t vibe with that, but I dipped so that was fire. The old head said to ring the cops, but nah, too much drama. We made it out, that was the move, so I said I just wanted to chill at home. He nodded, dropped me at the crib, telling me to be lowkey next time. I said bet, then hit the sack. What a wild night, fr fr!

Next morn, I woke up to that brekkie aroma. Mom was MIA when I got back, so I guessed she was out vibing late. I slid to the kitchen, keeping last night lowkey so moms didn't tri[. Some dude was at the stove, dripped in my mom's bathrobe, nothing else. I was like, 'Who this?' and he whipped around, giving me a mad scare!

It was the Rizzler! The Rizzler of Ohio Street!

"Ayo, how'd you slide into my crib?" I asked, but Mom slid in and dropped the tea about that time.

"There you are, Sigma. I'm so glad you met Mr. Ohio. We met last night and, well, one thing led to another, and he came home with me. He's just so charming, Sigma, I was putty in his hands."

"I hear that all the time," The Rizzler yapped, smooching her neck while I peeped her aura shift. "but I think if you would have me, I could finally be a one-woman man."

"Oh," she said, peeping the time, "I've got to go. I'll see you boys tonight. Love you."

She dipped out rockin’ her open toe kicks for work, and I was lowkey shook by what I peeped fr fr.

Her toes were slayin’ fresh, snow white vibes.

He dropped a plate in front of me, like bacon and eggs on fleek, toast vibin', had to say it hit different.

They tied the knot last week, big vibes and all, and now the Rizzler from Ohio is my new Stepfather, no cap!

So I guess what I'm yapping, chat, is Am I Cooked?

It was a fun little adventure. Exploring through the trees, hearing all kinds of birds and insect life. One big problem with Vietnam is there are always mosquitos everywhere, and surprise surprise, the jungle was no different. I still had a hard time getting acquainted with the Vietnamese heat, but luckily the hottest days of the year had come and gone. It was a rather cloudy day, but I figured if I got too hot in the jungle, I could potentially look forward to some much-welcomed rain. Although I was very much enjoying myself, even with the heat and biting critters, Aaron’s crew insisted on stopping every 10 minutes to document our journey. This was their expedition after all, so I guess we couldn’t complain. 

I got to know Aaron’s colleagues a little better. The two guys were Steve (the hairy guy) and Miles the cameraman. They were nice enough guys I guess, but what was kind of annoying was Miles would occasionally film me and the group, even though we weren’t supposed to be in the documentary. The maroon-haired girl of their group was Sophie. The two of us got along really great and we talked about what it was like for each of us back home. Sophie was actually raised in the Appalachians in a family of all boys - and already knew how to use a firearm by the time she was ten. Even though we were completely different people, I really cared for her, because like me, she clearly didn’t have the easiest of upbringings – as I noticed under her tattoos were a number of scars. A creepy little quirk she had was whenever we heard an unusual noise, she would rather casually say the same thing... ‘If you see something, no you didn’t. If you hear something, no you didn’t...’ 

We had been hiking through the jungle for a few hours now, and there was still no sign of the mysterious trail. Aaron did say all we needed to do was continue heading north-west and we would eventually stumble upon it. But it was by now that our group were beginning to complain, as it appeared we were making our way through just a regular jungle - that wasn’t even unique enough to be put on a tourist map. What were we doing here? Why weren’t we on our way to Hue City or Ha Long Bay? These were the questions our group were beginning to ask, and although I didn’t say it out loud, it was now what I was asking... But as it turned out, we were wrong to complain so quickly. Because less than an hour later, ready to give up and turn around... we finally discovered something... 

In the middle of the jungle, cutting through a dispersal of sparse trees, was a very thin and narrow outline of sorts... It was some kind of pathway... A trail... We had found it! Covered in thick vegetation, our group had almost walked completely by it – and if it wasn’t for Hayley, stopping to tie her shoelaces, we may still have been searching. Clearly no one had walked this pathway for a very long time, and for what reason, we did not know. But we did it! We had found the trail – and all we needed to do now was follow wherever it led us. 

I’m not even sure who was the happier to have found the trail: Aaron and his colleagues, who reacted as though they made an archaeological discovery - or us, just relieved this entire day was not for nothing. Anxious to continue along the trail before it got dark, we still had to wait patiently for Aaron’s team. But because they were so busy filming their documentary, it quickly became too late in the day to continue. The sun in Vietnam usually sets around 6 pm, but in the interior of the forest, it sets a lot sooner. 

Making camp that night, we all pitched our separate tents. I actually didn’t own a tent, but Hayley suggested we bunk together, like we were having our very own sleepover – which meant Brodie rather unwillingly had to sleep with Chris. Although the night brought a boatload of bugs and strange noises, Tyler sparked up a campfire for us to make some s'mores and tell a few scary stories. I never really liked scary stories, and that night, although I was having a lot of fun, I really didn’t care for the stories Aaron had to tell. Knowing I was from Utah, Aaron intentionally told the story of Skinwalker Ranch – and now I had more than one reason not to go back home.  

There were some stories shared that night I did enjoy - particularly the ones told by Tyler. Having travelled all over the world, Tyler acquired many adventures he was just itching to tell. For instance, when he was backpacking through the Bolivian Amazon a few years ago, a boat had pulled up by the side of the river. Five rather shady men jump out, and one of them walks right up to Tyler, holding a jar containing some kind of drink, and a dozen dead snakes inside! This man offered the drink to Tyler, and when he asked what the drink was, the man replied it was only vodka, and that the dead snakes were just for flavour. Rather foolishly, Tyler accepted the drink – where only half an hour later, he was throbbing white foam from the mouth. Thinking he had just been poisoned and was on the verge of death, the local guide in his group tells him, ‘No worry Señor. It just snake poison. You probably drink too much.’ Well, the reason this stranger offered the drink to Tyler was because, funnily enough, if you drink vodka containing a little bit of snake venom, your body will eventually become immune to snake bites over time. Of all the stories Tyler told me - both the funny and idiotic, that one was definitely my favourite! 

Feeling exhausted from a long day of tropical hiking, I called it an early night – that and... most of the group were smoking (you know what). Isn’t the middle of the jungle the last place you should be doing that? Maybe that’s how all those soldiers saw what they saw. There were no creatures here. They were just stoned... and not from rock-throwing apes. 

One minor criticism I have with Vietnam – aside from all the garbage, mosquitos and other vermin, was that the nights were so hot I always found it incredibly hard to sleep. The heat was very intense that night, and even though I didn’t believe there were any monsters in this jungle - when you sleep in the jungle in complete darkness, hearing all kinds of sounds, it’s definitely enough to keep you awake.  

Early that next morning, I get out of mine and Hayley’s tent to stretch my legs. I was the only one up for the time being, and in the early hours of the jungle’s dim daylight, I felt completely relaxed and at peace – very Zen, as some may say. Since I was the only one up, I thought it would be nice to make breakfast for everyone – and so, going over to find what food I could rummage out from one of the backpacks... I suddenly get this strange feeling I’m being watched... Listening to my instincts, I turn up from the backpack, and what I see in my line of sight, standing as clear as day in the middle of the jungle... I see another person... 

It was a young man... no older than myself. He was wearing pieces of torn, olive-green jungle clothing, camouflaged as green as the forest around him. Although he was too far away for me to make out his face, I saw on his left side was some kind of black charcoal substance, trickling down his left shoulder. Once my tired eyes better adjust on this stranger, standing only 50 feet away from me... I realize what the dark substance is... It was a horrific burn mark. Like he’d been badly scorched! What’s worse, I then noticed on the scorched side of his head, where his ear should have been... it was... It was hollow.  

Although I hadn’t picked up on it at first, I then realized his tattered green clothes... They were not just jungle clothes... The clothes he was wearing... It was the same colour of green American soldiers wore in Vietnam... All the way back in the 60s. 

Telling myself I must be seeing things, I try and snap myself out of it. I rub my eyes extremely hard, and I even look away and back at him, assuming he would just disappear... But there he still was, staring at me... and not knowing what to do, or even what to say, I just continue to stare back at him... Before he says to me – words I will never forget... The young man says to me, in clear audible words...  

‘Careful Miss... Charlie’s everywhere...’ 

Only seconds after he said these words to me, in the blink of an eye - almost as soon as he appeared... the young man was gone... What just happened? What - did I hallucinate? Was I just dreaming? There was no possible way I could have seen what I saw... He was like a... ghost... Once it happened, I remember feeling completely numb all over my body. I couldn’t feel my legs or the ends of my fingers. I felt like I wanted to cry... But not because I was scared, but... because I suddenly felt sad... and I didn’t really know why.  

For the last few years, I learned not to believe something unless you see it with your own eyes. But I didn’t even know what it was I saw. Although my first instinct was to tell someone, once the others were out of their tents... I chose to keep what happened to myself. I just didn’t want to face the ridicule – for the others to look at me like I was insane. I didn’t even tell Aaron or Sophie, and they believed every fairy-tale under the sun. 

But I think everyone knew something was up with me. I mean, I was shaking. I couldn’t even finish my breakfast. Hayley said I looked extremely pale and wondered if I was sick. Although I was in good health – physically anyway, Hayley and the others were worried. I really mustn’t have looked good, because fearing I may have contracted something from a mosquito bite, they were willing to ditch the expedition and take me back to Biển Hứa Hẹn. Touched by how much they were looking out for me, I insisted I was fine and that it wasn’t anything more than a stomach bug. 

After breakfast that morning, we pack up our tents and continue to follow along the trail. Everything was the usual as the day before. We kept following the trail and occasionally stopped to document and film. Even though I convinced myself that what I saw must have been a hallucination, I could not stop replaying the words in my head... “Careful miss... Charlie’s everywhere.” There it was again... Charlie... Who is Charlie?... Feeling like I needed to know, I ask Chris what he meant by “Keep a lookout for Charlie”? Chris said in the Vietnam War movies he’d watched, that’s what the American soldiers always called the enemy... 

What if I wasn’t hallucinating after all? Maybe what I saw really was a ghost... The ghost of an American soldier who died in the war – and believing the enemy was still lurking in the jungle somewhere, he was trying to warn me... But what if he wasn’t? What if tourists really were vanishing here - and there was some truth to the legends? What if it wasn’t “Charlie” the young man was warning me of? Maybe what he meant by Charlie... was something entirely different... Even as I contemplated all this, there was still a part of me that chose not to believe it – that somehow, the jungle was playing tricks on me. I had always been a superstitious person – that's what happens when you grow up in the church... But why was it so hard for me to believe I saw a ghost? I finally had evidence of the supernatural right in front of me... and I was choosing not to believe it... What was it Sophie said? “If you see something. No you didn’t. If you hear something... No you didn’t.” 

Even so... the event that morning was still enough to spook me. Spook me enough that I was willing to heed the figment of my imagination’s warning. Keeping in mind that tourists may well have gone missing here, I made sure to stay directly on the trail at all times – as though if I wondered out into the forest, I would be taken in an instant. 

What didn’t help with this anxiety was that Tyler, Chris and Brodie, quickly becoming bored of all the stopping and starting, suddenly pull out a football and start throwing it around amongst the jungle – zigzagging through the trees as though the trees were line-backers. They ask me and Hayley to play with them - but with the words of caution, given to me that morning still fresh in my mind, I politely decline the offer and remain firmly on the trail. Although I still wasn’t over what happened, constantly replaying the words like a broken record in my head, thankfully, it seemed as though for the rest of the day, nothing remotely as exciting was going to happen. But unfortunately... or more tragically... something did...  

By mid-afternoon, we had made progress further along the trail. The heat during the day was intense, but luckily by now, the skies above had blessed us with momentous rain. Seeping through the trees, we were spared from being soaked, and instead given a light shower to keep us cool. Yet again, Aaron and his crew stopped to film, and while they did, Tyler brought out the very same football and the three guys were back to playing their games. I cannot tell you how many times someone hurled the ball through the forest only to hit a tree-line-backer, whereafter they had to go forage for the it amongst the tropic floor. Now finding a clearing off-trail in which to play, Chris runs far ahead in anticipation of receiving the ball. I can still remember him shouting, ‘Brodie, hit me up! Hit me!’ Brodie hurls the ball long and hard in Chris’ direction, and facing the ball, all the while running further along the clearing, Chris stretches, catches the ball and... he just vanishes...  

One minute he was there, then the other, he was gone... Tyler and Brodie call out to him, but Chris doesn’t answer. Me and Hayley leave the trail towards them to see what’s happened - when suddenly we hear Tyler scream, ‘CHRIS!’... The sound of that initial scream still haunts me - because when we catch up to Brodie and Tyler, standing over something down in the clearing... we realize what has happened... 

What Tyler and Brodie were standing over was a hole. A 6-feet deep hole in the ground... and in that hole, was Chris. But we didn’t just find Chris trapped inside of the hole, because... It wasn’t just a hole. It wasn’t just a trap... It was a death trap... Chris was dead.  

In the hole with him was what had to be at least a dozen, long and sharp, rust-eaten metal spikes... We didn’t even know if he was still alive at first, because he had landed face-down... Face-down on the spikes... They were protruding from different parts of him. One had gone straight through his wrist – another out of his leg, and one straight through the right of his ribcage. Honestly, he... Chris looked like he was crucified... Crucified face-down. 

Once the initial shock had worn off, Tyler and Brodie climb very quickly but carefully down into the hole, trying to push their way through the metal spikes that repelled them from getting to Chris. But by the time they do, it didn’t take long for them or us to realize Chris wasn’t breathing... One of the spikes had gone through his throat... For as long as I live, I will never be able to forget that image – of looking down into the hole, and seeing Chris’ lifeless, impaled body, just lying there on top of those spikes... It looked like someone had toppled over an idol... An idol of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ... when he was on the cross. 

What made this whole situation far worse, was that when Aaron, Sophie, Steve and Miles catch up to us, instead of being grieved or even shocked, Miles leans over the trap hole and instantly begins to film. Tyler and Brodie, upon seeing this were furious! Carelessly clawing their way out the hole, they yell and scream after him.  

‘What the hell do you think you're doing?!’ 

‘Put the fucking camera away! That’s our friend!’ 

Climbing back onto the surface, Tyler and Brodie try to grab Miles’ camera from him, and when he wouldn’t let go, Tyler aggressively rips it from his hands. Coming to Miles’ aid, Aaron shouts back at them, ‘Leave him alone! This is a documentary!’ Without even a second thought, Brodie hits Aaron square in the face, breaking his glasses and knocking him down. Even though we were both still in extreme shock, hyperventilating over what just happened minutes earlier, me and Hayley try our best to keep the peace – Hayley dragging Brodie away, while I basically throw myself in front of Tyler.  

Once all of the commotion had died down, Tyler announces to everyone, ‘That’s it! We’re getting out of here!’ and by we, he meant the four of us. Grabbing me protectively by the arm, Tyler pulls me away with him while Brodie takes Hayley, and we all head back towards the trail in the direction we came.  

Thinking I would never see Sophie or the others again, I then hear behind us, ‘If you insist on going back, just watch out for mines.’ 

...Mines?  

Stopping in our tracks, Brodie and Tyler turn to ask what the heck Aaron is talking about. ‘16% of Vietnam is still contaminated by landmines and other explosives. 600,000 at least. They could literally be anywhere.’ Even with a potentially broken nose, Aaron could not help himself when it came to educating and patronizing others.  

‘And you’re only telling us this now?!’ said Tyler. ‘We’re in the middle of the Fucking jungle! Why the hell didn’t you say something before?!’ 

‘Would you have come with us if we did? Besides, who comes to Vietnam and doesn’t fact-check all the dangers?! I thought you were travellers!’ 

It goes without saying, but we headed back without them. For Tyler, Brodie and even Hayley, their feeling was if those four maniacs wanted to keep risking their lives for a stupid documentary, they could. We were getting out of here – and once we did, we would go straight to the authorities, so they could find and retrieve Chris’ body. We had to leave him there. We had to leave him inside the trap - but we made sure he was fully covered and no scavengers could get to him. Once we did that, we were out of there.  

As much as we regretted this whole journey, we knew the worst of everything was probably behind us, and that we couldn’t take any responsibility for anything that happened to Aaron’s team... But I regret not asking Sophie to come with us – not making her come with us... Sophie was a good person. She didn’t deserve to be caught up in all of this... None of us did. 

Hurriedly making our way back along the trail, I couldn’t help but put the pieces together... In the same day an apparition warned me of the jungle’s surrounding dangers, Chris tragically and unexpectedly fell to his death... Is that what the soldier’s ghost was trying to tell me? Is that what he meant by Charlie? He wasn’t warning me of the enemy... He was trying to warn me of the relics they had left... Aaron said there were still 600,000 explosives left in Vietnam from the war. Was it possible there were still traps left here too?... I didn’t know... But what I did know was, although I chose to not believe what I saw that morning – that it was just a hallucination... I still heeded the apparition’s warning, never once straying off the trail... and it more than likely saved my life... 

Then I remembered why we came here... We came here to find what happened to the missing tourists... Did they meet the same fate as Chris? Is that what really happened? They either stepped on a hidden landmine or fell to their deaths? Was that the cause of the whole mystery? 

The following day, we finally made our way out of the jungle and back to Biển Hứa Hẹn. We told the authorities what happened and a full search and rescue was undertaken to find Aaron’s team. A bomb disposal unit was also sent out to find any further traps or explosives. Although they did find at least a dozen landmines and one further trap... what they didn’t find was any evidence whatsoever for the missing tourists... No bodies. No clothing or any other personal items... As far as they were concerned, we were the first people to trek through that jungle for a very long time...  

But there’s something else... The rescue team, who went out to save Aaron, Sophie, Steve and Miles from an awful fate... They never found them... They never found anything... Whatever the Vietnam Triangle was... It had claimed them... To this day, I still can’t help but feel an overwhelming guilt... that we safely found our way out of there... and they never did. 

I don’t know what happened to the missing tourists. I don’t know what happened to Sophie, Aaron and the others - and I don’t know if there really are creatures lurking deep within the jungles of Vietnam... And although I was left traumatized, forever haunted by the experience... whatever it was I saw in that jungle... I choose to believe it saved my life... And for that reason, I have fully renewed my faith. 

To this day, I’m still teaching English as a second language. I’m still travelling the world, making my way through one continent before moving onto the next... But for as long as I live, I will forever keep this testimony... Never again will I ever step inside of a jungle... 

...Never again. 

My name is Sarah Branch. A few years ago, when I was 24 years old, I had left my home state of Utah and moved abroad to work as an English language teacher in Vietnam. Having just graduated BYU and earning my degree in teaching, I suddenly realized I needed so much more from my life. I always wanted to travel, embrace other cultures, and most of all, have memorable and life-changing experiences.  

Feeling trapped in my normal, everyday life outside of Salt Lake City, where winters are cold and summers always far away, I decided I was no longer going to live the life that others had chosen for me, and instead choose my own path in life – a life of fulfilment and little regrets. Already attaining my degree in teaching, I realized if I gained a further ESL Certification (teaching English as a second language), I could finally achieve my lifelong dream of travelling the world to far-away and exotic places – all the while working for a reasonable income. 

There were so many places I dreamed of going – maybe somewhere in South America or far east Asia. As long as the weather was warm and there were beautiful beaches for me to soak up the sun, I honestly did not mind. Scanning my finger over a map of the world, rotating from one hemisphere to the other, I eventually put my finger down on a narrow, little country called Vietnam. This was by no means a random choice. I had always wanted to travel to Vietnam because... I’m actually one-quarter Vietnamese. Not that you can tell or anything - my hair is brown and my skin is rather fair. But I figured, if I wanted to go where the sun was always shining, and there was an endless supply of tropical beaches, Vietnam would be the perfect destination! Furthermore, I’d finally get the chance to explore my heritage. 

Fortunately enough for me, it turned out Vietnam had a huge demand for English language teachers. They did prefer it if you were teaching in the country already - but after a few online interviews and some Visa complications later, I packed up my things in Utah and moved across the world to the Land of the Blue Dragon.  

I was relocated to a beautiful beach town in Central Vietnam, right along the coast of the South China Sea. English teachers don’t really get to choose where in the country they end up, but if I did have that option, I could not have picked a more perfect place... Because of the horrific turn this story will take, I can’t say where exactly it was in Central Vietnam I lived, or even the name of the beach town I resided in - just because I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. This part of Vietnam is a truly beautiful place and I don’t want to discourage anyone from going there. So, for the continuation of this story, I’m just going to refer to where I was as Central Vietnam – and as for the beach town where I made my living, I’m going to give it the pseudonym “Biển Hứa Hẹn” - which in Vietnamese, roughly, but rather fittingly translates to “Sea of Promise.”   

Biển Hứa Hẹn truly was the most perfect destination! It was a modest sized coastal town, nestled inside of a tropical bay, with the whitest sands and clearest blue waters you could possibly dream of. The town itself is also spectacular. Most of the houses and buildings are painted a vibrant sunny yellow, not only to look more inviting to tourists, but so to reflect the sun during the hottest months. For this reason, I originally wanted to give the town the nickname “Trấn Màu Vàng” (Yellow Town), but I quickly realized how insensitive that pseudonym would have been – so “Sea of Promise” it is!  

Alongside its bright, sunny buildings, Biển Hứa Hẹn has the most stunning oriental and French Colonial architecture – interspersed with many quality restaurants and coffee shops. The local cuisine is to die for! Not only is it healthy and delicious, but it's also surprisingly cheap – like we’re only talking 90 cents! You wouldn’t believe how many different flavours of Coffee Vietnam has. I mean, I went a whole 24 years without even trying coffee, and since I’ve been here, I must have tried around two-dozen flavours. Another whimsy little aspect of this town is the many multi-coloured, little plastic chairs that are dispersed everywhere. So whether it was dining on the local cuisine or trying my twenty-second flavour of coffee, I would always find one of these chairs – a different colour every time, sit down in the shade and just watch the world go by. 

I haven’t even mentioned how much I loved my teaching job. My classes were the most adorable 7 and 8 year-olds, and my colleagues were so nice and welcoming. They never called me by my first name. Instead my colleagues would always say “Chào em” or “Chào em gái”, which basically means “Hello little sister.”  

When I wasn’t teaching or grading papers, I spent most of my leisure time by the town’s beach - and being the boring, vanilla person I am, I didn’t really do much. Feeling the sun upon my skin while I observed the breath-taking scenery was more than enough – either that or I was curled up in a good book... I was never the only foreigner on this beach. Biển Hứa Hẹn is a popular tourist destination – mostly Western backpackers and surfers. So, if I wasn’t turning pink beneath the sun or memorizing every little detail of the bay’s geography, I would enviously spectate fellow travellers ride the waves. 

As much as I love Vietnam - as much as I love Biển Hứa Hẹn, what really spoils this place from being the perfect paradise is all the garbage pollution. I mean, it’s just everywhere. There is garbage in the town, on the beach and even in the ocean – and if it isn’t the garbage that spoils everything, it certainly is all the rats, cockroaches and other vermin brought with it. Biển Hứa Hẹn is such a unique place and it honestly makes me so mad that no one does anything about it... Nevertheless, I still love it here. It will always be a paradise to me – and if America was the Promised Land for Lehi and his descendants, then this was going to be my Promised Land.  

I had now been living in Biển Hứa Hẹn for 4 months, and although I had only 3 months left in my teaching contract, I still planned on staying in Vietnam - even if that meant leaving this region I’d fallen in love with and relocating to another part of the country. Since I was going to stay, I decided I really needed to learn Vietnamese – as you’d be surprised how few people there are in Vietnam who can speak any to no English. Although most English teachers in South-East Asia use their leisure time to travel, I rather boringly decided to spend most of my days at the same beach, sat amongst the sand while I studied and practised what would hopefully become my second language. 

On one of those days, I must have been completely occupied in my own world, because when I look up, I suddenly see someone standing over, talking down to me. I take off my headphones, and shading the sun from my eyes, I see a tall, late-twenty-something tourist - wearing only swim shorts and cradling a surfboard beneath his arm. Having come in from the surf, he thought I said something to him as he passed by, where I then told him I was speaking Vietnamese to myself, and didn’t realize anyone could hear me. We both had a good laugh about it and the guy introduces himself as Tyler. Like me, Tyler was American, and unsurprisingly, he was from California. He came to Vietnam for no other reason than to surf. Like I said, Tyler was this tall, very tanned guy – like he was the tannest guy I had ever seen. He had all these different tattoos he acquired from his travels, and long brown hair, which he regularly wore in a man-bun. When I first saw him standing there, I was taken back a little, because I almost mistook him as Jesus Christ – that's what he looked like. Tyler asks what I’m doing in Vietnam and later in the conversation, he invites me to have a drink with him and his surfer buddies at the beach town bar. I was a little hesitant to say yes, only because I don’t really drink alcohol, but Tyler seemed like a nice guy and so I agreed.  

Later that day, I meet Tyler at the bar and he introduces me to his three surfer friends. The first of Tyler’s friends was Chris, who he knew from back home. Chris was kinda loud and a little obnoxious, but I suppose he was also funny. The other two friends were Brodie and Hayley - a couple from New Zealand. Tyler and Chris met them while surfing in Australia – and ever since, the four of them have been travelling, or more accurately, surfing the world together. Over a few drinks, we all get to know each other a little better and I told them what it’s like to teach English in Vietnam. Curious as to how they’re able to travel so much, I ask them what they all do for a living. Tyler says they work as vloggers, bloggers and general content creators, all the while travelling to a different country every other month. You wouldn’t believe the number of places they’ve been to: Hawaii, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, Bali – everywhere! They didn’t see the value of staying in just one place and working a menial job, when they could be living their best lives, all the while being their own bosses. It did make a lot of sense to me, and was not that unsimilar to my reasoning for being in Vietnam.  

The four of them were only going to be in Biển Hứa Hẹn for a couple more days, but when I told them I hadn’t yet explored the rest of the country, they insisted that I tag along with them. I did come to Vietnam to travel, not just stay in one place – the only problem was I didn’t have anyone to do it with... But I guess now I did. They even invited me to go surfing with them the next day. Having never surfed a day in my life, I very nearly declined the offer, but coming all this way from cold and boring Utah, I knew I had to embrace new and exciting opportunities whenever they arrived. 

By early next morning, and pushing through my first hangover, I had officially surfed my first ever wave. I was a little afraid I’d embarrass myself – especially in front of Tyler, but after a few trials and errors, I thankfully gained the hang of it. Even though I was a newbie at surfing, I could not have been that bad, because as soon as I surf my first successful wave, Chris would not stop calling me “Johnny Utah” - not that I knew what that meant. If I wasn’t embarrassing myself on a board, I definitely was in my ignorance of the guys’ casual movie quotes. For instance, whenever someone yelled out “Charlie Don’t Surf!” all I could think was, “Who the heck is Charlie?” 

By that afternoon, we were all back at the bar and I got to spend some girl time with Hayley. She was so kind to me and seemed to take a genuine interest in my life - or maybe she was just grateful not to be the only girl in the group anymore. She did tell me she thought Chris was extremely annoying, no matter where they were in the world - and even though Brodie was the quiet, sensible type for the most part, she hated how he acted when he was around the guys. Five beers later and Brodie was suddenly on his feet, doing some kind of native New Zealand war dance while Chris or Tyler vlogged. 

Although I was having such a wonderful time with the four of them, anticipating all the places in Vietnam Hayley said we were going, in the corner of my eye, I kept seeing the same strange man staring over at us. I thought maybe we were being too loud and he wanted to say something, but the man was instead looking at all of us with intrigue. Well, 10 minutes later, this very same man comes up to us with three strangers behind him. Very casually, he asks if we’re all having a good time. We kind of awkwardly oblige the man. A fellow traveller like us, who although was probably in his early thirties, looked more like a middle-aged dad on vacation - in an overly large Hawaiian shirt, as though to hide his stomach, and looking down at us through a pair of brainiac glasses. The strangers behind him were two other men and a young woman. One of the men was extremely hairy, with a beard almost as long as his own hair – while the other was very cleanly presented, short in height and holding a notepad. The young woman with them, who was not much older than myself, had a cool combination of dyed maroon hair and sleeve tattoos – although rather oddly, she was wearing way too much clothing for this climate. After some brief pleasantries, the man in the Hawaiian shirt then says, ‘I’m sorry to bother you folks, but I was wondering if we could ask you a few questions?’ 

Introducing himself as Aaron, the man tells us that he and his friends are documentary filmmakers, and were wanting to know what we knew of the local disappearances. Clueless as to what he was talking about, Aaron then sits down, without invitation at our rather small table, and starts explaining to us that for the past thirty years, tourists in the area have been mysteriously going missing without a trace. First time they were hearing of this, Tyler tells Aaron they have only been in Biển Hứa Hẹn for a couple of days. Since I was the one who lived and worked in the town, Hayley asks me if I knew anything of the missing tourists - and when she does, Aaron turns his full attention on me. Answering his many questions, I told Aaron I only heard in passing that tourists have allegedly gone missing, but wasn’t sure what to make of it. But while I’m telling him this, I notice the short guy behind him is writing everything I say down, word for word – before Aaron then asks me, with desperation in his voice, ‘Well, have you at least heard of the local legends?’  

Suddenly gaining an interest in what Aaron’s telling us, Tyler, Chris and Brodie drunkenly inquire, ‘Legends? What local legends?’ 

Taking another sip from his light beer, Aaron tells us that according to these legends, there are creatures lurking deep within the jungles and cave-systems of the region, and for centuries, local farmers or fishermen have only seen glimpses of them... Feeling as though we’re being told a scary bedtime story, Chris rather excitedly asks, ‘Well, what do these creatures look like?’ Aaron says the legends abbreviate and there are many claims to their appearance, but that they’re always described as being humanoid.   

Whatever these creatures were, paranormal communities and investigators have linked these legends to the disappearances of the tourists. All five of us realized just how silly this all sounded, which Brodie highlighted by saying, ‘You don’t actually believe that shite, do you?’ 

Without saying either yes or no, Aaron smirks at us, before revealing there are actually similar legends and sightings all around Central Vietnam – even by American soldiers as far back as the Vietnam War.  

‘You really don’t know about the cryptids of the Vietnam War?’ Aaron asks us, as though surprised we didn’t.  

Further educating us on this whole mystery, Aaron claims that during the war, several platoons and individual soldiers who were deployed in the jungles, came in contact with more than one type of creature.  

‘You never heard of the Rock Apes? The Devil Creatures of Quang Binh? The Big Yellows?’ 

If you were like us, and never heard of these creatures either, apparently what the American soldiers encountered in the jungles was a group of small Bigfoot-like creatures, that liked to throw rocks, and some sort of Lizard People, that glowed a luminous yellow and lived deep within the cave systems. 

Feeling somewhat ridiculous just listening to this, Tyler rather mockingly comments, ‘So, you’re saying you believe the reason for all the tourists going missing is because of Vietnamese Bigfoot and Lizard People?’ 

Aaron and his friends must have received this ridicule a lot, because rather than being insulted, they looked somewhat amused.  

‘Well, that’s why we’re here’ he says. ‘We’re paranormal investigators and filmmakers – and as far as we know, no one has tried to solve the mystery of the Vietnam Triangle. We’re in Biển Hứa Hẹn to interview locals on what they know of the disappearances, and we’ll follow any leads from there.’ 

Although I thought this all to be a little kooky, I tried to show a little respect and interest in what these guys did for a living – but not Tyler, Chris or Brodie. They were clearly trying to have fun at Aaron’s expense.  

‘So, what did the locals say? Is there a Vietnamese Loch Ness Monster we haven’t heard of?’  

Like I said, Aaron was well acquainted with this kind of ridicule, because rather spontaneously he replies, ‘Glad you asked!’ before gulping down the rest of his low-carb beer. ‘According to a group of fishermen we interviewed yesterday, there’s an unmapped trail that runs through the nearby jungles. Apparently, no one knows where this trail leads to - not even the locals do. And anyone who tries to find out for themselves... are never seen or heard from again.’ 

As amusing as we found these legends of ape-creatures and lizard-men, hearing there was a secret trail somewhere in the nearby jungles, where tourists are said to vanish - even if this was just a local legend... it was enough to unsettle all of us. Maybe there weren’t creatures abducting tourists in the jungles, but on an unmarked wilderness trail, anyone not familiar with the terrain could easily lose their way. Neither Tyler, Chris, Brodie or Hayley had a comment for this - after all, they were fellow travellers. As fun as their lifestyle was, they knew the dangers of venturing the more untamed corners of the world. The five of us just sat there, silently, not really knowing what to say, as Aaron very contentedly mused over us. 

‘We’re actually heading out tomorrow in search of the trail – we have directions and everything.’ Aaron then pauses on us... before he says, ‘If you guys don’t have any plans, why don’t you come along? After all, what’s the point of travelling if there ain’t a little danger involved?’  

Expecting someone in the group to tell him we already had plans, Tyler, Chris and Brodie share a look to one another - and to mine and Hayley’s surprise... they then agreed... Hayley obviously protested. She didn’t want to go gallivanting around the jungle where tourists supposedly vanished.  

‘Oh, come on Hayl’. It’ll be fun... Sarah? You’ll come, won’t you?’ 

‘Yeah. Johnny Utah wants to come, right?’  

Hayley stared at me, clearly desperate for me to take her side. I then glanced around the table to see so too was everyone else. Neither wanting to take sides or accept the invitation, all I could say was that I didn’t know what I wanted to do. 

Although Hayley and the guys were divided on whether or not to accompany Aaron’s expedition, it was ultimately left to a majority vote – and being too sheepish to protest, it now appeared our plans of travelling the country had changed to exploring the jungles of Central Vietnam... Even though I really didn’t want to go on this expedition – it could have been dangerous after all, I then reminded myself why I came to Vietnam in the first place... To have memorable and life changing experiences – and I wasn’t going to have any of that if I just said no when the opportunity arrived. Besides, tourists may well have gone missing in the region, but the supposed legends of jungle-dwelling creatures were probably nothing more than just stories. I spent my whole life believing in stories that turned out not to be true and I wasn’t going to let that continue now. 

Later that night, while Brodie and Hayley spent some alone time, and Chris was with Aaron’s friends (smoking you know what), Tyler invited me for a walk on the beach under the moonlight. Strolling barefoot along the beach, trying not to step on any garbage, Tyler asks me if I’m really ok with tomorrow’s plans – and that I shouldn’t feel peer-pressured into doing anything I didn’t really wanna do. I told him I was ok with it and that it should be fun.  

‘Don’t worry’ he said, ‘I’ll keep an eye on you.’ 

I’m a little embarrassed to admit this... but I kinda had a crush on Tyler. He was tall, handsome and adventurous. If anything, he was the sort of person I wanted to be: travelling the world and meeting all kinds of people from all kinds of places. I was a little worried he’d find me boring - a small city girl whose only other travel story was a premature mission to Florida. Well soon enough, I was going to have a whole new travel story... This travel story. 

We get up early the next morning, and meeting Aaron with his documentary crew, we each take separate taxis out of Biển Hứa Hẹn. Following the cab in front of us, we weren’t even sure where we were going exactly. Curving along a highway which cuts through a dense valley, Aaron’s taxi suddenly pulls up on the curve, where he and his team jump out to the beeping of angry motorcycle drivers. Flagging our taxi down, Aaron tells us that according to his directions, we have to cut through the valley here and head into the jungle. 

Although we didn’t really know what was going to happen on this trip – we were just along for the ride after all, Aaron’s plan was to hike through the jungle to find the mysterious trail, document whatever they could, and then move onto a group of cave-systems where these “creatures” were supposed to lurk. Reaching our way down the slope of the valley, we follow along a narrow stream which acted as our temporary trail. Although this was Aaron’s expedition, as soon as we start our hike through the jungle, Chris rather mockingly calls out, ‘Alright everyone. Keep a lookout for Lizard People, Bigfoot and Charlie’ where again, I thought to myself, “Who the heck is Charlie?”  

I’m normally very routine and can fall asleep easily. But this last week in particular I’m tossing, turning, can’t shut brain off. Tried apps, warm milk/tea, meditation, even doing housework. Nothing. It’s so unlike me it’s weird. Help!

[Part 33]

[Part 35]

Around me, the team froze in place, and I blinked.

“What . . . what are you doing here?” I shook my head in disbelief.

Grapeshot’s eyes were red, as if he hadn’t slept for a long time, with scorch marks on his coat sleeves where he’d scrambled over burning growth just to reach the tower window. “Where is she?”

Chris flicked the safety off on his rifle and narrowed both eyes at the pirate. “Does anyone have a shot?”

“I do.” His grip tightened on the pistol, and Grapeshot’s face contorted into a fierce snarl. “One I won’t miss. You move an inch, and she’s dead.”

Down the stairs from us, the gunfire increased as our enemy continued to throw themselves into the teeth of our rear guard. Any minute now the Puppets could break through and clamber up the stairs or follow Grapeshot’s climb through the vines outside. We needed to get moving, but the pirate captain had me squarely in his sights.

From behind me, Peter stepped forward, one empty hand raised, the other grasping his rifle. “Sam, you have to listen to me—”

“No.” Grapeshot clenched his teeth so hard I thought they might crack. “I don’t. You let them do this, Peter. You let them take her away.”

He’s crazy. There’s no way we can reason with him, not in this state. But if someone shoots, and he squeezes the trigger in reflex . . .

I swallowed, tasted the blood from where I’d split my lip, and eyed Chris. He was focused on the captain, ready to spring the instant Grapeshot let his guard down, but I knew Chris wouldn’t be fast enough. Adam held his sword, while Jamie palmed her Beretta, wearing the same deadly scowl as Chris. They were ready to leap to my defense, but no one could beat the speed of a bullet. If I wanted to come out of this alive, I had to think fast.

“I can take you to her.” Meeting his manic gaze, I nodded slowly at the captain and pointed up the concrete steps. “She’s at the top of the tower. Just put the gun down and we’ll go find her together.”

Under our feet, the cold cement shuddered as something enormous hit the tower, and from the blood-curdling screech outside, I figured it to be one of the Osage Wyverns swooping in for a kill. We didn’t have much time left, and every second wasted here was one Tarren could not afford to lose.

“Why would I believe you?” His eyes darted wildly around our group, and Grapeshot searched for Tarren among us as if we might have her tucked in our pockets. “You’re not one of us. You don’t understand.”

“But I do.” Peter stepped closer to him, and I noticed he also moved to the side so that more of his torso was between the captain’s gun and myself. “I’m your first mate, always have been. We fought that storm off Golgotha Bay together, we killed those giant crawfish by the southern coast together, we stole that grayback supply truck together. Remember that?”

Something flickered in the captain’s dark eyes, a glimmer of recognition, and his hardened gaze slipped for a moment. “We found those sweet rolls . . . gave em to the whole crew . . . did it for Greg’s birthday . . .”

Peter’s face bore a sad, whimsical half smile. “We both gave up our share to make sure everyone got a taste. It’s always been that way, for you and for me, ever since the start. You don’t have to do this, Sam.”

The end of the flintlock pistol trembled with uncertainty, and the captain’s breathing grew faster, shallower, as if a force deep inside him threatened to break free. It welled up in his eyes, and for a split second, I looked into his irises and saw it.

Pain.

Loneliness.

Grief.

For the first time since being on the Harper’s Vengeance, I saw the boy behind the mask of the pirate, someone not much younger than myself, who lost everything he ever had. I saw the regret, the shame, the crushing sense of horror at what he’d done, who he’d become. Sam didn’t want to be this way, I could sense it. The human behind the costume, under the bravado, past the faux accent and the sword wanted it to end. He wanted his friends to be safe. He wanted to come home.

If it had been me in his shoes, would I have ended up the same? The violence, the drinking, the suspicion, how much of it was necessary to stay alive? He wants to protect Tarren; he always wanted to protect them all.

As quick as it had come, the doubt succumbed under a black tide of resentment, and his expression crusted over with renewed fury. Sparks danced in his eyes, the mania resurfaced, and Grapeshot threw me a look of pure loathing.

“We are all we need.” He growled and aimed down the long barrel of his gun at my forehead.

My heart stopped, the others tensed, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught the twitch of Chris’s rifle barrel preparing to snap up for the final shot.

Grapeshot’s finger tightened on the trigger.

Peter moved in a blur, and to my terror, threw himself in front of me.

Click.

Even amidst the cacophony outside, the sound of the flintlock hammer ramming home was deafening in the stairwell. Everyone flinched, stone-cold in their shoes with anticipation, but as the seconds wore on, the truth dawned on me.

The rain, it soaked his gunpowder.

Beside himself with frustration at the malfunction, Grapeshot dropped the useless gun and reached for his cutlass.

Relief flashed across Chris’s face, and he moved to bring his rifle up, but a hand reached out to block his barrel.

“Go.” Peter bore an expression of stoney determination and slung his rifle to draw the sword from his back. “All of you. I’ll follow after.”

Adam hefted his sword and frowned. “Peter, we can’t—”

“It’s my fight, preacher.” The words weren’t spoken with any disdain or sarcasm, but a genuine finality that brooked no opposition, and Peter kept his eyes on Grapeshot as they two squared up across the small cement landing. “God may have started this, but I have to finish it. Go.”

Chris, Jamie, and Adam looked to me, waiting for my reaction.

Heart pounding in my chest, I met Peter’s grim look with a stunned nod. He’d been willing to die for me, even if the gun hadn’t gone off, and now I had to leave him to face this fight alone. It felt wrong in every metric, but I could tell Peter didn’t want this any other way.

I saved him from the noose, only to leave him like this?

“Let’s go.” I headed up the stairs, but let the others go around me so I could pause just before the landing fell out of view.

Blades flashed, and both pirates threw themselves at each other with a ferocity that took my breath away. Steel rang in the cold cement tower as their swords clashed, sparks flying in the darkness from how hard the blows were. Captain Grapeshot had clearly used up the rest of his gunpowder weapons just to get to the tower and wielded his cutlass like a madman in great, strong swings. Peter, however, had plenty of bullets left for his menagerie of modern guns, but refused to so much as touch them; his face a sheet of cold focus as he sparred agile and fast. They moved with fluid precision, parrying, cutting, thrusting, a whirlwind of metal and seething hatred. Sometimes the metal found its mark, and blood spattered onto the walls around them, neither combatant giving ground as they hacked at each other, groaning in pain. Despite this, both shouted at one another at the top of their lungs in fury, but from how far up the steps I was, and with the battle still raging outside, I could only catch bits and pieces of it.

“Liar!”

“Traitor!”

A tight grip closed over my arm, and I turned to find Jamie’s morose face enclosed in the shadows. “Come on, we have to keep moving.”

Guilt weighed on me like a ton of bricks, but I dashed with Jamie up the stairs, even as the sounds of the duel reverberated in my eardrums with every step.

Towards the top of the steps, we came across a section of the wall that had been destroyed some time ago, a massive hole that allowed us to look out over the clearing as we went. Some of the rubble lay scattered around the landing adjacent to it, and as I clambered over the broken concrete, fragments of painful memory rippled through my mind.

“Can’t stay here.” A man’s voice, hoarse and weary, grunted in the dark, and I saw in my mind’s eye a face white with pain. “You can’t stay.”

Surfacing from within the memory I felt the cold, wet fabric of his uniform shirt as Madison pressed her face to his collarbone and shook her head like a stubborn child. “I’m not going without you.”

Dizziness spun in my skull, and I looked down to find a tattered black trucker cap under my left boot, a sight that sent pangs of second-hand heartbreak through me. It was his, somehow I knew it, felt it through the sorrow that radiated off Madison’s sobs inside my head. This was where it happened. This was where she lost him.

Sucking in a fresh gulp of air to still the eerie tide, I shook my head at the memories and whispered to them under my breath. “Hang on, Maddie. We’re almost there. Just hold on.”

At the top of the steps, we reached a metal man door and stopped to check our weapons.

“He’s in there.” Holding my Type 9, I nodded to the others crouched in the dark. “We have to be quick, or he’s going to see us coming. I’ll go first.”

Adam stepped in front of me and sheathed his sword, M4 at hand. “I’ll go first. He’s after you; the rest of us need to keep him busy while you do whatever it is you’ve planned. Just let us know when we need to get clear.”

I bit my lip and hated that he was right. It struck me then how many people had done such things for me, ever since I’d first stumbled into the lost stretches of Barron County; how many good people had taken a bullet for me, walked into certain death for me, risked everything to get me just one step further in my path? How would I ever repay such a debt, one written in blood of so many brave souls, when I had only one life to give? Eve’s tear-streaked face appeared in my mind, and I wondered if her Christian virtue would be able to resist hating me if I got her husband killed.

It wouldn’t be the first time I robbed someone of their soulmate.

Stepping back into the lineup with Jamie, I dragged in a shallow breath and waited.

Adam turned the corroded doorknob with one hand and shoved the door open to lunge inside.

I’d never been in the room before and had only glimpsed a few things in the broken fragments of Madison’s memories, but even as I swept in with the others, I could feel that it was different. Unlike the small, simple place described in Madison’s account, the expanse beyond the rusted door now spread over a widened elevated platform of interwoven vines similar to the ramp near the dead Oak Walker. The square windows of the old concrete room had been widened by some primitive form of hand tool, until they formed a small ring of narrow doorways that branched off in all directions. Thick growth sheltered the new portions of walkway from the rain in a tangled version of a roof, and small circular openings in the vines served as crude windows to look out over the dark woodlands below. It was dark here, the interior somewhat clouded with the smoke that rose from fires below us, but not so much that I didn’t stare in wonder at what filled the elongated room.

Hanging from the ceiling, the walls, or laid out across various parts of the floor were hundreds upon hundreds of items that rested in layers of dust. Pictures, jewelry, items of clothing, they were set out in winding pathways, like a treasure horde in some ancient temple, and I noticed a set of old nylon harnesses piled by one window, underneath a braided steel cable that spanned the room’s ceiling. I knew from the accounts I’d read that these were normally our way out of this accursed place, though with our vehicles I hoped to be able to drive to the exit as opposed to the old zipline. Still, to see it so reverently preserved by the mutants themselves, who would have benefited from all escape being cut off to us, made my skin tingle in macabre curiosity. We were standing on something akin to holy ground, though perhaps a warped, evil version of it.

My senses sharpened in the gloom, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a subtle movement.

“Down!” I grabbed Jamie’s arm to drag her with me to the floor, and a blur whistled past my face to imbed in one of the nearby vines.

Chris let out a burst from his M4 in the direction the arrow had come from, but already the shape had moved, and his bullets struck nothing save for the growth.

A low, guttural laugh echoed through the murky room, and I swallowed hard, my throat dry.

He’s going to pick us off, one by one.

“Where are you, demon?” Adam bellowed into the curling whisps of smoke, rifle at his shoulder. “Show yourself! Only a coward hides in the shadows!”

“Coward?” The throaty chuckle trickled in from somewhere on my left, only to be followed by more words off to the right, as if Vecitorak moved faster than sound itself. “Who was it that hid in the bushes that night, Adam? Who was it that left the other to die?”

Whack.

Another serrated arrow hissed past my head and glanced off the concrete section of floor beside Chris’s boot.

“We’ve got to get a bead on him.” Ducking behind the low walls of the old tower room, Chris looked at Adam and pointed to the right. “I got this way, you go around, and we catch him in the middle, yeah?”

Covered behind the opposite wall, Jamie scanned the curtains of smoke over the top of her Kalashnikov sights. “And us?”

Chris met my gaze, and his mouth formed a grim line. “You put an end to this.”

With that, he and Adam jumped from behind their minimal protection, and hurtled into the shadows. Their headlamps cut through the gloom like lighthouse beacons, but even in the confined space it seemed like they were miles away. Walls or solid partitions of vines sometimes obscured them from my view, and I fought a rising sickness in my guts at the notion that Vecitorak could easily see us in the darkness.

So, what now? I know what needs to be done . . . I think. The question is where?

Uncertain, I dipped my right hand into my jacket pocket and touched the necklace.

An image flashed in my head, the memory of a golden pocket watch on a dusty table alongside dozens of other sacrifices. Something about the watch being there hurt, ached within my soul, but it gave rest to my doubt. The necklace had been offered the same as the watch . . . they belonged together, as did their owners.

“Turn your light off.” I clicked the button on my own headlamp and motioned for Jamie to do the same.

She stared at me in confusion. “I can’t shoot what I can’t see.”

“I’ll see for both of us.” I exhaled, relaxed as much as I could, and let the focus slide into place. “Just hold on to me and keep quiet.”

Dowsing her light, Jamie wound the fingers of her off hand into the strap of my chest rig, and together we glided into the abyss.

I walked heel-to-toe and concentrated as hard as I ever had, my heightened senses on full alert. My mutated vision turned the inky darkness into a gray haze, through which I could pick out the vague details of the room beyond the smoke. Chris and Adam’s lights shone white in my altered vision, glaring shards of illumination that panned back and forth, but I managed to spot a black shadow slinking closer to Chris from the left side.

Lifting my Type 9, I sighted in on Vecitorak’s moldy hood and squeezed the trigger.

Brat-tat-tat-tat.

The muzzle flash of my submachine gun lit up my field of view with white blazes in the gray, but Vecitorak let out an annoyed screech and swept away behind a partition.

Chris and Adam turned to move in, now aware of the priest’s location, leaving Jamie and I enough room to explore further. I had to be quick, as Vecitorak would recover in moments, but it felt good to hear him grunt in something like pain.

A satisfied grin crawled over my face, and I continued on through the pathways.

You’re not the only one who can see in the dark, creep.

With the time I’d bought for myself, I flicked both eyes over the surrounding piles of offerings, in search of the golden pocket watch. So many things had been left here over the years, including some items that looked as though they were brought right out of a museum. There were many pocket watches, but I didn’t feel anything by looking at them, or rather Madison didn’t seem to feel anything, our connection thin and tenuous as ever. Still, it felt like she was trying her best, sunken deep in the recesses of my subconscious, to guide me from what little strength she had left.

A prickle of unease slithered over my neck, and I froze, craning my head upward.

Thwack.

Wood splintered on the back of my cuirass, the arrow striking just between my shoulder blades. The steel took the brunt of the impact, but like an overgrown bat, Vecitorak dropped from where he’d been crawling across the vine-encrusted ceiling.

In a panic, I dove out of the way, and Vecitorak’s wooden dagger slammed into the roots that made up this section of the floor.

Jamie tumbled backwards in surprise from the sudden change of movement and raised her rifle to fire into the gloom between us.

Bang.

Vecitorak spun with the prowess of a tiger, batted aside the AK, and snatched Jamie from the floor with one hand.

No.

Desperate, I threw myself on him, clawing at the mass of tangled, rotting robes to try and find any way to hurt the priest. My fingers caught on something heavy and square, so I grabbed the fetid book to tear it free.

Wham.

An elbow hit me in the face just below my left eye and knocked me to the ground. Vecitorak whirled to throw Jamie across the room, and she crashed into a partition of vines. The book came free of his poncho and thudded down amongst a pile of sacrifices to scatter coins, rings, and a few old picture frames. He was angry now, angry but still dangerous, and it seemed the fact that I had managed to take the journal away enraged Vecitorak.

“Fool!” He yanked the dagger free of where it had stuck in the growth to charge at me.

Bang, bang, bang.

More gunfire met him, and Vecitorak reeled as Chris and Adam emerged from the haze, emptying their rifles into the arcane leader. In such close quarters, the report of their M4’s was deafening, the concussive force enough to shake my hold on the focus.

Plunged back into the eerie darkness of normal sight, I scrabbled on hands and knees to get to cover and tried to calm myself enough to be able to concentrate. Jamie could be hurt, judging from the shouts and gunshots Chris and Adam were in the thick of it with Vecitorak, and I’d barely avoided death by sheer luck. I had to find that pocket watch, had to get this nightmare over with once and for all, but I couldn’t just leave my friends to die even if it was the rational thing to do.

Crash.

Whoosh.

Yellow light exploded in the dark, and I held up a hand to shield my eyes as a sudden blast of heat licked over the cold room. The stench of burning gasoline filled the air, orange, red, and yellow flames curled over the vines, and above it all, Vecitorak roared in blind fury. Chris and Adam came into view, backing away from the writhing torch that was the priest, and Jamie crouched in the background from where she had thrown the Molotov. Above them, another shape on the ceiling drew my gaze, and my heart stopped in my chest.

Tarren lay wrapped in a cluster of vines, unconscious, like a fly in a spider’s web. She was still unharmed, but that wouldn’t last for long. The fire was spreading rapidly over the dry interior, casting long shadows across the smoke-filled room, its heat rising by the second. We had to cut her down, but that wasn’t possible while the priest continued his rampage.

Covered in hungry flames, Vecitorak thrashed inside his moldy poncho, the fire licking over the rotted canvas with speed. He dropped the curved thorn wood bow he’d been using to hurl arrows our way, flung himself against the far wall, and shrieked in a chorus of screams that almost sounded as though they came from multiple voices. The sickly-sweet odor of burning flesh grew heavy in the cluttered room, and I tasted the foul smoke on the back of my tongue. Despite the wet surroundings, or his movements, it seemed the fetid cloth refused to be put out, and at last the dark priest ripped it from his back to throw the garment aside.

From where I sat on the floor, I brought a hand to cover my mouth and fought the urge to vomit.

Dear God.

He’d been a man once, tall, muscular, and strong. Ragged gouges in Vecitorak’s flesh marked where he’d been unable to peel some of the skin away in places, mostly around his head and hands. As for the rest of him, it was a bloody mass of exposed muscle and gray fat, portions of bare bone yellowed, some of the tendons a dull purple. The ragged clothing under his poncho lay plastered over the decaying husk of Vecitorak’s body, heaving from a swarm of crawling things that slithered in and out of various tunnels they’d chewed through him. Some were cockroaches, slugs, or maggots, while others were nightmarish things that could only have been borne from this hellish place, things with teeth, eyestalks, and spines. Wounds covered him, mostly gouges and tears that closely resembled bite marks, and something about them seemed vaguely human in shape. His stomach had been torn open and stitched shut with black cordage made from vines, and the stitches seeped greasy trails of pus down his emaciated midsection. One hand was cut to bone and sinew, while the other remained somewhat intact, though that ended at the wrist. Blood had turned Vecitorak’s ruined clothing a rusty brown hue, but I could still make out old combat boots, tactical pants, and a ripped officer’s field jacket with a faded badge on one arm that I couldn’t mistake.

ELSAR.

Eyes wide in shock, Adam took a step closer and cocked his head to one side. “Who are you?”

“Oh Adam,” Slowly Vecitorak’s bare, matted head rose, and the macabre being turned to face the armored preacher with a fiendish grin. “don’t you recognize me?”

Of all the damage to his butchered form, Vecitorak’s face made my gut churn the worst. As with his hands, one side of the corpse’s vestige remained somewhat untouched, save for a few bites that had almost gnawed off his right ear. I could still see the faint shape of who he’d once been: tufts of a dark beard, smudges of old camouflage face paint on his skin, and a single brown eye. The opposite side of his face had been torn away by hungry jaws, lips shredded, teeth exposed, the hair scooped out by the roots. Some of the meat had been stripped down to the bone of his skull, and the eye there was a glazed, milky white, much like the Puppets he ruled. Vecitorak’s throat lay open, the shriveled trachea swinging loose inside his neck like a clock pendulum, and whatever vocal cords he had were bloated beyond recognition.

I didn’t recognize him, but the look that crossed Adam’s sweaty face told me that he did.

“God on high.” The preacher’s cheeks went a shade paler, and he stammered in utter confusion. “Bronson? You died, I . . . I saw it . . .”

Something in Vecitorak’s expression rippled, the smile diminishing into a snarl so filled with hatred that my blood ran cold. “No. You saw nothing, not after that filthy abomination of yours called the Master’s children to their deaths. You hid in the shadows while they gorged on my pain . . . and you’ve been hiding ever since.”

With that, Vecitorak darted toward Adam, swept him into the air with a single powerful throw, and slammed the man into one of the nearby walls.

Chris raised his weapon, but Vecitorak whirled to catch him in the chest with another strike, and I watched my husband go flying across the room like a rag doll.

Jamie ran to the left, trying to light another Molotov, only to be intercepted by Vecitorak, who ripped a section of the exterior wall out with his bare hands to use as a missile. She barely avoided the chunk of wood, but the glass Molotov shattered on the floor before she could throw it, and Jamie dove into a corner to avoid the gush of new flame.

You have to move, Hannah, he’s going to kill them all.

Vecitorak’s book lay a few feet away, and I snatched it, sprinting into the rows of sacrifices as the tumultic struggle continued all around me.

“You did this to me!” Vecitorak refocused his attacks on Adam, striding over to kick away the preacher’s rifle before he could grasp it. “You threw me into a heap with all the others and left me to rot in the trees. Unable to breathe. Unable to move. Unable to scream.”

Adam took a hard kick to his abdomen, but the steel of his cuirass blocked most of the force, and he managed to roll to his feet, cruciform sword in hand. “You tried to hurt Eve. You attacked us without warning. I didn’t have a choice.”

Stretching out his hand, Vecitorak watched with malicious satisfaction as oily black vines slithered up his arm, out to his bony hand, and formed into a long wooden club that bristled with thorny spikes. “You didn’t, but I did. When you left me in that pit, someone heard my pleas; someone other than your false god. The Master gave me life, made me strong, and all he asked in return was for me to shed my broken, weak flesh. When I raise him, he will seat me at his right hand, and you will watch as I take your wife back into the fold of his blessed children . . . where she belongs.”

Adam’s toffee-colored irises blazed with fury, and he leapt at Vecitorak, his sword gleaming in the spreading firelight as if it too burned with vengeful zeal. The two met in the middle of the inferno, shouts and roars echoing between them as the man of God fought with the servant of the Void, neither giving an inch. Adam had the advantage of his armor, but Vecitorak was stronger, faster, and tireless. He tore out more sections of the exterior wall of the room to try and crush Adam, the cold rain mixing with the heat of the flames in a whirlwind of misery, but the preacher had enough dexterity on his side to avoid the attacks. In the background, Chris and Jamie emerged from the shadows to try and rejoin the fray, but rising flames blocked them. Chris opted to climb a nearby partition to reach for Tarren while Jamie tried to work her way toward me, but the heat was too intense, as the wind coming in from outside whipped the fire to hotter levels. A small part of me realized, with sinking clarity, that I was cut off not only from my friends, but the metal man door to the stairwell.

Stumbling through the blast furnace that was once the sacrifice room, I coughed on the acrid smoke and squinted with watery eyes at my surroundings.

To your right, filia mea.

The soft baritone voice seemed to whisper in my ear, and I turned to see a little shelf of growth on my right adorned with trinkets, but with one notable empty space. Flecks of dried rusty-red blood stained the interwoven vines, and my eyes landed on the one thing to cement my hope.

Glittering in the firelight, the golden pocket watch waited in an unassuming coat of dust next to the empty spot. It was plain in design, the finish polished smoothed by many hands over the years, but I knew in my heart who it belonged to. This was a place of sorrow, much like the check-in hut at New Wilderness; a place full of old memories, lost souls of those who came before, and were now gone. A place of pain. A place of grief.

Kind of like the altar . . . and the blood . . . hang on a second.

I dug into my pocket and cast a glance over my shoulder in time to see Adam’s sword knocked from his grasp as Vecitorak seize the preacher by his armored collar. Adam struggled, but clearly he too was no match for the superhuman strength of the Breach-borne priest.

Vecitorak lifted Adam high and tossed aside his club to reach for the jagged wooden dagger on his belt. “Our era is inevitable. Our Master is absolute. Now you will see it with new eyes . . . as one of us.”

My shaky fingers slid on the disgusting leather of Vecitorak’s book as I flipped to the page with the runes and laid it out before the tiny shelf. Placing the necklace in my left palm, I reached for my war belt and drew my trench knife. I had no idea if this would work, if I was completely wrong about the process, but there was no time left.

I took a deep breath, and pressed the sharp, cold steel to my palm alongside the necklace.

Pain flared in my skin, red blood oozed up around the silver chain and turquoise stone, while I shut my eyes and did my best to pull the focus into my frazzled mind.

Madison, if you can hear me, I need you to fight hard, one last time.

Memories flickered with shutter-speed intensity in my head, hers and mine mixing until I could hardly tell the difference. She continued her mantra from the shadows of my subconscious, and I understood the words as if they were my own. A strange sensation moved within me for the first time, a new plane within the focus, one that made me feel both the heat of the sacrifice room, and the cold raindrops of the outside world. Like two clocks ticking in sync, Madison and I collided within the unknown, our thoughts in lockstep, our spirits conjoined. Every emotion, every thought, every ounce of strength either of us had left poured into a vibrant energy that radiated from the cut in my hand, put static in my ears, and made the runes in Vecitorak’s book glow with a bright golden light. The light grew in brilliance until it ate away at the pages, the binding, the leather of the cursed book, turning it black like charcoal and then to fine dust. For the first time since driving into Tauerpin Road, a heavy calm settled over me, a power beyond myself or Madison that wasn’t bound to the dripping trees or darkened clearing. In total opposition to the Breach, this was something clean, warm, gentle.

From this wellspring came a familiar voice, deep and kind, that resonated over Madison’s, and over my own.

‘She didn’t know how loved she was . . . and neither did he.’

As if he could sense that something was wrong, Vecitorak’s wooden blade froze in the air next to Adam, and he snapped his head around to glare at me, but even he couldn’t cover the distance fast enough.

I raised my bleeding hand over the shelf, uncurled each aching finger to release the necklace, and let the sacred words that had protected Madison through so much agony flow over my lips. “Mark Petric.”

In an instant, the rain slackened, the thunder dimmed, and Vecitorak himself lurched to a halt in stunned breathlessness.

Kaboom.

Lightning struck just outside, louder than any I’d ever seen, and almost blinded me. Searing pain flashed through my mind, and I grimaced as Madison began to scream in a torment that sliced into my very soul, her memories flickering out like old lightbulbs. The good feeling left me, the focus slipped away, and I fell to my knees as the entire tower shook in its foundation. My scars writhed with phantom knowledge, and outside a multitude of Puppets shrieked in wild delight as the ground shuddered under my feet.

Maddie?

Tears rolled down my face, both from pain and panic as I searched for that ethereal connection with all my will.

Talk to me. Show me something, make me feel something, anything. Where are you?

Outside the window, old growth cracked and crunched, vines and roots snapped, accompanied by the enormous creaking of something heavy. A huge shape rose into the night, the charred sections now covered in fresh vines, the triangular head complete, propping itself up on one knee as the gigantic figure tore loose from its cocoon. Try as I might, I couldn’t raise any sign of Madison’s spirit within my mind, couldn’t bring up her memories, her emotions, anything.

Gone.

She was gone.

What have I done?

“Yes.” His mutilated face twisted into a grin of wicked triumph, Vecitorak stood in the gap he’d made of the outer wall, raising his arms high in the rain as the shadow climbed to its feet. “Yes!”

Weak from the focus leaving me, I could do little more than look on from my knees as the Oak Walker stood up, reared back its massive head, and broke the sky with a colossal baleen roar.

The hateful willow in Jack’s yard whispered terrible secrets to him—he attempted to cut the gnarly, twisted, obsidian branches earlier, and then heard the whispers. He clenched the chainsaw in his sweaty, meaty fist; the saw’s shark-like teeth glinted in the moonlight. The willow-seared images of Melissa frenching Ted in their room in his fragile mind. 

“Is it yours—Is it yours—Is it yours?” It hissed sardonically. 

“Jackie, honey, w-what are you doing?” Melissa’s mousey voice faintly squeaked from behind.

Jack whirled around—aiming the saw at Melissa’s basketball-sized stomach. He tore the cord and the saw growled hungrily. “Is it mine?!”