Andrew Layden's Blog

Once I drifted,
Untethered, untouched
But for the lapping sea
Below. I washed
In waves
Past shores of soft silt
While the stars whirled
In distant circuits
Overhead. Bound for beauties
Always beyond

The horizon, I sated myself
On the freedom
Of the current, content
In the sting of salt
And the briny embrace. At the will
Of wind and water,
I strayed.

I strained
For years, fed on half-
Formed hopes
And fever dreams
Of fantasy isles
And gilded treasures, I trusted
In the promise of the unknown
Whose unreason I regarded,
For its illogic

Was liberation. But liberty
Is not in losing
Oneself. Nor is it in wandering
As you wish. It is your arms
That anchor me, your touch
That breaks the tempest, your hands
That harbor a home
And nurture

Still sanctuary. I yearn now
For your yoke
Upon my shoulders, and long
To live in the choke
Of your chains. Bind me
In your caress, and build a cage
Of your care, for that

Is freedom: to brave
The stormy surf without fear
Of fate, to dock in days
Of want or need. This thread
That ties us
Will ever tug us together.

The world is loud
With life and brims till breaking,
Melodies spilling
A symphonic soup
Into the cracks

In the floor. Silver noise
Slips underground
Where the sound gathers
And grows, and I
Become deaf, dumb,

And dazed with a beatless
Blur beneath. Not a sound
Speaks inside. Ever cold,
Ever quiet. The music was lost
To me long ago.

Then you came
In soft-spoken sonatas,
Gaze aglimmer
With the chorus
As a crown

Upon your dusky head.
And the world melted
Into watercolor haze,
Muted to hushed
Harmonies. Now

The music lives
Within. Crescendos crash
Beneath my skin
Where you planted
The first seeds of song.
May it play ever long.

All things have a soul, from the stray rats that scamper through the streets to the swaying lanterns stifled by smog. Even the city itself is well and truly alive. Yet, to a foreigner like Edward, such wisdom was a mystery, and not one he had any interest in until it was forced upon him.

Edward was relocated to Japan to serve as lead financial consultant in his company’s newly opened Japanese branch. By all accounts, he was a terrible fit for the position. Not only did he lack knowledge of the country and its language, but he was also missing the ambition and experience necessary to succeed. The only reason Edward got the promotion was because no one else was willing to relocate, and Edward had his own reasons to leave it all behind.

Nonetheless, Edward hoped to make the most of his move. It was a fresh start. He had planned to visit the historic temples of Kyoto, the snowy slopes of Hokkaido, and the hot springs of Hakone. But he never made it out of the city. He never had a chance to. Every day flowed seamlessly into the next. Wake, work, sleep, repeat.

In the streets, Edward floated along the stream of salarymen and smoke-filled izakayas, where each face and neon light blurred together into a single, endless night. After a week in the city, the thought never even occurred to him to step out of line or see something new. Instead he retraced his steps, day after day, and memorized every crack in the street. He knew that path more intimately than he knew his own face. So it came as a surprise one night when a sixth building had sprung up on a street that had only ever had five.

7-Eleven had always stood on the corner lot with a dingy pharmacy beside it, and there was never any building in between. But on that day, a misplaced building of plaster and glass sat sandwiched between them. Its sudden appearance baffled Edward so much that he stopped and stood gawking as the crowd rushed around him.

The windows of the building had that cloudy look you’d expect from decades of sticky Japanese summers. And the plaster was stained black in spots where a generation of car exhaust and street dust had left its mark. But that was all impossible. The property hadn’t even existed until that night.

Edward approached the building. By all laws of logic, it had no right to be there. Yet, as he looked around at the passersby, they merely shuffled along their paths into the night-soaked city. No one else noticed or cared.

Unlike the other shops on the street, this building had no signs or markings. Its only adornment was a battered, gray door. The door was ajar, and a stale odor emanated from within. Edward stepped closer and made out the hushed sound of a woman’s tears. Through the glossy windows, he spied a crouched silhouette hidden beneath a curtain of black hair.

People flowed past, head down. However, Edward stood and watched the figure’s shoulders shake to the rhythm of her muted sobs. It was an intimate moment and not one he should have been watching so intently. But he was invested now, and some part of him felt that he shouldn’t look away. In an expansive city, where thousands upon thousands live, shouldn’t there be at least one person to witness a woman’s sorrow?

Noticing Edward’s concern, the woman stifled her sobs and turned to meet his curious gaze. At once, he recoiled in shock. The woman’s face was smooth and featureless like a pale mannequin fitted with a dense black wig whose frayed strands floated as though suspended in water. Retreating from the building, Edward stole a final glance at the window. A single doll-like hand was pressed against the glass, and a shallow whimper echoed outward.

Disturbed by what he had seen, Edward quickly entered the 7-Eleven to calm his nerves with a drink. He passed down the aisle of liquor, muttering to himself all the while. “Too much work,” he said. “That’s it. All work. No sleep.” He rubbed his eyes and wiped the sweat from his bow. A twitch started in his hands. “Something strong,” he decided.

Crouching beside the whiskeys, Edward felt a wave of cold wash over his neck, and goosebumps prickled along his arm. He turned with a growing sense of dread in his gut. But it was just the cold of the fridge. Someone had left the door open.

Edward walked to the fridge. Overhead, the fluorescent lights flickered. As he set his hand against the fridge door, the lights cut out, and another chill sank into his skin. It was the bite of frost, the ice pick to the jugular. It was the drowning river, the burying avalanche. And from the darkness, a face like winter breathed upon his neck.

The lights kicked on, the cold withdrew, and Edward ran for the door.

However, the store clerk sprinted after him, shouting in Japanese. Edward soon realized he had taken a bottle of whiskey without paying. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to … I just …” Taking out his wallet, he glanced back at the shop. In the corner by the fridge, he saw a woman in white standing with hair over her eyes. 

Gripped with panic, Edward took out as much cash as he could and shoved it into the clerk’s hands. It must have been double what he needed to pay. But his mind was a disjointed patchwork seized by terror. Even the simplest arithmetic could not survive among the cascade of fretful thoughts that plagued him. Edward gave the money to the clerk and ran off again before the man could say anything.

He looked over his shoulder every few steps. As far as he could tell, no one was following him. However, he could not shake the sensation that he was being watched. He looked around at the countless shaded windows and at the numerous alleys hidden in gloom. If someone was watching him, he had no way of knowing where they were.

Shaking off the unnerving sensation, Edward hurried to his apartment. Perched on the fifth floor, he had a mesmerizing view of the fluorescent streets below. On many sleepless nights, he stood on his balcony to bathe in the flashing lights. But that night the lights seemed pale and weak while the darkness gathered in writhing forms.

Edward’s eyes fixed on the shadows, searching for what might lurk within. As he climbed the stairs to the fifth floor, he gazed at the ground below. Nothing and no one could surprise him if he kept his watch trained on the entrance.

Yet, when Edward finally landed on the fifth floor, he saw precisely what he did not wish to see. Standing at the opposite end of the corridor was the pale, faceless woman. Almost bashful, she stood in the shaded corner of the hall with her hands clasped in front of her. Just above her, the lights flickered intermittently. The strobing light cast the occasional glimmer on her eyeless stare.

Edward proceeded with caution, and he dared not blink. He would give her no opportunity to frighten him more than she already had. Whatever it is the spirit desired, Edward wanted no involvement. He opened his mouth to tell her this, but his voice died in his throat.

With a cautious step, Edward proceeded towards his apartment halfway down the corridor. The lights overhead failed, and for a brief moment, the woman disappeared. Yet, as the lights sputtered back on, she returned. This time her head was cocked to the side with threatening intrigue. Leaning forward through the throbbing shadow, a slit opened across her face. And as her head lurched back, the slit opened to reveal a gaping throat.

“寂しい…” The words hissed out of her like steam through a burst pipe. Uncertain what she said, Edward ignored her and shuffled through the hall. His room was only a few doors down. If he could just make it there, he’d be safe. Yet, when Edward next stole a look at the spirit, it stretched out a crooked, white hand. Another string of incomprehensible words issued from the depths of the spirit’s throat. Her cold, decayed voice sent Edward into a blind panic.

Chest walloping, Edward sprinted to his door. His fingers fumbled for the keys in his pocket while the woman stood watching. Slowly, her hand fell to her side. Yet, to Edward’s shock, she did not chase him. She merely stood in the pulsing shadows, watching. It was almost worse than the alternative.

Stealing one last glance at the spirit, Edward slipped inside his apartment and flicked on the lights. He retreated from the door, watching, waiting, listening. And from the hall came the slow patter of feet.

Edward stared at the gap under his door. The light outside still shuddered as the fluorescents flashed on and off. The steps seemed to come in rhythm with the faulty lighting. Every time the darkness returned, Edward heard the tap of feet against the stone floor. The closer the steps, the more the lights fluttered. In time, they strobed so violently that the light blared beneath the gap in the floor, blinding.

With an electric crunch, the bulbs shattered, and the lights died. Chest still heaving, Edward stood waiting. For a few moments, there was silence. And then came a slow, steady knock.

“話したい…聞いて…” the spirit called from outside.

“I… I don’t know what you’re saying,” Edward said. A long, low sigh issued from behind the door. The sound slid like steel through his ears, severing the last of his nerves. Like a frightened child, Edward felt impossibly small and fled to his bed for safety. If he was going to be killed by a ghost, he might as well do it in the comfort of his own bed.

Yet, Edward soon heard the woman’s feet shuffle and the fading sound of her senseless muttering. He was alone in the cramped confines of his apartment. Somehow that was more terrifying than having the monster outside his door. In her absence, the dull hum of his appliances disturbed an otherwise silent backdrop.

Without changing his clothes or even moving, Edward sat on the edge of his bed. He didn’t so much as stir until dawn pried through his curtains. And when it had, he glanced with shock at his watch.

Soon, it would be time to go to work, but the thought of leaving his room terrified him. He pulled out his phone and opened up his messages. Buried under a sequence of work-related texts, Edward found his daughter’s name. He opened the message thread and started to write a heartfelt apology. He was sorry for what he had done and for what he was. He wished he were a better father; the kind that lived up to her once lofty opinion of him; the kind that put family first instead of his own selfish desires. He loved her. He always had and always would, no matter what happened.

But Edward hesitated as his finger hovered over the send button, the weight of his shame greater even than his regret. Some wrongs too deep, too grievous, could not be remedied. He read Laura’s last message:

“Please don’t text me again. I will call mom.”

With a heavy sigh, Edward set down his phone and headed to the shower. The water kicked on with a rusty screech. Due to the faulty heater, the shower wavered between scorching hot and bitter cold. Steam filled the cramped bathroom, fogging the mirror over. For a moment, Edward felt a sort of comfort in that. He could not see a ghost lurking there if he could not see anything at all.

Yet, the absence of sights and sounds made Edward’s mind concoct horrors just out of view. Half-heard creaks created specters behind the door. Wisps of wind blew into howling ghouls. Every shifting shadow sent shivers down his spine. But the ghostly woman never showed herself.

Steeling himself, Edward shut off the water and exited the bathroom, armed only in a towel. He was still alone. 

Edward collected his phone and headed out the door. As he passed over the threshold, his phone made a cheery ping. Glancing down, he noticed a message from his daughter.

“Why does that sound like a goodbye?”

It appeared Edward had sent his message after all, though he was certain he hadn’t. And now that he looked at his daughter’s text, he had no idea what to say to her. He hadn’t meant to sound so final, but perhaps she was right. Perhaps it was a goodbye, and if so, maybe it was better to leave it at that. For the time being, he said nothing.

Edward shuffled to work. On his way there, he saw the same signless building standing impossibly on a street where it did not belong. Yet, under the sun’s glare, the building showed no signs of malice or mischief. And the shadows stayed confined to the empty interior. Unmarked and unremarkable, the building was merely that.

Work passed without incident. Edward had a noticeably jumpy mood and a manic gaze from his sleepless night. But, by all other measures, the day was entirely normal.

Night, on the other hand, brought a sudden, spiteful rain; the kind that beat against the windows and blistered the skin with its cold and bitterness. Edward kept an umbrella at his office for just such an occasion.

Stepping out into the downpour, Edward turned his face to the sky. The matted rain clouds had vanished into the night, swallowed whole by its vacuous embrace. Neither star nor moon penetrated the black sheet above. Yet, the rain poured down all the same, and Edward fell into thought.

How long had the unseen shaped his path? How long had the void hung over him? And now that he felt its grip, how could he ever be free of it?

A sudden bump of the shoulder jostled Edward from thought. He turned to see a slender woman rush ahead. Her lengthy black mane billowed behind her with a scent like fresh-pressed asphalt and discarded cigarettes. Just as her featureless expression passed under the light, she opened her umbrella and melted into the crowd. An icy jitter entered Edward’s veins, and he knew yesterday’s nightmare had yet to release him.

Edward hastened along his route home. All the while, his eyes darted from umbrella to umbrella. Any one of them could hide his faceless tormenter. However, it was no easy task to find her. The woman’s umbrella was black as was everyone else’s, including his own. So instead, Edward sought out the woman’s long, dark hair and loose white gown. Yet, that too proved a fruitless strategy. Everywhere he looked Edward saw the same somber style hidden beneath a downturned umbrella.

The city had always crushed the individual and hammered him into the crowd. All men in the city were one and no one, all women a copy of the next. But this was more than a monoculture or a favored fashion. Wherever Edward looked, the women were truly identical. 

And as the realization dawned on him, the crowd stopped in its tracks. Their umbrellas tilted up to the falling rain, which pattered on and on, marking time in a senseless world. And their eyeless gazes narrowed upon him with unnerving unity. The spirit was not buried among the crowd. She was the crowd itself.

All motion froze, and color drained from the world. Streetlights blinked gray, and rain fell as a dense ink that trailed down the crowd’s bloodless cheeks. When Edward finally found the courage to sprint home, the sightless throng parted to watch him go. Their unblinking watch gored him through the back.

Amid the monochrome legion, a single individual pushed far ahead. Edward watched her path through the people. As he began to catch up to the figure, Edward saw her slip into the depthless interior of that same impossible building. Some formless compulsion tugged him towards the gaping doorway. It gnawed at him with a sensation so visceral, so rooted in his being, that it demanded to be felt. Even so, he would not give in to it.

Sprinting on towards his apartment, Edward wound his way up the stairs to the fifth floor. With each step he climbed, the building shifted. Scrawled characters crept across the walls like black ivy. Their inky stems reached ever closer to the staircase until they surrounded Edward in an unreadable jumble.

As Edward reached the fifth floor, the dense script spoke in a dizzying tongue. The voice was that of a woman and also a man. It was her voice and his and all others as well. The sound burrowed into his eardrums, rebounding and resounding, building on itself until his vision went black. Even after he slipped inside his apartment, the clamor crashed through his body. It swung from ear to ear, ebbing slowly to a low drone.

Once the noise finally died, Edward found himself curled in a ball on the floor. Stars danced across his eyes, and his chest heaved to an erratic rhythm. But he was safe now. Nothing could harm him in his room.

Behind him the floorboards creaked, and a hushed voice spoke. “大丈夫?” it said, its tone lifting up into a question.

The hairs on Edward’s neck prickled as the presence shifted nearer. He bolted out of his apartment, back into the bustle of the street… except this time there was no bustle. No chatter of pedestrians, no murmur of cars, no rumble of trains. Even the rain had given way to a sudden, stifling silence.

However, it was not merely the noise that had vanished. The roads were barren, and the buildings plain. All life had seeped out of the neighborhood. The city was dead, and Edward was alone.

Edward hurried along the sidewalk, glancing all around. Somewhere far off echoed the drum of footsteps. First, it was ahead of him, and then a moment later behind. Out of the corner of his eye, Edward spied a flash of white fabric. And as he scanned the neon-lit streets, he caught sight of the woman once more. She looked back as if to ensure he was behind her. 

Although Edward could not understand her words or read her face, he knew she wanted him to follow. And by now it was clear that she would not leave him alone until he did.

So against his best instincts, which trembled in his veins like a windswept fire, Edward followed along. He could already guess where the spirit wanted him to go. Trailing behind her in that desolate night, Edward found himself before the building that should not have been.

The woman dipped inside, and though cloaked in shadow, her pale, beckoning fingers were still visible.

He hesitated as a foul rot exuded from the interior. Its piercing bite penetrated his nostrils and delved into his lungs. Along with it came a keen chill that clawed its way into his skin. It rooted him in place and soaked into his flesh. Edward could not enter that space. Every primal instinct screamed that he would not leave as he had entered.

“どうしたの？” the spirit asked. Its words were gentle, sweet even. Despite his terror, Edward almost felt sorry for her and for what he was going to do.

“I can’t,” he said. As soon as his hand touched the rusted doorknob, the woman bolted after him. If she had eyes, they might have narrowed. If she had lips, they might have scowled. But Edward tried not to think of it or her or the building again. He shut the door in her face and sprinted into the street.

In that instant, the world shifted. Life returned to the city with a shout and a screech. A car barreled through Edward, dashing him upon the asphalt with a brutal thud.

A sharp pain shot through Edward’s back and radiated down his bloodied limbs. Vision still hazy, he stared upward at the depthless night. Salarymen passed by without a care in the world, and the car that had struck him simply drove away.

Edward attempted to peel himself off the pavement, but something in him was broken. So he lay there motionless. His voice was weak in his throat, but he managed to speak. “Help me. Help me. I’m hurt,” he said. But no one stopped. No one looked at him. “Can’t you understand me? Can’t you hear me?” 

The streetlights pulsed and flickered, indifferent to his suffering. And as Edward watched the people pass by, a familiar figure stood over him. Her pale face opened along a wide slit, and a toothless smile dominated her cheeks.

“Please…” Edward said. “I don’t know what you want.”

The spirit grabbed him by the ankle and dragged him away as though he weighed nothing at all. Edward called out for help as the gaping maw of that impossible building came ever closer. However, not a single soul looked down at him. They carried on among the swirls of road dust and flaring fluorescents, each of them trapped within the confines of their own lives.

Fear had taken Edward as easily as the spirit. But, just as their absence cannot be ensured, even the most vile of emotions cannot last forever. A burdensome weight lifted from his shoulders. In place of fear, a precarious acceptance soon filled him, followed by a lethal dose of curiosity. Edward looked up at the approaching doorway, and for a single moment gazed inward.

Imagination has a will of its own, and in frightful times, it so often burdens the mind with restless scenes of abject horror. In that shifting cloud of delusion, an agitated web of refracted thoughts can concoct man’s worst nightmares. Yet, Edward could never have viewed so much in so small a glimpse.

Hysteria lit his throat with a maddened shriek as the building loomed larger, and the woman dragged him to his inexorable end.

The Evil of Mortar’s Isle

Waves washed in fury upon the shore with black-stained waters bloodied by the night. The sea spat salt and roared in protest of all things happy and holy. Its rage was without thought or reason, merely a cruel instinct bound to its ever-writhing form. And the people of Mortar’s Isle had named it Evil; for it relished in their sorrow.

That night the Evil took an infant child. It threw her from the cliffs and dashed her upon the rocks before the tide claimed her permanently. When her mother found the child missing, she searched until the morning. However, after a long, fruitless search, she returned home. There, on her daughter’s pillow, the mother found a severed hand dripping blood and seafoam. Carved into the palm was the frayed sigil of the sea.

Decades had passed since suffering had last taken Mortar’s Isle. But there remained one elder that recognized the Evil’s mark. He knew it intimately. It knew him. And in the climax of that sleepless night, he heard the wakened malice call his name.

“Silas. Silas. Silas,” it echoed from the shadowed corners of his seaside cottage.

Silas stiffened at the sound of that formless voice. His heart lurched with an agitated thump, and his hands shook with tremors. “You are a memory,” he said.

The cottage groaned as a guttural laugh passed from root to roof. “Even ancient memories may wound and kill,” the Evil said. “Come and see.” Its twisted tones led Silas from the haven of his bed to the creaking swing of his front door. Moonlight shone a path out and off to the sea cliffs. A shrill wind beckoned.

Silas shook his head. “I dare not.” He turned back and at once was greeted with a familiar, white gaze and a dripping hand around his neck. The Evil flung him outside and slammed the door shut.

The wind whipped into a frenzy that pushed Silas to the edge of the sea. And its fell voice howled. “Silas … Come and see …”

The frightened, old man did as asked, knowing too well that he should not. When he reached the precipice, he glanced down into the churning sea. There amid the crushing waves, he spied a briny, black figure clutching a corpse upon a rock. With a crooked knife, the figure sawed through the corpse’s wrist. Then, smiling with tattered, tar lips, it turned to Silas and raised its prize.

Shaking, he said to the creature, “Why not me? It’s me you hate.” A wave crashed over the inky being and its trophy. When the water subsided, both had vanished.

“I do not hate. I love,” the Evil said. Silas could feel its cold breath on his neck and heard a low, rumbling growl. As he turned, he faced the Evil’s gaping maw and empty, white stare. The creature seized Silas’s head in both its hands. “And this is what I love,” it hissed.

Gruesome images of gore and torment passed over Silas’s eyes too quickly to process. He tasted iron on his tongue and heard the shrieks of a hundred voices. And somewhere beyond the fog of undue torture, Silas spied a city, whose twisted gates hid something far more sinister.

When the old man came to, he was alone in his bedroom. Black ink coated his palms. And he heard a final whisper. “You were the beginning. Soon comes the end. Until then, I will make you watch.”

Silas passed through his house like a specter robbed of soul and body. As he washed the ink from his hands and watched the dark liquid run down the drain, he felt no emotion or sense of self. Having clothed himself, he sat at the kitchen table and stared out of the glossy windows that faced the sea. The waves tossed back their heads in laughter as they rolled farther and farther up shore. In time, the ocean would swallow them all.

Finding the strength in his rickety bones, Silas left his house and began the trek to the church on the far side of the island. As expected, the town was abuzz. A trio of women huddled around Ms. Ainsel while she wept at the feet of Mayor Krest. She was clutching something in her hands, but Silas could not see what.

Officer Jacobs was deep in thought. A cigarette spewed smoke as it hung from his limp fingers. A man and his wife were talking to the police officer, but he didn’t seem to hear. The man noticed Silas shuffling through town and called out for him. “Father! Father!” he said, waving him over.

Begrudgingly, Silas joined them. “What is it? Has something happened?” he said.

“I am afraid so,” his son Oliver said.

“Just dreadful,” his wife Sarah added. Between them stood their daughter Eve, a small, sickly girl with blonde hair braided in two. She looked up with tears already in her eyes. Although too young to understand what had happened, the girl knew instinctively that she was in danger. Upon meeting Silas’s gaze, Eve burst into sobs. “Oh, it’s alright. You are safe, dear,” said Sarah.

Oliver touched his wife’s shoulder. “Take her home. Lock the door.” Sarah looked at her husband and then at Silas. Silas nodded in agreement.

Stirring from his daze, Officer Jacobs took a long puff on his cigarette before stamping it in the dirt. “Mr. Keene, you come at a most opportune time,” he said.

“And why might that be?” Silas said.

“Doubtlessly, you have sensed the somber mood. However, I suspect no one has explicitly informed you what has occurred,” the officer said. Silas shook his head and cocked his brow in feigned confusion. “Ms. Ainsel’s daughter Lyla disappeared last night. From dusk ‘til dawn Ms. Ainsel and I scoured the island for some trace of her child. Yet, for all our efforts, we found no hint of the poor girl. That is until we returned to her residence, where we found the girl’s severed hand displayed upon a pillow. Etched into her skin was a mark.”

Officer Jacobs fished a leather-bound journal out of his jacket. Scrawled on the yellowed parchment was an ominous whirl of profane intentions. Jacobs saw recognition plain in Silas’s glassy eyes.

“You have seen it before,” he said. But Silas said nothing in response.

Oliver gripped his father’s shoulder and spoke in a tone both pleading and apologetic. “I already told him about it. If there is anything you can offer, you must tell him. People are frightened, father.”

With a reluctant groan, Silas rolled up his sleeve to reveal a silver scar halfway up his forearm. Although faded and broken by time, it was unmistakably the same mark.

Jacobs nodded and sucked his teeth. “Mortar’s Isle has not seen such wanton cruelty in over five decades. The victims of that time bore an identical symbol. You were there. You witnessed what I can only glean from dusty papers. If you could —”

“Not witnessed. Experienced,” Silas corrected.

Thunder rumbled from a black mass that hung over the sea. The waves frothed and roiled in the deep. On the horizon, ghostly sparks of light flashed in warning.

“What is it then, this mark? What happened all those years ago?” Jacobs said. When Silas did not answer, the officer shook his head and sighed. “Tell me, Mr. Keene. What am I to think? You are the only individual yet alive that was there when the mark appeared, and havoc reigned. But you will not speak of it. You bear that same mark upon your flesh but will not tell me what it symbolizes.”

Oliver knit his brow in anger. “You cannot mean it,” he said, voice rising. “My father is a victim.”

Officer Jacobs shrugged. “Is he?”

Unbothered by his accusations, Silas snorted. “I will say this, but for your sake, ask me no more. The mark is of the sea. I cannot say what, if anything, it communicates; for even I am not certain. There may yet be some use for this mark, but this is something else. What you found upon the pillow was meant for fear and torment, and you lot have given it exactly what it wants.”

“And what is it?”

“Evil.”

After a moment of hesitation, the officer chuckled. He had heard stories of the Evil of Mortar’s Isle, but to him, they were just that. Stories.

Silas did not join in the officer’s laughter. Rather, having decided the conversation was at an end, Silas began walking towards the northern side of the isle.

“Where are you going?” Jacobs asked.

“Church,” Silas said.

“Father David hasn’t been seen for two days.” Silas stopped. Shadow veiled his gaze as he turned to face the police officer. “I suspect you will not find him there. But if you should, I would appreciate you sending him my way.” Silas nodded and continued on.

As expected, Oliver jogged after his father. But Silas had no words of comfort to offer. “Take your wife and the little Eve. Flee this cursed rock if you might, ere it is too late.”

The sky thundered and threatened to break. Waves hissed upon the stony bluffs. Their salted bodies pummeled the isle into submission. There was no leaving.

“You never spoke of that time,” Oliver said. “I doubt even mother knew.”

“Did you not hear me?” Silas said, grabbing his son by the collar. “Leave this place, or else find shelter beyond reach of any man or worse.”

“What is this Evil?” he asked.

Silas gnashed his teeth and exhaled sharply. “Would that I knew more. Would that I knew less,” he said. “But if it can be sealed again, then none of us need bear that knowledge.”

“How might we do that? How can I help?”

“Are you deaf? You must keep far from this matter. I will not tell you again.”

He knew well the stubbornness of sons; for he was once someone’s son, and he too had gone meddling where he should not. Even so, Silas hoped Oliver would listen just this once. Otherwise, he feared what it might cost.

Leaving his son behind, Silas climbed the worn path to Father David’s church. The Catholic structure stood brazenly upon a weather-beaten precipice. Time had torn down its cross, and the wind had stripped its wood bare of all paint or protection. Yet, still the building stood as a tattered protest to the cruel will of the sea.

The wind bellowed as Silas neared the church’s shuttered doors. And on its whistling cry, he heard the dull thud of death bells ringing. They were not from the church.

Although the church’s front doors were locked, a second entrance swung gaping in the back. Silas entered with a cautious step. He called out for Father David but heard only a distant cackle in reply.

Silas had not stepped inside the church for several decades. Yet, he remembered the crooked, wooden halls better than those of his own meager home. As threatening shadows played on the wall, he walked down the creaking corridors until he came upon a door of cold metal. All those years ago, Silas had locked the door and thrown away the key. Yet, evidently, the lock had been picked because when he tried the handle, the door swung open with a groan.

Past the door lay a long flight of stairs that passed deep into shadow. From the darkness emanated the foul scent of grease and rot. And from that darkness, Silas heard a sinister call: “Silas … come and see …”

As he descended the worn steps, the ceiling chugged and coughed. Lights kicked on from above. Their hue was sickly and pink; for the lights, as with the walls, were encased in a fleshy membrane conjoined to stone and steel. The flesh was withered and pale but for a few throbbing vessels.

Silas followed the steps into a dank chamber buzzing with biomechanical whirs. All around, he spied machines of insipid and unknowing design. They clicked and snapped and beat with wires of sinew and gears of bone. He could not guess their purpose, but their presence itself was no doubt a cruel insult to the church above.

At the far end of the chamber, Silas found a familiar stone coffin. Runes of a forgotten language covered the tomb on all sides, sealing its inhabitant inside. But the cover was splayed open, and on the ground lay a pale, blonde girl in a pool of congealed blood.

“Anna.” Just as he had left her, abandoned her, cursed her all those years ago. Preserved by the Evil that possessed her, her body had not aged. But now it appeared she was dead, and the Evil was free.

As Silas approached the body, the walls undulated. Their frayed sinews reached out to her like tattered fingers. And in his gut, Silas felt a sharp pang of guilt nestle deeper. But it was what he deserved.

“Do you mourn her?” the Evil asked. Silas saw its cruel, inky form standing stiff in the undercroft’s gory recesses. “Do you mourn her?” the Evil repeated. “You who sealed her away? Your love? Your pure, precious Anna? You condemned her, Silas, to a lifetime of torture and defilement at my hand. Shall I tell you what I did to her while bound to her flesh?”

Silas gritted his teeth and turned away from Anna’s body. “Where is Father David? He set you free, did he not?”

“His god will not save him. Will you?”

“Where is he?”

The Evil snickered and set its hand against the wall. Tendrils shot forward and wrapped around Anna’s limbs. Slowly, her body was dragged to the center of the room. The Mark of the Sea was carved into her neck, and from her abdomen, a deep stab wound leaked curdled blood.

“I discarded her and stole the priest. They will not be the last,” the Evil said.

“What do you want?” Silas asked, striding towards the crooked figure. As he neared the cruel entity, it receded into darkness. In its place, Silas saw a massive, stone door marked with a multitude of twisted runes. From somewhere beyond, he heard the slosh of brine and bilge.

With a final glance at his former lover, Silas returned to the church above. In search of Father David, he proceeded to the altar. But the priest was not there, and the hall was empty.

Silas looked out at the shadow-laden pews, and as he looked, the wooden seats groaned and splintered. Above, a headless Christ watched with arms splayed upon the cross. His head lay upon the altar, eyes streaming blood.

Just then, a shriek rang from behind. Silas ran back into the corridor. He sprinted through the winding halls until he stood face-to-face with the muzzle of Officer Jacobs’s pistol.

“What is that down there?” Jacobs asked, not lowering his gun. “Who is that girl?”

Silas raised his hands. “Her name is Anna. She was my lover when we were in our teens. If I could just –”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Jacobs said. There was a crazed look in his eyes. The pistol trembled in his hands. “None of this makes sense.”

Something below had shaken the seasoned officer. Something he had seen. Something he had felt. The Mark of the Sea was seared into his forearm. Its unholy design glistened with scorched, red flesh.

“What happened to you?” Silas said.

Officer Jacobs holstered his gun and shoved Silas against the wall. “You did this to me,” he said through chattering teeth. He cuffed Silas and pushed him out of the church.

While they trudged back into town, Silas attempted to explain his case, but the officer was not listening. He stared out at the surging sea as if in response to some voiceless call. The brewing storm was almost upon them, and the roll of thunder sent shivers through Jacobs’s spine. A soft rain pattered down from above. It was only a whisper of what was to come.

The townspeople watched Silas and Jacobs shuffle into town. They whispered and pointed but dared not leave the safety of their homes.

Once in the police station, Silas was uncuffed and thrown into a cell. Officer Jacobs gawked at him from the other side of the bars. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

“Officer Jacobs, you must tell me what you saw,” Silas begged. “It is with the priest. If we find him, if we know what it wants, we might have some chance of stopping it. However, I cannot help you if you stay silent, and I cannot guide you from inside this cell.”

Jacobs responded with a drawn-out sigh while something pulled his gaze out into the hall. “I need a smoke,” he said. The officer passed out of view, leaving Silas in the silence of his dusky cell. However, he was not entirely alone.

Behind Silas, a hole opened. It was no bigger than a saucer, and from it issued an unnerving sound unlike that of any man or beast. It was gnashing teeth and cackling laughter. It was soaring screams and choking gurgles. It was all of those and more and none of them at all.

Silas crouched down beside the hole. It smelled of salt and sea, and there was a distant crash of waves. He bent his ear towards the void to have a closer listen, but it faded the closer he got. Then, when the noise had all but disappeared, a pair of pallid white hands grabbed him by the skull, and Anna pulled her face into view.

“Why did you leave me?” she said. Thick gashes lined her neck and trailed down her chest. Flaps of tissue hung from her ribs, and the bones lay exposed. “Why did you leave me with it? You did this to me. It was you!”

Silas managed to slip out of her grasp and stumble backwards. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said, panting. Anna slunk back into the hole.

Behind him, the cell door creaked open. He stood and gazed warily at his freedom, expecting another trick. “Hello?” he said, testing for a response. He looked back. The hole was gone.

As he neared the corridor, Father David swept suddenly past the doorway. Startled, Silas jumped back in fright.

“Father David!” he called. In the hall, he found the clergyman’s black frock in a limp bundle on the floor. Silas crouched down to pick up the robe and noticed a line of moist footsteps glinting in the slanted daylight.

Outside, thunder crashed, and a murmur built into a clamor. Rain pounded upon the earth like nails into a coffin, and a sickening moan cut through the surging wind.

Silas bolted into the town square, where a crowd had gathered around a towering, wooden cross. Hammered upon the cross was Father David, stripped bare for all to witness. His pierced palms oozed blood while the sea’s hateful sigil wept ink upon his brow.

Father David muttered prayers between his winces and cries. He begged the heavenly lord to spare him of his pain and cast down the Evil of Mortar’s Isle. But God had abandoned him.

The priest’s frantic chants continued until the strength died in his throat. And as he went quiet, so too did the storm. The wind dissipated. The rain dried. Even the townsfolk held their tongues. It was an eerie, skin-prickling quiet, the kind that could not last long.

“Get him down from there!” Silas tried to shout. But his words were drowned out by a sudden flash of light and the deafening sound of thunder. The cross ignited and flames rolled up the priest’s body. He flailed and shrieked, but he could not pull himself from the cross. His skin charred, and the stench of burnt flesh was in the air. All the while, the townsfolk looked on with horror.

Once the fire rose to his chin, Father David grew unseemly still and quiet. He turned his head and locked eyes with Silas. Throwing back his head, the priest unleashed a demonic bellow. While the throat-splitting roar rang across the island, the rain returned as a furious downpour. It extinguished the fire, and surrounded the cross in a murky, black puddle.

Then, the cross staggered and snapped. Father David fell face first into the puddle. Some life yet remained inside him because he looked up at the crowd. Skin peeled from his cheeks in blackened strips, and his lips cracked as he opened them to speak.

“Help” was all the priest managed to say. Before the townsfolk could answer his request, a dozen black hands rose out of the water and latched onto him. They dragged Father David into the unknowable depths of the dusky pool. He lacked the strength to resist, and thus protested with merely a frightened gurgle that rose to the surface as a trio of bubbles.

Horrified, the town devolved into a chaotic mess of reactions. Some fell to their knees in prayer. Others broke down into tears. Silas spotted Mayor Krest running, quite sensibly, back to the safety of his home. Amid it all, Ms. Ainsel stood without thought or expression. As for Officer Jacobs, he was nowhere to be seen. And above all the noise and commotion, Silas heard a pitiful cry rise above the rest.

Waking ever so slightly from her daze, Ms. Ainsel pointed wordlessly at something just beyond his shoulder. Silas followed her vacant gaze and turned slowly. As he did, the Evil leapt upon him. Its viscous, throbbing fingers penetrated his eyes, turning all to black. The Evil wrestled him to the ground as it wounded him in places he did not know existed. Silas cried out, but the voice was not his own. It was that of a child. And across his blind stare flashed images of wretched structures in a drowned city.

When his torment ceased, Silas awoke to a pounding headache. He picked himself off the floor. He was in his study. A strange, leather-bound tome rested on his desk, and his hands were stained black with ink.

“Come see what we have created, Silas,” the Evil taunted. From far off, he heard a girlish moan.

Silas opened the book and found it was filled with his own handwriting. But he had no memory of writing. Worse still, the book told of vile entities whose maddening forms and cruel intentions could only be described by means of comparison. There seemed also to be written spells of a sort Silas dared not imagine.

“What is this? A book of spells? A grimoire?” he asked.

“There are things beyond me that would shatter the feeble bounds of your sanity. I am but a keeper of the gate waving them in, and this is my invitation.”

Silas pulled back his sleeve to reveal the sigil of the sea. “Our suffering is your own. Why would you invite others? What of your mark?”

The formless voice snickered. Its laugh rattled around his skull in painful surges. “You think it a signature? How pitiful the idea. After all these years, you still never imagined my intentions.”

Silas flipped through the grimoire’s cluttered pages, hundreds of them, all filled to the margins with his handwriting. “When did you … when did I … when was this written?”

“You do not recall? We wrote it together you and I.”

Just then Officer Jacobs burst through the front door, gun drawn. His composure had long since shattered, and his eyes were stricken with forks of blood. “Tell me what is going on at once,” he shouted. “My senses fool me, and the shadows speak. Father David. The church. That girl. Something brews in the sea, and it is calling me. I fear it like a knife to the belly, but I cannot bear the weight of it much longer.”

The front door creaked open. Again Silas heard a girlish moan, distant but painfully shrill. Silas walked past Jacobs to the open door. Thunder cracked, and the waves roared. A girl whimpered and choked.

“What must I do to rid myself of this evil?” Jacobs asked. “What …” But his second question faded in his throat. His attention shifted to a small, orange crab scuttling through the open door. Another followed behind it, and behind that one another still. They marched into Silas’s home and began to circle around Officer Jacobs. Their beady eyes were empty and black.

With only the slightest hesitation, Jacobs jumped back and began to fire at the crabs. Yet, for each one he killed, another took its place.

From the illumination of the flashing gun, Silas saw a dark figure crawling along the ceiling. With long, contorted limbs, the Evil hung like a spider over Officer Jacobs. Its smile spread too far and too wicked.

Another shot rang out, and the officer’s pistol flashed. Jacobs cried in pain. Somehow the gun was in Silas’s hand, and a bloody wound on Jacobs’s knee caused the officer to fall to the floor.

“No. I didn’t …” Silas said weakly and dropped the gun.

Seizing on the opportunity, the crabs climbed onto Jacobs’s body. He tried to push them off, but there were far too many. Their chitinous pincers carved pieces of flesh from his body and fed the meat into their chattering mouths. They gorged themselves on Officer Jacobs, who twitched and wailed as his gore spilled on the floor. He could bear the torment for only so long.

“No!” he screamed. “No! Take me. Be done with it. Please!”

The crabs ceased and looked up to the ceiling. A stain above dripped brine and blood. A pair of gnarled, black hands emerged from the stain, pushing it open until a shower of salt water covered Jacobs. The hands vanished for an instant before the Evil pounced on the officer and dragged him into the ceiling, crabs and all. A muffled scream was the last Silas heard before the black hole sealed.

“Father.” A rain-soaked Oliver stood in the doorway. Silas turned breathlessly. “Father, she’s gone. Eve. My daughter.”

“You must leave me. It is not safe,” Silas said. He looked down at his ink-stained fingers and at the gun on the floor.

“Did you not hear what I said? Eve is gone,” Oliver said.

Silas paused. He heard a soft sobbing on the edge of his hearing. “It has her.”

“I saw Officer Jacobs take her. I tried to stop him, but he held a pistol to her temple and threatened to shoot if I followed.”

“And you followed anyway.”

“When I saw him next, he was on the way to your cottage, and she was missing. But now … Jacobs …”

“You must listen to me,” Silas said. “The Evil resides within me now. Through me it may do whatever it pleases. Through me it might kill you or worse. It may even decide to inhabit your body. Every moment you spend in my presence is a risk.”

Oliver stood still and strong. “I would risk all for her,” he said. The Evil was counting on it. “I wish to speak with it. If you are possessed as you say, then I wish to bargain.”

Silas shook his head. “Son, the Evil never compromises. It knows no mercy. It …” His sentence faded in his throat, and his expression ebbed away. For a moment, his face was blank and still. Then, a wide grin surged across his cheeks, and a deep malice took root in his eyes. “Good evening, Oliver. Shall I send my regards to young Eve, or would you like to join her?”

“You are the Evil of Mortar’s Isle?” Oliver asked.

His father shrugged. “You may call me what you like. It matters not.”

“I want my daughter back.”

“I might consider it. However, I require something in exchange.”

Oliver nodded. “Of course. Name it.”

Silas walked over to the study and picked up the leather-bound grimoire. “Take this and join me in the church.”

“Why?”

Silas held out the book and waited for his son to take it. Only then did he answer. “I come from another plane, whose unseeable bounds intersect with those of your own and others. Yet, the ways were shut long ago by those who are forgotten. Whosoever remained on this side was hunted, forced into hiding, or sealed away.”

“I take it there is an intersection in the church. You want to return home, is that it?” Oliver said. Silas answered with a smile. “Will this help you do that?” They both looked at the book cradled in Oliver’s arms.

“Not quite, but it will be necessary regardless. Do we have a deal?” Silas reached out his hand.

“That’s it?”

“That is it,” Silas said, hand still extended.

“I do not trust you so easily,” Oliver said, biting his lip. “Still, I have no choice but to accept.”

Silas grinned heartily as Oliver took his hand. Their palms had scarcely touched before a burning pain sank into Oliver’s skin. He pulled back his hand, but the damage was done. A steaming, pink mark stared up at him.

“What is this?” Oliver asked.

Walking out the door, Silas turned his head to the dark, unseeable sky. “Consider it a signature,” he said. “Are contracts not sealed with a signature in your plane? In any case, let us make haste. Your dearest Eve is waiting.”

With the vile text nestled in the crook of his arm, Oliver stepped through the doorway. As his body crossed the threshold, he found himself in a musty chamber that reeked of spoiled gore and festering ooze. A stone door of gargantuan proportions stood before him, and beside him a pedestal.

A single light pierced the darkness. As it shone against his back, a long, dense shadow fell on the door. In his breast, Oliver felt a ravenous fear he could not reason or explain.

He turned slowly and then staggered back in horror and revulsion. At the center of the chamber stood a blistered mass of flesh and bristle. Gnarled veins forked through its taut skin and lumps of flesh and bone. The mass was shaped into an egg. Umbilici of swollen steel and coiled sinew protruded from its base, passing into shadow. And at its head, the egg narrowed to a pair of parted lips that choked on a rising beam of metal.

Oliver approached the foul deformity with cautious steps. A pair of lidless eyes looked up at him with utter panic and helplessness. The fleshy egg shivered and gurgled but could not speak.

“What is this? Where is my daughter?” Oliver asked. In his own voice, he heard a rising terror that he could not resist. The shadows shifted, and there came a metallic growl like the grinding of gears.

“Place the book upon the pedestal, and you shall see your daughter,” Silas said, standing beside a splayed casket marked with runes. Cloaked in shade, the elderly man strained the eyes to see. At times, he appeared as his old self, and at others as a contorted silhouette with a sinister gaze. Ever a slave to his parental instincts, Oliver did as asked, knowing all the while he should not.

Overhead, a dim, pink light sparked to life. It revealed a wall of webbed skin that wrapped around the twitching bodies of several helpless victims. Among them were the drowned Lyla, charred priest, half-consumed Jacobs, and sniveling Eve. Vascular cords attached to their bodies where they had been given the Mark of the Sea while hanging blades plunged into wounds kept ever-gaping by frequent and merciless slashes. The running gore trailed down their throbbing cables into the growing mass at the center of the room.

Overcome with emotion, Oliver sprinted towards his daughter. “Eve! My Eve. Dear daughter, what has it done to you?” Although still conscious, the girl no longer possessed the strength to speak. She was a frail, whimpering husk drained of skin and spirit. She looked up with tears in her eyes.

“Did you think this would end happily?” Silas said in a tone not his own. “Your father tried to warn you. Now I have her … and you.”

A meaty tendril slithered along the floor towards Oliver’s leg. “He knew this would happen?” Oliver said with rising anger. “He knew she would be tortured, but still he kept the truth from me?”

Silas smirked. “This is not his first encounter with me. Only a fool would suspect a more favorable outcome. Now I need only one more.”

The tendril wrapped around Oliver’s ankle and began to tug him back. “That bastard let this happen to her. I want to speak to him,” he said, balling his fists. “Do what you want with him and with me. But first, let me have him.”

Eyes fixed on Oliver’s tensed knuckles, Silas considered the notion with a long, devious smile. Then, the cord around Oliver’s leg unfurled and sank away. The lights flickered, and the chamber surrendered to the dark. “Oh my. This I must see.”

When the lights returned, Silas had regained control of his body. He gazed around the room at all the Evil had wrought. When he saw the mass at the center of the room, he covered his mouth and took a single step forward. “Anna?” The lips had completely torn at the seams, giving way to the muzzle of some unholy contraption.

“You did this. All of this is your fault,” Oliver said. “All of this is your fault.” He stomped towards his father.

“No. Wait. Son, you must –”

Oliver swung at his father, breaking his nose. “I know what I must do,” he said. He grabbed Silas by the collar and drove him back with a flurry of punches. Blood coated his knuckles and pumped through his veins. Oliver bashed his father’s head while a sourceless laughter rang through the chamber. He pushed Silas back until he tripped over the coffin and fell inside.

“Wait,” Silas said in a voice both his and not his own. But it was too late now. Oliver pulled the lid over the coffin, sealing his father and the Evil within.

A hesitant silence filled the chamber. From within his stony prison, Silas breathed a shaky sigh of relief. “You did it. It is over,” he said.

“I am sorry, father,” Oliver said, tears in his eyes.

“Do not apologize. It was I that first released the Evil upon Mortar’s Isle. It is only fitting that I should be buried with it. This was the only way,” Silas said. And then to the Evil, “You are trapped in here with me now, and so we shall spend eternity together. May we both rot beyond memory.”

“One of us will.”

Blind to the outside world, Silas heard a muffled gagging and the collapse of his son’s body. He smelled the scent of freshly spilled blood and listened to the cry of honed blades at work.

“Oliver!” There was no reply but the patter of flailing limbs against the ground. And when all was still, a new sound entered the void: a hum of such growing proportions that it shook the very walls of the undercroft. Without mistake, it was coming from the disfigured machine of flesh at the center of the room.

Then, like a storm building charge, the machine unleashed a thunderous blast. It collided with the towering, runed door and shattered the stone into pieces. The way was open, and those that had shut it had long since perished.

“But the coffin,” Silas said. “You cannot …”

“I am not in the coffin,” the Evil answered. “I have found a different form, one more durable than your pitiable flesh and bone.”

“The book.” Silas said.

“I am every word and every spell. I am the ink and the thoughts there penetrating. What cannot die lives ever on, and so I shall be. The gates are known to me, and the gates are me. Man was not always the Earth’s master, and he shall not be its last. They have waited, patient and primal, and by my word, they shall return.”

Age had taken Silas’s strength, and the Evil had taken his spirit. So he could not even attempt to escape his stony grave. There was no hope for him. All he could do was wait for whatever might come. For him, it would be death. Yet, for others, far worse.

Over the past few decades, a disturbing rumor has spread throughout the backwoods settlement of Littlefork. People there tell tales of so-called “alternates,” who kidnap and impersonate the small town’s residents. Taking the form of their victims, they appear human at first glance. But the alternates possess uncanny facial features like dead, bulging eyes and unusually long limbs.

Of course, none of this concerned Dr. Emma Wilton. She was in search of another Littlefork legend: the ivory-billed woodpecker. Once the largest woodpecker in the US, the bird was now considered extinct by most ornithologists, Emma included. Although the last official sighting of the bird occurred in 1941, some in the area claimed to have seen a large bird with shiny black plumage not unlike those of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Emma made the trip to Littlefork alone, stopping first at the town’s only hotel. An old, rickety porch wrapped around the front of the building. There two older men sat in wicker chairs with smoldering cigarettes between their fingers. They watched Emma with a blank stare. Smoke spilled from their lips.

Inside, a portly woman sat behind the counter. She sighed as Emma approached as if annoyed that she actually had to work. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes. I booked a room. It should be under Robert Monroe,” Emma said.

The woman blinked long and slow. “You’re not Robert Monroe.”

“No. But the room was booked for two people.”

“That’s right,” the receptionist said.

“And I’m the second person. I’m Emma Wilton.”

“I see,” the woman said, “And where is Mr. Monroe?”

“He decided not to come.”

“Why not?”

“That’s personal.” Emma forced a smile, but it was hard to hide the irritation in her voice.

“Well, I can’t let you stay in the room. It’s booked under his name.”

Emma sucked her teeth and glanced around the dingy interior of the hotel. Aside from the two men out front, the place was dead. “Meaning no offense, but this doesn’t look to be a busy hotel.”

“None taken,” the receptionist replied dryly.

“What are the chances someone would come to the hotel and correctly guess the name of a guest?”

The fat receptionist pushed a greasy strand of hair behind her ear and shrugged. “Company policy. You can call him if –”

“No,” Emma said quickly. “You must have his number on file. How about you call him? Okay?”

With a sigh, the woman picked up the phone and dialed Robert’s number. While they waited for him to pick up, Emma paced around the lobby. She stopped by a bulletin board, which only had two papers pinned to it. One was a flier for a local concert scheduled for two months ago. The other was a wrinkled notice about a missing girl. According to the faded, black letters, the girl’s name was Ashley. She had disappeared two years ago at the age of sixteen. Sad. But again, it was none of Emma’s concern.

While the receptionist dialed Robert’s number a second time, the old men from the porch entered. “Don’t get many visitors,” said the first. He was missing most of his teeth, and his breath reeked of tobacco.

“Not safe around these parts,” said the second. He had thin, shriveled lips that seemed to stretch to the edges of his face. He pointed to the missing person poster on the bulletin board.

Emma offered a polite smile. “I’m just here for the forest,” she said.

“That’s exactly the place you need to avoid. There’s a killer in those woods. Done skinned poor Ashley, and she ain’t the only one,” the toothless man said.

“Not so. Wasn’t no killer,” the other said. His friend shook his head and sighed. “They say she was seen in the neighbor’s barn. But she wasn’t nothing but a cheap copy. A fake.” An alternate. Emma had heard the tales, but she didn’t have the energy to argue with a couple of old men.

“Yes, well, I will be careful. Thank you for your concern.”

Fortunately, Emma was called over by the receptionist, who happily informed her that she could not reach Robert. Having left him a message, the receptionist told Emma she could leave her luggage and walk around the town in the meantime. It was just as well. She had had enough of the hotel and the irritating people inside it.

With a camera slung around her neck, Emma decided to venture into the forest for an early start on her research. The ancient woodland encircled Littlefork on all sides. Like a fetid, green shadow, it lurked behind every building and at the end of each road. However, there were no entrances into the Littlefork Forest. They had all gone unused and overgrown with vegetation. Gnarled branches crossed over one another like a wall of mossy veins, and from the earth rose tall reeds of grass that hid the forest interior from view.

Just behind the hotel, Emma found a small gap in the trees. Petite as she was, she managed to slip through without much effort. Yet, just as she disappeared into the shaded woods, Emma felt a cold gaze on her neck. She glanced back and saw the men from the hotel watching her. Their faces were blank and expressionless.

She thought nothing of it. Emma had more pressing matters on her mind. After her conversation with the receptionist, she began to think about Robert Monroe. An esteemed ornithologist like herself, Robby was a silver-tongued man with a chiseled jaw and piercing, blue eyes. And whether by luck or sheer force of will, he was also the sort of man that acquired anything his heart desired. So it wasn’t long before Emma fell under his charms and into his bed.

In between their frequent bouts of lovemaking, Emma and Robby found time to collaborate on academic ventures. Even professionally, they had chemistry. Their interests and ideas always complemented one another, and together they had published a few papers. So, as their personal and professional lives faded into another, Emma found herself thinking about Robby at all hours of the day. And in time, her thoughts turned to the future.

This would not be a problem for any other couple in a relationship. However, from Robby’s perspective, they were not in fact in a relationship. Therefore, when Emma began discussing her desire to have a daughter one day and how lovely their own children might look, Robby decided to set the record straight. He also decided it would be healthy for them to go their separate ways.

Emma cursed herself for being so oblivious. Part of her hoped this search for the ivory-billed woodpecker would train her to be more attentive. Yet, as she looked around at the expansive canopy of trees, she saw no creatures, not even a squirrel or a sparrow. She listened for the repetitive tap tap tap of a woodpecker’s beak. But Emma heard only a soft, sighing wind and the groan of shifting branches.

Woodpeckers have a particular fondness for dead trees. So Emma followed a path of decay to deeper and darker sections of the woods, where hollowed oaks and twisted beeches lay in toppled wrecks. Shadows played against their shattered bodies as the sun descended into evening.

While Emma gazed around in search of the bird, she noticed a rustling among the trees. At first, she thought it might be the rustle of a creature in the canopy. But whatever made the sound was bigger. As it moved through the forest, it shook entire trees so that their rotten trunks bent and snapped. Emma could even feel the ground tremble as the beast drew near.

Backing up slowly, Emma raised her camera. Through the lens, she glimpsed a small fraction of what lumbered through the trees. At once, she grew sick from that oozing and unwholesome form riddled with scabrous growths and hair-like filaments. The creature uttered a gurgling moan. Panic filled her, and she staggered backward in fear.

As a fleshy tendril reached towards Emma, her foot slipped on a twisted root, and she tumbled down a hill. The hill was not so tall or steep to warrant concern. However, when Emma fell backwards, her head struck the corner of a jagged rock. The last thing she remembered before her vision went dark was the crunch of her camera beneath her.

No doubt concussed from the head trauma, Emma passed between bouts of waking and unwaking. And in that limbo between dream and reality, she saw herself carried away by a looming mass of writhing flesh. It wrapped her in its moist appendages and stroked her belly in a swift, obsessive circle. Although terrifying to look at, the creature was not evil in itself. On the contrary, it doted over her well-being with warm, gentle touches not unlike a mother with her child.

Once Emma came to, she found herself in a cave on a bed of moss. Moonlight shone through a hole in the stone ceiling. It fell on her like a pale spotlight upon a stage. Yet, as far as Emma could tell, there was no audience watching her.

The comforting environment eased her nerves to a small degree. Emma found herself able to rationalize all that had happened. She told herself the beast was nothing more than a mangey bear. Frightened, she had tripped and fallen through the hole in the cave ceiling. All that nonsense about being tended to by a fleshy monster was nothing more than a dream.

Indeed Emma felt completely calm and rational. Her only concern was the gash atop her head. But judging by the dried clumps of blood in her hair, the wound had already clotted. In addition, Emma still felt sick to her stomach. No doubt, it was a lingering effect of that revolting and wholly imagined nightmare.

A low chatter rumbled through the cave, and Emma saw a shadow play against the walls. She looked around for her camera but found it was missing. “Hello?” she said. There was no reply. “Is someone there? I’m hurt.” But no one answered.

Emma got to her feet. Her stomach flopped, and her head dizzied. Regardless, she pushed ahead. She had to get back to the hotel. No doubt, the receptionist would have something snarky to say. But she needed proper medical care and a bed. Hopefully, Robby had returned the receptionist’s message.

As Emma stumbled down the dank passages of the cave, she came upon a group of childlike drawings scrawled in chalk. Under the slanted moonlight, these drawings depicted happy families with wide, goofy smiles. Innocent as they were, there was something off about the drawings. The family member’s forms and expressions were stretched and skewed as if the artist did not fully understand the human body.

What’s more, there was a sketch of some other form. Not by any stretch of the imagination could it be confused with a human. Long, cystic limbs surfaced from spotted globs of flesh while lidless eyes bulged from sparsely hairy masses. It was not certain what this abomination had to do with the grinning families, but it was certain Emma had seen it before.

Emma pressed on through dank and dreary tunnels. She followed broad, smoothed out paths that coiled this way and that. She trudged past cold, inky pools whose depths she could not fathom. All the while, her head ached, and her stomach panged. She clutched her gut. It was bloated and firm.

After a seemingly endless sequence of passages, Emma came upon the exit. The first morning light peaked above the horizon, penetrating the forest in pale swaths. Had she really been in the cave that long? It didn’t matter. Emma had entered the forest from the west. If she followed the rising dawn, she could find her way back to Littlefork.

Just then, a guttural bellow erupted behind her, and Emma heard the dull scrape of flesh against stone. At once, she ran into the forest as fast as she could. She ran without looking back, knowing she wouldn’t like what she saw.

And yet, despite her desperation, Emma could only run so fast and so far. Her feet were heavy, and her stomach throbbed with acute pain. When she could force herself no longer, she leaned against the trunk of a rotted birch and gazed down at the source of her pain.

Her belly was massive. She pulled up her shirt to get a better look. Blue veins struck sharp paths across her skin. And although there was no obvious sign of injury, that didn’t rule out the possibility of internal bleeding. Judging by the size of her gut, the bleed was serious. Without help, it would certainly prove fatal.

Emma placed her hand on her stomach and thought of Robby. All she had wanted was love and the joy of a child. But now Robby was gone, and she would bleed to death in some forsaken forest, afraid and alone.

But Emma was not alone. As if reaching out for her hand, an infant limb stretched against the walls of Emma’s abdomen. She stared at her stomach in disbelief. But there was no denying what she had seen and felt. Something was inside of her.

The sudden pregnancy shocked Emma so much that she had almost forgotten why she had run into the forest in the first place. Behind her, the branches groaned and cracked. A mucousy heap of changeable limbs dragged itself into view. On its raw and oozing flesh, gaping eyes peered down at Emma. And though she saw no mouth that could utter a sound, Emma heard a shapeless baying as if of some great and terrifying hound.

By now, Emma knew there was no point to running in her current condition. She wouldn’t make it far. Already her body tensed with vicious contractions in an attempt to expell the growing parasite. So she fought back by flinging both rocks and obscenities. But by the sound of it, the creature was hurt more emotionally than physically; for it merely suffered Emma’s attacks with a disappointed whimper.

Although the revolting beast did not leave, it at least kept its distance. Its engorged eyes peered through the crooked trees while its tentacled limbs twisted and snapped. It was waiting.

Another contraction sent shivering pain through her loins. She felt something burst between her legs, and a gush of hot liquid spilled onto the ground. The writhing mass of contorted limbs cooed with delight.

Emma staggered to the ground. Birth is never a pleasant affair, but her pain was too sharp, too quick. Blood oozed down her thighs, soaking her trousers red. Tremors ran through her arms in tune with the violent pangs that wrenched her gut. And it took all her strength just to slip out of her clothes.

When she did – to her horror – she saw a pair of pink, wormy hands forcing their way into the open air. Emma bit her tongue to suppress the screams rising in her throat. But she could not resist the swelling current of terror and skin-splitting pain. As the parasitic child exorcised itself from her bleeding womb, her tortured wailings reached greater and greater heights.

Emma watched helplessly as the nearly human child ripped her cunt into a long and literal gash. By then, her agony had exceeded the limits of her perception so that each new injury was a mere wisp lost amid a hellish conflagration. There seemed no end to the torment. But in time her trials finished, and before her lay a raw and mewling infant.

The small creature looked up at Emma with eyes not unlike her own. It studied her briefly and mimicked her exhausted expression. And below the child’s left ear, she noticed a pair of black moles. It was a feature she had only ever seen in the mirror.

But there was something off about the child’s appearance. Its lifeless eyes sat too many inches apart, its limbs reached too far, and its familiar smile stretched too wide. Only at a glance could that thing be called human.

Just then, the lumbering mass beyond the trees issued a long bellow. Answering its command, the newborn scurried into the forest, dragging its shriveled afterbirth with it. That was the last Emma saw of it. As for the malformed beast, Emma was not safe just yet. The bristly heap of flesh peeled back the trees and pulled itself towards her.

Emma grabbed her clothes and rose to her feet. Hot gore spilled down her legs, and a dreadful ache smoldered inside her. But she would not let the beast take her again. “Leave me alone!” she screamed and threw a rock. Emma didn’t even wait to see if the rock hit. She bolted as far and fast as her feet would carry her.

For well on an hour, Emma jogged through the trees. When she could jog no more, she decided to walk. And when she could not walk, she stopped to dress. There was still a small trickle of blood, but for the most part, her wounds had clotted.

Dawn had bloomed in slanted shades of orange and red. A cool wind blew against Emma’s face, and the trees swayed to and fro. The only sounds were of the squirrels chattering, the sparrows tweeting, and an incessant tap tap tap. Emma craned her head to stare up at the trees, and it was then she saw it: the ivory-billed woodpecker. The regal bird hacked away at a dead oak with its strong, straight bill. Its feathers shone red, white, and lustrous black. The long-lost bird was a beauty to behold, but all Emma could feel in the moment was contempt.

In time, Emma found her way out of the forest and onto a narrow dirt path. She followed the long and lonely road back to Littlefork. There the townspeople called her an ambulance and sent her on her way. She did not tell them what she had endured. Nor did she tell the doctors at the hospital. They would not believe her. They would not understand.

Following the traumatic events in the woods, Emma entered a state of intense apathy. Her memories were now so full of pain. To avoid feeling them, she had learned not to feel at all. That night had changed her, and in her darkest hours, Emma wondered whether the monster had stolen her humanity as well as her womb.

A week after the event took place, Emma received a phone call. It was Robby. “Emma, I just heard the news. Are you okay?” he said.

“Yes,” Emma said. She did not want to talk about it, least of all with him. “I’m doing better now.”

“I am glad to hear that,” Robby said. “So it’s all true then? What happened? I got a call from the hotel one day and then the next …”

“We really don’t need to discuss it,” Emma said. “You made clear how you feel about me.”

Robby scoffed. “Just because I don’t want a serious relationship doesn’t mean I can’t worry about you. And of course I’m worried! The police said they found you naked in the woods.”

“What? What are you talking about? Police?”

“I know it’s embarrassing, but you don’t need to lie to me,” he said. “You attacked some lady and tried dragging her into the woods. They took you to a psych ward.”

“That wasn’t me.”

“I’m surprised they let you go to be honest.”

“Robby, that wasn’t me. When did this happen?”

“A couple days ago. But —”

Emma hung up the phone. She did not doubt Robby’s story, but she did not want to hear it. She already knew the truth. Someone had attacked that lady. Someone was in the psych ward. A second Emma. A copy. An alternate.

Eternal Sleep

Arthur Gaunt had spent his whole life as a slave to curiosity. Above all else, he yearned for truth and an answer to those questions he had never thought to ask. No matter where or when, a nameless force pulled him towards an unnamable place, some origin point, where the most fundamental knowledge lay waiting for his discovery. But despite his efforts, the truth always eluded him.

It should come as no surprise that Arthur pursued a career in criminal investigation. While specializing in missing persons, he closed 98% of his cases. By his colleagues’ standards, Arthur was very good at his job. But that pesky 2% bothered him to no end. Despite numerous orders from his supervisors, Arthur refused to let any case go cold. His supervisors could look past his obsessive behavior, but not his disobedience. So Arthur was fired.

The case of Mary Whitman was the final nail in the coffin. According to one neighbor, a group of men in a white van abducted Mary outside of her suburban home. She called the police, but they arrived too late. Other neighbors confirmed to have seen this white van. However, surveillance footage from nearby homes showed no sign of Mary or any vehicle at the time.

By all reports, Mary was a kind, cheerful adolescent. She had no enemies, no jealous exes, and no trouble at home or elsewhere. And until that night, no one had seen any reason to worry for Mary’s safety. Arthur secretly copied the case files to take home before his departure from the police force. But after weeks of private investigation, he still had no motive, no leads, and no clue.

That is until he received a strange letter from a man named Thomas Hoslow. The contents of the letter were as follows:

Dear Mr. Gaunt,

They told me they were criminals. All of them. Whatever horrors were necessitated by our righteous path, it is only what they deserved. But Mary is just a girl. What might she have done to deserve such torment? Have we grown so desperate as to snatch children from the streets? How many others might have come before, smuggled under my nose, guilty of naught but a knack for misfortune? I can abide no longer.

All my life, and long it has been, I dedicated myself to the careful protection of one greater truth. I have warded it from all others save our own to prevent a most abrupt and unwelcome end. Yet, if a system demands cruelty to persist, perhaps it should not persist at all.

Mr. Gaunt, I know you as a respected detective, and I believe you haven’t yet dropped your inquiries into the case of Miss Mary Whitman. You will find her, in some shape or another, among those I might have called my brothers. You may enter unseen at the ruins of 4 Deadwood Drive in Underton.

Consider this my resignation from the Cult of Ungola. I have had my awakening, and soon so will we all.

Cordially,

Thomas Hoslow

This was Arthur’s first true lead, and he would follow it to its natural end, but not without doing his research. First, he looked for any information he could find on the Cult of Ungola. But his search yielded nothing. Either the cult was the creation of a deluded mad man, or someone had taken great measures to scrub any trace of the cryptic group.

As for Thomas Hoslow, Arthur could find only a few mentions of his name in public records. But according to those documents, Hoslow had died half a century ago. Provided with those records was a photo of the man prior to his death. He was a willowy figure with sharp cheekbones and a coarse, white beard. Although there was a lively glint in his eye, there was no way such an elderly man could have survived another fifty years.

Regardless, Arthur made the trip to 4 Deadwood Drive. It was his only clue to the whereabouts of Mary Whitman. But just as the letter suggested, the address led to a ruin. Although a building might have been there at some point, now all that remained was a wreckage of rusted metal and shattered glass. Graffiti covered the monstrous pile, painting it in vibrant shades of red and black.

As Arthur stepped into the ruin, he could see no hint of an entrance or sign of activity. Even so, there was some organization to the cluttered chaos. The debris spiraled around a central point, where the ruin reached its peak. There Arthur noticed what looked like an archaic network of gutters and pipes. It was a rainwater collection system. And as Arthur approached, he could hear a soft patter of water below.

While his eyes followed the pipes, Arthur noticed a black sigil painted onto a sheet of metal. The symbol depicted an ambiguous shadow of coiled tendrils, and at once, Arthur felt an unnerved tremble in his breast. Upon closer inspection, the metal sheet had a hinge on one side. It was a hatch.

Opening the hatch, Arthur found a ladder that descended far below, presumably into the bowels of the cultist base. Spurred on by equal parts duty and curiosity, Arthur climbed down the ladder. And before long, he found himself in an old cistern supported by stone columns.

Just as his feet touched the tiled floor, a dim, red light flashed from somewhere above. The murky light danced along the inky surface of the cistern water. While the flashing continued, a shrill cry echoed from far off. Then came the patter of steps against cold stone.

Arthur ran along the narrow path that led from the ladder to a rusted door. Before anyone could find him in the cistern, he exited onto a shadowy corridor. At once, a horrid stench stung his nose, making him want to vomit. That gut-twisting sensation only worsened as he entered a chamber cloaked in darkness.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust. But when they did, Arthur bit his tongue to stifle a scream. At the center of the room was a pile of rotting corpses, their limbs gnawed to bone by rats and their flesh crawling with maggots. The ceiling above extended far beyond sight.

Despite himself, Arthur approached the fetid mound. He recognized one of the faces, pale and bloodied as it was. Maggots swam through the man’s once lively eyes, but it was unmistakably Thomas Hoslow. He looked the same as his fifty-year-old photograph. But how could that be?

Regardless, what concerned Arthur more than anything else was the manner of Hoslow’s death. His limbs were torn, and his body was shredded into fleshy ribbons. Lacerations carved deep paths all over his skin as though someone had wrapped him in a circle of blades. Arthur had seen plenty of cruelty in prior investigations but nothing so violent.

Like any sane individual, Arthur decided to get out as soon as he could. But the sound of footsteps was approaching quick. There was no time to flee. He scanned the room briefly, but there was only one place to hide.

Having buried himself among the heap of gore, Arthur waited and listened. Two men marched past the room and into the cistern. After a few minutes, they strode back into the hall. “You think the intruder is in there?” one of them asked.

“What? With Tom and the others? I doubt it,” another man said. “I’m not even sure there is an intruder. Could’ve been a rat that set off the alarm.”

The first man sighed. “Are we just going to leave Tom in there? He was one of our own.”

“He was a traitor. Let the rats have him.” With that, both men disappeared down the hall.

As their footsteps faded, Arthur slid out of his hiding spot. Dark, coagulated blood stained his clothes, and maggots wriggled in his hair. He wanted to wretch and scream. But he had to get out. He ran for the cistern, but the door was locked. He looked at his phone, but there was no service. If Arthur wanted to leave, he would have to progress deeper into the cultist base. No one could help him now.

At the opposite end of the hall was a spiral staircase. Before Arthur could take a step upward, he heard a trembling cry and a drawn-out moan. He stopped to listen closer. He heard another horrid wail and another. It was not one person in distress but several, all crying out in pain. And beneath all the agonizing tones came a sound lower and more sinister. Arthur did not hear it so much as he felt it penetrating his skull, setting all his hairs on end.

Once he found the courage to ascend the stairs, Arthur came upon a long hall drenched in dreary, white light. Without doors or windows, the entire length of the hall was lined with narrow cells. In each of them was a prisoner, scrawny and pale. Their skin was riddled with sores and bruises, and in their eyes, he saw a look of unyielding terror.

Arthur tried to ask them questions, but the prisoners flinched as he approached and shrank into the shadows. “Please. Tell me what is going on here. What is this place?” Arthur asked them. Most merely shivered and cried. Others were utterly silent and despondent.

The sheer number of prisoners astounded Arthur. There must have been hundreds. Yet, Mary Whitman was the only missing person he knew of. How could so many have ended up here without notice? And more importantly, what were the cultists doing with them?

“Hey, over here,” one of the prisoners said in a surprisingly lucid tone. He stuck his hand through the bars and waved Arthur over. The man could not have been more than thirty-five. But his skin was striped with deep wrinkles, and his hair was falling out in patches. “Are you one of us? Have you escaped? Can you set me free?” the man asked.

“No, I came to look for someone. But what is this place? How did you get here?”

“What does it look like? This is a prison. But not like any other I have been to,” the man said. He licked his lips. They were cracked and half-coated in coagulated blood. “They moved me to this place from the Cooperstown Penitentiary. They told my family I was killed in some prison fire. But there was no fire. It never happened.” His voice trailed off. “No one is looking for me. But I’m not dead. I’m not,” he said, as if to himself.

“Do you know Thomas Hoslow? Is that name familiar to you?” Arthur asked.

The prisoner grumbled. “One of them.”

“One of them? You mean the Cult of Ungola?”

“Yes.”

Arthur glanced up and down the corridor. There were footsteps, but they were still far off. He leaned closer to the cell and asked in a hush, “What is the Cult of Ungola? Who is Ungola?” The prisoner closed his eyes and scrunched his face into a painful knot. He shook his head. “Please. You must tell me.”

“Not who. It’s not human.”

“What do you mean it’s not human?” The prisoner shook his head and slunk back into the shadows of his cell. Arthur could see his shoulders shake. The man was crying. “What are they doing to you?”

“No,” the prisoner said. “No. I don’t want to.”

“Please. I can help you.”

“No … I can’t.”

“Just tell me.” The prisoner started to moan and whimper. “I just want to help. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on here.”

The prisoner jumped towards the bars. “It’s torture!” he screamed. “They cut and they break and they wound until blood streams across the floors. They slice the flesh from our bones and smile through our screams. They say their words and they shatter our bones. Anything for the pain. So much pain.”

“Why are they torturing you?” Arthur said.

Smashing his head against the bars, the prisoner groaned and cried. “Don’t listen to them. It just wants to feed. They say it’s to keep him asleep. But Ungola wants pain. Ungola wants blood … and control. Everything. It controls … everything … in this nightmare,” he said through gritted teeth. Arthur didn’t understand. He asked the prisoner to help him make sense of it. But the troubled man couldn’t hear him. His sanity was unraveling fast.

“Do you know Mary Whitman?” Arthur said. “Can you tell me about her?”

“Nailed to a cross. Blood boiling. Nerves splitting. Darkness spinning. It’s not real. It’s not real! Wake up! Wake up!” Arthur tried to calm the prisoner, but he screamed more and more. The corridor boomed with his shouts. “Wake up! Wake up!”

A pair of cultists appeared at the other end of the hall, dressed in ceremonial black robes. They pointed and chased after Arthur. He ran down a side hall and then down another and another. It didn’t take long before Arthur was hopelessly lost. But he could not stop. The cultists were still behind him.

Arthur found a staircase and followed it up another floor. The air smelled of bloodied steel and hot disease. As he climbed the steps, the defeated wails of the prison faded. In their place grew a choir of soul-wrenching screams. The tormented tones struck a fear so deep and so primal. It was there Arthur found the torture chambers.

The rooms were as numerous as they were vile. Through slits in the doors, Arthur saw men splayed on racks, seated in barbed chairs, and hung from ropes. Their naked bodies were contorted and dislocated. Their skin ran with rivers of blood until the drains on the floor clogged and overflowed. Behind each of these contraptions was a cloaked figure, whose careful supervision ensured the pain never dulled and never relented.

No matter how repulsive the images he encountered, Arthur could not look away. In fact, he investigated every room he could as if addicted to the horror. But for once, Arthur was rewarded for his curiosity. Near the end of the hall, he found Mary Whitman nailed to an x-shaped cross. Her hands and feet trickled red while her face was utterly drained and pale. She was alone. Although he called her name, Mary could barely open her eyes let alone lift her head. He tried the door, but it was locked.

Arthur stood and stared into her chamber. He could not think what to do. It was Mary he had come for, and it felt wrong to leave without her. But he had no way to free her. Besides, it might be more practical to flee and find help. Yes, he needed to run before it was too late.

But before he could turn away, Arthur saw something shift in the dark corners of Mary’s room. It moved with the shadows, and it was the shadows. The amorphous, black mass gathered and unfurled. Tentacles writhed with gaping mouths that bristled with honed teeth. And at the peak of the twisted chaos was a vaguely human head without feature or expression. Its smile was vertical, tattered, and filled with a cluster of lidless eyes.

As if sensing the malevolent presence, Mary jolted awake. Inky tendrils crawled up her limbs with hungry mouths that gorged on her flesh. She strained against the cross and screamed until blood vessels burst in her eyes. Arthur could not help but join in her shouts. At once, the creature turned with eyes swollen and mouths spread. The mere sight of it sent Arthur into a maddened frenzy. He backed away from the door, straight into the arms of two cultists.

Minutes passed before madness released his brain. Even when Arthur calmed himself, his sanity was still in shambles and his nerves were on edge. But for good reason. The cultists were dragging him towards his own torture chamber. The door at the end of the hall was already open for him. He saw a stone slab, and a tray glittering with sharpened tools. He tried his best to resist, but his legs were as good as jelly.

“Why are you torturing people?” Arthur asked. “What was that thing in there?”

The cultists snickered. “You must have seen our god, Ungola,” said one.

“Consider it an honor,” said the other.

The cultists threw him on the stone slab and shut the door behind them. “What do you want?” Arthur asked as they bound his arms and legs. This time they did not answer. Instead the cultists selected blades from the tray and plunged them into Arthur’s flesh. Pain erupted across his body like a roiling fire. But he did not beg them to stop or ask for reprieve. He only asked, “Why?”

The cultists paused with their blades still lodged in his body. “To keep the god asleep,” they said.

“Which god? Ungola?”

They smirked. “You have no idea what you stumbled into.” With that, they continued the torture. The blades twisted and dug into his flesh. Blood ran through his fingers and pattered on the floor. All the while, Arthur screamed for answers. More than anything else, even an end to his suffering, he wanted to understand.

Suddenly, the door opened, and a gentleman in a black suit strode forward. At once, the cultists stopped the torture and returned their blades to the tray. “Lord Unger,” they said with a bow. Arthur glanced up from the slab, and the lord stared down at him. There was something unsettling about his features: eyes too big, mouth too wide, figure too fluid. He appeared like a poor copy of a person rather than a genuine human himself. And yet, there was something incredibly common about the man’s appearance. His expression was one Arthur had seen a thousand times before.

“Leave us,” Unger said in a chilling tone. The cultists obeyed without hesitation. Once they had gone, Unger crossed his arms and smiled. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Arthur Gaunt.”

“How do you know my name?”

Lord Unger circled around the stone slab, never once taking his eyes off Arthur. “I know many things,” he said with a lopsided smile.

“And who are you?” Arthur asked.

“Lord Warren Unger.” A fleeting ray of light reflected off his gaze. His eyes were flat and iron gray. “I am Ungola’s chosen emissary. I alone communicate with our deity.”

A shiver ran through Arthur’s spine. “I’ve seen your deity and the horrors it demands. I cannot understand why you would worship such a being.”

Lord Unger’s crooked smile turned into a sneer. But if Arthur’s comments insulted him, he did not say so. Instead he crouched beside Arthur and ran a finger through his streaming blood. He rubbed it between his fingers and tested its bouquet with a deep sniff.

“Though you may not realize it, there is power in blood. The power to prolong, for example.” Lord Unger rose to his full height and glared down at Arthur. “You have no idea how old we are. By Ungola’s power, we are virtually immortal.”

“Is that why you do it?” Arthur said.

“No. Ours is a higher purpose.”

“What is it? Your followers said it was to keep a god asleep. What did they mean?”

Unger’s lips spread into a wormy smile. With careful fingers, he unbound Arthur’s arms and legs. Then he stepped back from the slab and exited through the door. Just as he crossed the threshold, he instructed Arthur to follow.

Arthur struggled to his feet and joined Unger in the hall. “Do I have a choice?” he said.

“There is always a choice. Run if you’d like. My men will leave you be if I ask it of them.” Lord Unger spoke with his back to Arthur. Not once did he turn or even glance in his direction. He already knew what Arthur would do.

Together they walked down the dusky corridor, where the prisoners still wailed in agony. Unger was utterly deaf to the sounds. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back and his head held high. Nonetheless, he saved his monologue for after they spiraled deeper into the base, where the screams of the tortured would not interrupt his speech.

Having climbed three flights of stairs, they came upon yet another dingy, windowless hall. Lord Unger cleared his throat and began. “You asked me about a sleeping god. I am afraid we do not speak his name, and by our design it will be lost to history. Yet, there is one fundamental truth I will impart on you.” He straightened his suit jacket and fixed one, flat eye on Arthur. “The universe in its entirety, including you, me, and the nebulous void beyond, is but the dream of a god that exists beyond our own realm of time and space. For eons this being has rested in a sleep so long and deep that it is almost akin to death.”

Arthur laughed an empty laugh. “You cannot possibly know that,” he said. Even so, the lord’s knowledge settled in his mind with such ease and satisfaction. It was as though it had always belonged there. The truth was impossible to deny.

“In the dusty haze of genesis, there emerged another god, he who rules from the shadows, our lord, Ungola. Perceiving the reality of existence, Ungola has ever endeavored to keep the god asleep; for if this god were to wake, all of us would cease to be.” Lord Unger raised his hands and gestured to their surroundings. “That is why we do what we do. Ungola uses the power in blood to keep his sleep eternal.”

“Interesting,” Arthur said with a pant. His aching wounds made it hard to walk, but he pushed forward nonetheless. “A prisoner told me the last part is a lie. Ungola just wants pain and blood.”

Lord Unger stopped. “Which prisoner told you that?”

Arthur shrugged. “He never gave me his name.” Unger forced a smile and continued on his way.

They turned down another corridor. Its features were as bland and depressing as the rest of the building. But something felt different, familiar even. A stubborn throbbing started in Arthur’s heart, and his palms began to sweat.

“If Ungola is so powerful,” Arthur said, as he studied the corridor with suspicion, “Then why does he need a cult? Can’t he do everything himself?”

“Think of my worshippers more as guard dogs,” Unger answered.

“Your worshippers?”

Ignoring the question, Lord Unger entered a room that must have been his office. Moody, fluorescent lights illuminated a mahogany desk, where Unger’s papers rested in neat stacks. Opposite the desk was a spotless couch of burgundy velvet. Above it hung an abstract painting with provocative splashes of red and black. Layered one atop another, the splotches of color formed an ominous mass that appeared to reach outside the canvas.

Arthur looked at Unger’s office with a panicked disbelief. As soon as he set foot in the room, he was struck with an overwhelming sensation of déjà vu. Everything from the grain of the floorboards to the thickness of the air tickled a memory from long ago. He had been there before.

“Why does this all feel familiar?” Arthur asked, both to himself and to Unger. “Why do I know this place?”

But Unger ignored his questions. He delighted in Arthur’s confusion and the sound of his own voice. “The god is asleep, and so he shall remain for eternity. Yet, he yearns to awake. His subconscious is searching for the truth even if it doesn’t understand why.”

“Searching how?” Arthur asked. He could barely hear his own words over the pounding of his heart. But he had heard enough from Unger to wonder what he was getting at.

“As with anyone else, a dream ceases when the dreamer sees it for what it is and recognizes it as his own.”

Arthur knew there was more Unger wasn’t telling him. The cult leader enjoyed speaking in a roundabout manner. But their discussion was circling around the truth. Sooner or later it would all unravel.

Lord Unger approached an ebony door with a tarnished silver knob. He invited Arthur to open it. Although he could not say what lurked behind the door, Arthur was certain he should fear it. Some forgotten horror lay in wait, and he could feel the terror sinking into his bones.

“Why are you stopping? I have more to share with you,” Unger said. Arthur looked back the way they had come. It was not too late to turn around. Unger guessed his thoughts and smiled. “Would you like to return home? Would you drop your investigation and forget everything you have seen and learned? Could you? Or shall we pull more on that fateful thread and indulge your most fundamental curiosities?”

As Unger had said, there is always a choice. But in truth, there was only ever one choice Arthur could make. Compelled by that nameless force, he had arrived at this unnamable place. Any sense of volition was merely an illusion.

Arthur shuffled through the ebony door and found himself in a room of utter blackness. Not even the light of Unger’s office penetrated the dim interior. “It’s so dark,” Arthur said. He was scared to venture any farther into the unknown.

“There is a light if you wish,” Unger said. He shut and locked the door, sealing them inside the abysmal chamber. Then came the click of a light switch and the flicker of a lamp hanging overhead.

Although shadow still clung to the walls of the room, the center was fully illuminated. There Arthur saw a pit roughly ten feet in diameter. He poked his head over the edge and saw a pile of bodies several stories below. It was the same pile Arthur had seen when he entered the base. This is where Thomas Hoslow had died.

“Why … why did you bring me here?” Arthur stuttered.

“Oh, Mr. Gaunt,” Unger said, “I do enjoy our talks. But you did not think I would let you live?”

“Why? You could’ve just killed me on the slab or let your men torture me.”

“That is but a simple pleasure. But your appearance is a special occasion.” He stepped back into the shadow so only his twisted smile was visible. “Have you not always hungered for the truth? Hm? Like a moth to a flame, you would see yourself burned just to grasp that final riddle. So what then could be more painful than this? Here you are on the precipice of true epiphany. But I will not let you pass. Instead you will die with the pain of wanting and confusion. It is as you said. Ungola craves pain.”

As Arthur watched the lord’s crooked mouth speak, a lost memory fell into place. “Wait. I … I know you. I know this room.” He backed away from the pit and from Lord Unger. Terror and dread flooded his body. He receded into his arms, guarding wounds he had not yet suffered.

“Ah, so it is coming back,” Unger said. “Then perhaps you will remember what comes next.”

A curtain of shadow enveloped Lord Unger, mingling with and contorting his flesh into grotesque forms. Mouthed tendrils slithered and snapped; black gore frothed and bubbled; and a mass of engorged eyes emerged from the distended blackness.

Arthur cowered in his hands as the monstrosity’s dusky body scraped against the floor. “Why? Why do I know this?” he said. “I don’t understand.”

Ungola stroked Arthur’s head with a fleshy limb. The appendage traced the curve of his cheek as another wrapped around his leg. The creature loomed over Arthur. Although he could not see in the gathering darkness, Arthur felt its cold breath on his face.

“Every dream has its nightmare,” Ungola said. Savoring every second, the god of living shadow tore into Arthur’s flesh. Sinew ripped, and bone splintered. Throbbing organs spilled onto the floor, and severed veins gushed.

Yet, through every agonizing moment, Arthur screamed the same thing over and over. “I don’t understand. Please. I don’t understand!” But he would not get his answers. He died with the pain of wanting and confusion just as Unger had promised.

When Arthur had breathed his last, Ungola sighed with content. “Maybe next time,” he said. He tossed Arthur into the pit and watched with a lidless gaze. The butchered corpse tumbled and fell in pieces, joining the pile of all those who came before.

The King’s Travel

If you’re wondering where I’ve been these past months, well, I’ve been a bit busy. I’ve been busy creating a new travel blog called The King’s Travel. Already I’ve poured hundreds of hours into it, creating beautiful posts and pages, editing photos, and marketing on social media. So I really hope you’ll check out my hard work.

After several years with this website, I realized something. This is an incredible platform for self-expression and indulging in some of my interests. Whether it’s writing stories or talking treasure hunts, I achieved it here with you guys. But with so many different topics, I could never turn this blog into an effective business. To do that, I would need to focus on a specific niche. That’s why I created a new website, where I can now focus solely on travel.

Don’t worry. This site isn’t going anywhere. I know there are still people that come here regularly. I want them to have access to all that. But for anyone that really wants to support me or is addicted to travel like me, head over to The King’s Travel. I’m really proud of the work I’m doing, and the site is growing quick. So come join us! https://thekingstravel.com

As you many of you know, I spent the past 6 months living and teaching in Moscow. I had an unforgettable time there. I saw so many beautiful sights that I must share them with you. Here is my personal travel guide for Moscow with tips on where to eat, what to see, and where to party.

Local Transport

Unlike the US, public transport in Moscow is clean, cheap, and reliable. The most popular method is the metro. It may seem scary at first, but the metro lines are color-coded, and station names are usually written in Russian and English. So it isn’t that bad. Plus, the stations are gorgeous! New or old, they are works of art. The metro is a must.

But if you’re too nervous or lazy, there is always Uber and Yandex Go. Book the rides on your phone. They’re cheap and easy, and they run all times of the day. So don’t worry about staying out late.

Sightseeing

Red Square: This should be number one on anyone’s list. All the iconic buildings are there: the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, Lenin’s Mausoleum, and the State Historical Museum. See them up close or take some selfies from afar. Bolshoi Theatre: If you like ballet or opera, this is the place to be. The Bolshoi is one of the most famous theatres in the world. Its ballet company is the biggest and oldest in the world.VDNH: Short for Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy. It is an exhibition center with pavilions to celebrate the republics of the Soviet Union. The architecture is stunning, the fountains ornate, and the gardens gorgeous.Gorky Park: Moscow is full of amazing parks. This is the most famous. Situated on the Moskva River, you can walk for hours. There are plenty of pretty gardens, ponds, and statues.Moscow City: If you want modern architecture, Moscow City has breathtaking views. But if I’m being honest, there are better places to hang out. So maybe just snap a pic or two.

Food

Blini: These Russian pancakes are a delight. Fill them with jam, sour cream, or caviar. Don’t bother breaking the bank. You can find them in any cafe, and they’ll be just as tasty. Teremok and Shokoladnitsa are some popular chains. But any cafe works.Pelmeni: A meat-filled dumpling. Every culture has its version. Russians eat them with sour cream. Lepim i Varim is the best-known place to have them, but I’ve never eaten bad pelmeni while in Russia. Some pleasures are too simple to spoil.Caviar: Fish eggs aren’t for everyone. But Russia is known for them. Red caviar, which comes from salmon, is cheaper. But the black caviar, which comes from sturgeon, is as fancy as it gets. I say, “live a little.” Try it!Borscht: Technically, this beet soup is Ukrainian. But Russians love it too. It’s colorful. It’s healthy. And with a dollop of sour cream, it’s irresistible.Georgian food: Hear me out! Georgian food is delicious, and there are tons of great places to try it in Moscow. My favorite is Tkemali. The menu is big, so you can find whatever you want.

Bars and Clubs

As in many big cities, Moscow clubs practice face control. Nothing kills a night out like getting stopped because you “don’t fit their image.” Here are some places I know and love that accept everyone.

Papa Barvillage: Just want to drink? You can sit at one of the bars or find a secluded seat. Want to dance? There’s space for it. The regulars are nice too. One even tried (and failed) to teach me to dance.Timeless: This place oozes style. They are especially known for their hookah. It’s not my thing, but if it’s yours, you’ll find no place better. Plus, they have a couple different places around the city. So find the one closest to you.Bar Union Profsoyuz: This is my favorite! Don’t know what you’re in the mood for? Profsoyuz is a collection of bars with different themes and drinks. Hungry? They’ve got Brooklyn-style pizza and shawarma. DJs? Check. Live music? Check! I even got to see a famous group perform there. Trust me. You’ll be drinking and dancing until the sun comes up.

It began with the disappearance of Edwin Huntington, a pimply, bookish boy, whose only notable feature, if gossip held true, was his last name. He was sixteen years old and until that day showed no promise in any ventures, commercial or academic, even despite the plentiful assistance from his own family. But that really is quite enough to go on about the boy. You see, the Huntington family ruled over Dimwater. Whatever they pleased to have or wished to be, their swollen wallets made it so. And that is merely a statement of fact rather than a dim-witted judgment, for the Huntingtons have improved our sleepy, harbor town in ways beyond count or measure. So it follows, when I was summoned – and of course I was summoned. There is no greater detective for miles in any direction – I came running.

A week had passed since Edwin was last seen. Neither his parents Regis and Clara, nor his brothers Laurence and Kenneth had talked to him at the time. It was a servant boy that spotted Edwin. The two were kindred spirits, solitary and tight-lipped, due to which they never communicated beyond a subtle nod or curt smile. One such nod was shared that fateful night, after which Edwin was never seen again. The servant boy couldn’t remember what the young Huntington was wearing or where he was off to. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember anything useful at all. It was rainy. The wind was in the trees. He had eaten a slice of brown bread. There was mold on the crust. Yet, as it pertained to Edwin, he could think of nothing.

Once at Huntington Manor, I was escorted to the boy’s room by his mother Clara. Even in the autumn of her years, she was a stunning woman with ruby lips as full as her bosom, which was quite full indeed. Already I had taken several ganders. It was neither the time nor place for such thoughts, and I being a gentleman did not want to conduct myself improperly. However, rumors had reached my ears about the loveless nature of the Huntingtons’ relationship, and I had only just lost my wife to illness four months prior. Clara was alone in her marriage, and I was alone without my own. Though I suppose we are each alone in our own manner, so the matter was neither here nor there.

As we progressed through the sprawling estate, whose halls were surprisingly dim and dusty, Clara shared all significant details of her youngest and least favorite child. There wasn’t much. That is he did say something of a lighthouse guiding him to safe shores, and the call of women in the sea. But the darling Clara dismissed it as the melodramatic ravings of a sexually frustrated boy, who, unlike his brothers, had never learned the importance of duty or responsibility. This was a rebellion, and some deluded dream of sexual exploration. No doubt, she said, he was off somewhere with his nose up some tavern girl’s skirts. The idea was not entirely improbable or unpleasant.

Yet, as if in the same breath, Clara recalled how Edwin was a pious boy whose only friend was God himself. Most nights he lay awake for hours praying and reading of the lord’s mysteries. Once, perhaps a year ago (or was it two?), they sent him to the Dimwater library to study their collection of religious texts. He returned home with a veritable tower of books. Since then, they assumed, though surely they had never asked, he was in the process of reading through the vast hoard.

Thus, I had a confused image of the missing boy. According to his mother, Edwin was a devout Christian and a sexually frustrated fiend in the midst of rebellion. An odd description, though not so uncommon as you would think, even among the clergy.

Edwin’s room was bare but for the heaps of books that crowded his desk. White walls, fogged windows, and films of dust. That was the lonesome dwelling he called home. The large, vacuous chamber was also situated far and away from the rest of the manor’s inhabitants. I supposed the boy felt abandoned and outcast. Judging by the thickness of the dust, even the cleaners didn’t pass that way.

Centered on the desk, next to a rusted inkwell, was a leather-bound book. “Ah…his diary,” Clara said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She must have seen him with it before.

“Have you read it?” I asked.

“No. I am afraid I didn’t bother,” she said. She batted her eyelashes at me. “I presumed to leave that to the professional.” And leave she did. It seemed her curiosity and concern were muted at best. If this was how Edwin’s parents related to him, I felt for the boy.

To her credit, however, the boy’s diary was a sleep-inducing stream of melodramatic drivel. “Dimwater is a prison,” the first page read. “There is no more company in Huntington Manor than at the bay before the boundless, salted sea. I have no companion, no lover. No hand to hold, no arms to embrace. Every day passes empty and quiet.”

I pocketed the journal. Sooner or later I would have to read the diary in its entirety, but I was not currently in the mood to read someone else’s troubles. I had my own. Reading about another’s problems didn’t distract from my own. Rather, I felt them double in weight.

No. A better distraction was the looming wall of literature Edwin had amassed in his dusky chamber. To my surprise, only a few of the books pertained to religion, and what religion it was I could not say. The entire collection was a trove of occult wisdom. I remember such titles as “Morello’s History of the Supernatural,” “The Veiled Ladies Beyond,” and “The Daemon’s Grimoire.” In all the margins, Edwin had scrawled frantic notes, arcane symbols, and images of bulging eyes behind stretched skulls. More by chance than intention, I scanned some of the words written in those dusty tomes and felt shivers roil in my spine.

Then, in that cold, isolated chamber, I heard a voice. A woman’s voice. “Are you alone?” it said. “I can fix that.” The voice was clear and quiet as though whispered just behind me. Yet, it echoed as well, as if sounding from some far off place beyond reach or sight.

“Clara?” I said, whirling around. “Lady Huntington?” But there was no one there.

I chuckled to myself. It was a noticeably nervous chuckle, if anyone was there to notice that is. My mind was playing tricks on me. It yearned for company and crafted its own. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Speaking of which, I wondered where the young Edwin had chosen to find company. At the time, I still entertained Mrs. Huntington’s theory that the boy had run in search of peasants’ skirts. All this occult nonsense was troubling, though most probably nothing more than an obsessive pastime.

Given the maritime references, I could only presume the boy’s desires brought him by the sea. Specifically, he had mentioned a lighthouse, of which there was only one in Dimwater. A pathetic structure it was, standing a pitiful five meters atop a scraggly hill beaten to bedrock by the murky waves. At such a height, it could scarcely call a boat safe to shore, let alone a pubescent boy equally lacking in sense and sex. Besides, it is common knowledge that a lighthouse is no place for a female. While a boy might revel in the pleasures of booze and salt-soaked labor, there is nothing there to attract the gentler sex as it were. It may even be considered dangerous as a young lady to fraternize with such rugged folk, those drunken keepers of the light.

That is all to say I had little hope finding my missing person among our own folk. Edwin had departed Dimwater to see what else the world could offer. After all, he had mentioned “women in the sea.” Women plural. The poor wretch did not even have a specific girl to fix his loathsome eyes upon. “In” was a peculiar choice of preposition, though not peculiar enough to occupy considerable real-estate in my head. But I digress. The investigation led inevitably to the docks, where someone must have seen or known what became of the Huntington boy.

Indeed, it did not take long to track down the boy’s trail. The harbor was a vacuous assemblage of eroded planks and barnacle-encrusted sailboats. A stench of rotten fish pervaded the air, though it had lost its vigor. Nothing more than a memory at that point, and an unpleasant one at that. Though, I was glad to sense some substance, good or bad, in an otherwise empty environment.

Almost without notice, the fishing industry had died in Dimwater. I remember running down the docks as a boy, sifting through the day’s catches, curious to find the most freakish of creations the ocean had to offer. And then as a man, watching the ships set to sea with my dearly departed. Already I could scarcely recall the sweetness of her voice and the softness of her lips. Perhaps she was just a dream I had dreamt on my own.

In a hut by one of the only boats in port, I found a pair of men toking on a pipe. Their teeth were few and yellow, and one had a crazed look in his eyes as though age had begun to addle his mind. I could scarcely say he was present in the room. The other man, a weathered fellow with a bushy beard was aware enough at least to acknowledge me with a nod of his head.

“I am looking for someone. A boy,” I said.

“Aye. The Huntington welp,” the bearded man said. “Figured someone would come by.” He took a long drag of his pipe and coughed up a puff of blackish smoke.

“You’ve seen him?” I said. He nodded. “Where is he?” The bearded sailor kicked his colleague to elicit a reaction, but to no avail. He was unresponsive.

With a grumble, the bearded sailor spoke in his stead. “He’s been like this ever since. The kid came looking for a boat to some island out in the sea. ‘There’s nothing out there,’ we told him. ‘Naught but the waves.’ But he waved around some money, so we saw no sense in arguing. Had some X marked on his map. Eddy took him out there.”

“Why did he want to go there? Did he mention some women?” I asked.

“That he did. But there wasn’t no women out there,” the sailor said. “Eddy came back claiming unseen things dragged the boat against the current. Silhouettes roiled in the deep, storm winds and fog blanketed the inky waters. There was the stench of bilge and bile.” Still silent, the other sailor started to tremble. His eyes darted up and down and around. He took one last toke of his pipe and bolted outside to breathe the foul, fishy air.

“What happened to the boy?” I asked.

“Believe it or not, there was an island out there. Just a flat patch of land amid the waves. But the boy babbled about ladies in the mist and a lighthouse.”

“A lighthouse?” It was just as Clara had said.

“Aye. He saw a lighthouse out there, but Eddy swears there was nothing. No houses or town or even a hut. But Eddy had no intention to see the island closer. Whatever lurked in those cursed waters wanted them to go there he said. Eddy pulled the boat back, but the boy. He goes out swimming. And that’s the last we saw of him.”

“So he’s still on this island?”

“Aye. If he hasn’t starved already. That was well near a week past. Damn near forgot about the boy myself. After what Eddy saw, we both tried to.”

By this point, I wanted to forget as well, but the Huntingtons paid to get their boy back. A seafarer’s story would not suffice. And if I am expressing the utmost sincerity, I will admit the strange undertakings had piqued my interest. I had heard stories of hermits and shut-ins, whose minds had turned to madness without care or company. But for someone of such youth and status to deteriorate like so… Perhaps Edwin had always been ill, and in his state of neglect, no one had noticed. Or perhaps there was something substantive to his desperate behavior. A woman worth drowning for? A home worth running from? Something…more?

Standing on the docks, I heard a whisper on the wind, one of the feminine variety. It was breathy and quiet, so only the most focused of ears could hear. Yet, it was of a caring and kind quality, the likes of which aroused undeniable desire and longing. It was a voice to lay down in, folded in arms warm and wanting, tight against a hot breast, motherly almost. All that was quite a lot to hear in an ethereal trick of the ears played by the ever-present breath of the sea. But the simplest of sounds plays on the tenderest of hearts. And so it was, I concluded Edwin was not entirely out of his mind.

“I need to see this island,” I told the sailor. His furry brow wrinkled.

“Not with me or Eddy you’re not,” he said. “If you go, you go alone.”

That was fair enough as fair goes. I would go alone as so often I did. Using the handsome advance given to me by the Huntington family, I bought a small ship and a map marked with Edwin’s island in mind. My father, a crabber, had taught me how to handle myself on the sea. He himself had vanished there one stormy Sunday, along with his crew. It was a fate that awaited most seafarers so long as they kept to the career. Nonetheless, he was gone enough as it was, so Mother had already grown accustomed to the widow’s life. And, on the point I was coming to, I had learned enough from the man to hold my own that day.

In my humblest of opinions, the sea is a lonesome expanse. Despite the words of poets and romantics, there is naught but water for miles in all directions. Once you drift far enough, it is all you see. No land or bird or beast. Just the surf and its mind-numbing babble. Men had lost themselves to less.

While the wind held steady and the course held firm, I took the time to read more of the boy’s diary. The shift from melodrama to madness was a subtle one, though not lacking in a logic of sorts. That is to say I sympathized with Edwin. I saw how the tense turnings of his isolated mind could twist into the beliefs there forming. It was a warning for me and for many how simply sanity could drift when left to wander astray.

In the first pages, I saw the ramblings of a boy bereft of love and a life worth living. Somewhere along the way, however, his writings turned for the stranger. “The more I pore over the tomes of old,” he wrote, “The more the veils of reality peel back. Unseen paths and hidden beacons point the way to the Ladies of the Mist in whose embrace no longer will I feel so.” A fog rolled in, but the ship was steady for a time. I read further. Something prickled inside me. “A form is shaping of something higher, but my eyes are not enlightened enough to open. Whispers I hear from beyond the seams that bind us, but there is more to learn before the way is free. And I will find it there, where the lighthouse beckons.”

Something shifted inside me, something that can only be described by means of comparison rather than by language itself. It was like skin peeling from weathered limbs. I was breaking free from a shell I never knew I had. Something in the sensation sparked pleasure, but it was washed away swiftly by a rush of fear.

It was not only me that changed, but the waters as well. The sky had darkened and the waves were tossed. The puny boat that I had purchased bowed against the frothing waves. At once, I felt so small and insignificant amid that great and powerful ocean, helpless even. Yet, I could not turn back, for beyond the curtains of fog I spied an island. I prayed only that my puny vessel could carry me to shore.

As if in irritated reply to my prayers, something jostled the boat. And I do mean something because I could not think of any specific terminology to describe what I saw beneath the waves. They were shadows of a formless sort, a displacement of light without body or weight, silhouettes as the sailor had described. What matterless beings they were that lurked in the depths I could not ponder. They would not give me the time or breath. The creatures, whatever they were, knocked against my pathetic vessel. Borne atop the waves, they bashed into the hull, tipping it over with ease.

I feared for my life, not least because of the perilous sea. The inky black shapes circled around me with predatory intent, though I could see no jaws or fins or tail. I was as good as blind in a lion’s den waiting for the teeth to tear my flesh. Instead, however, I felt hands, gentle but firm, buoy me above the seafoam, pushing me as if in suggestion, though I doubt my choice was considered.

Carried like a child through the billowing fog, I saw a pearly structure bare its fiery head against the twilit sky. A lighthouse. At no less than a hundred meters tall, it was not the sort of building one could miss even at first glance. Also perplexing, as the silhouettes ferried me to safe shores, the island itself was approaching. I had little frame of reference to verify this was the case. Nonetheless, I was certain the island was calling me, and I calling it.

To my momentary relief, the formless shadows dropped me off on the island’s rocky coast. I say momentary because I realized there was no further means for me to return to Dimwater. Even if I found Edwin on the island, I could not hope to bring him home.

Moreover, I made the grave mistake of looking back. Where once I saw shadows wade through the sea, I saw then an ebony hand of gargantuan proportion slip below the surface. Bristly hairs lined its skeletal fingers, which were crooked and bent as if arthritic. I could not see what the appendage connected to, though the curiosity in itself was enough to stretch my skull.

Shaken to no end, I returned my attention to the lighthouse, whose lumbering height dominated the taciturn sky. The structure was composed of white, stone scales that curled in random degrees of concavity and convexity, giving the building the appearance of an unpredictable instability, for which reason an ambient, inescapable fear penetrated my bones.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed runes etched into the lighthouse’s surface. But they were not of any origin, ancient or otherwise, that I could recall. They encircled the bestial tyrant of a building from root to flaming tip. I could not say what for the builders covered their creation so painstakingly in that arcane language. Yet, I would learn nothing if I did not enter.

In place of a door, the lighthouse had a gaping maw lit sparsely by lantern fire. I proceeded with cautious and deliberate steps, uncertain what secrets lurked in the heart of that drifting patch of land. However, the entry chamber was remarkably nondescript. It was deceivingly small, though the boundless ceiling gave the sense of sinking beyond sight or memory. Lights shone from high above, but I could see no lift or stairs to lead to them. The only way open was a twisted stairwell that spiraled into the cold earth.

A girlish giggle sounded from below. As it resounded against the pallid stone walls, the noise deepened to a harsh growl. Against my best judgments, I followed the laughter down the sloped steps, which spiraled deeper into cramped halls and abandoned chambers. The path split once and twice, straying to impossible depths. A sickly, yellow light followed me there, casting vision on warped corridors, whose lacquered walls peeled at the seams.

In time, the way concluded on a forgotten room enveloped in mold and dust. At the far end of the chamber was a coarse slab of rock, and atop it an inkwell. I called for Edwin. I called for anyone. Yet, there was no reply. I was alone.

I approached the slab on which rested the well of ink. For the time being, it was the strongest hint of human occupancy I had come across. A coagulated crust covered the reservoir of ink, so I knew it had been some time since the substance’s use. In addition, I saw no papers anywhere near. Carved into the rocky surface, however, was a whole story like the Greek friezes of classical antiquity. The scenes showed a man with his back turned to a trio of women. Their faces were shrouded, and his was wrought with misery. The ladies reached out, and the man lifted his head to hear. Books surrounded him, and scrolls sat at his feet. He pored through them until each was open and unfurled. Only then did the man see the ladies and enter into their embrace.

Above the carving, though I had not seen it before, was a sequence of slanted sentences. I read them aloud even as my voice trembled in my throat. “Lonely eyes seek but cannot find. To their cries they harken and in literature learn. Enlightened then, the doors will open and worlds reveal, where never again will they lonesome feel.”

Dizzy-eyed, I peeled my sight from the carved slab. There upon the walls, where nothing before was seen, hasty words were smeared in ink. “My eyes are open. There is no way back.” I whirled around. Every surface was marked black in warning. “The worlds are open. Mine is shut.” And on the ceiling, “Alone I wish I was.”

Out of the corner of my eye, for a second so brief it might well have been a trick of the mind, I noticed a figure in the doorway. It watched me with unblinking eyes, pink and protruding like swollen pustules. The creature slipped away as soon as I turned. The last I saw of it were three gargantuan hands, which tenderly clung to the doorway with seven willowy nails.

No inch of my personage lacked in the overwhelming sensation of dread and horror that struck me then. My throat could not even mutter a word of distress before I backed myself into the corner. Cowering against those inked walls, whose despairing warnings had come far too late, I wondered what lurked in that lighthouse and when it might return. Due to the latter concern, I watched the door and waited for immeasurable amounts of time until courage surfaced from the unknown depths of my heart.

Ever so slowly I crept out of the chamber and into the hall. Small, curious creatures crawled across the walls. They resembled sea cucumbers of a deep, crimson hue with short tentacles at the end of their bodies. They used these slick appendages to pull themselves along and also, it appeared, to look around, for when I passed by, they bent towards me like flowers to the sun.

I followed the stairs back to the surface, every so often glancing behind me, painfully conscious that I was not alone in that arcane structure. While my feet raced to the freedom above, my mind searched into the shadows, conjuring images of that monster I had but briefly witnessed. So focused was I on that fearful thing that I forgot all about the Huntington boy, whose parents had entrusted me to find him.

And it was then I did find him. His body lay at the center of the entry chamber, stinking of rot. Those tentacled cucumber creatures dragged their fleshy bodies over his decaying mass and lapped up his coagulated blood. I knew then to near perfection what ills had befallen the poor boy. In his state of loneliness and neglect, voices spoke to him. Thinking them of feminine origin, he heeded their call. Guided, no doubt, by the false ladies’ hands, he studied the mysteries of this ill-begotten world. Knowledge led him to the island and to enlightenment. Only then did he see the truth.

But I still could not say what these ladies were in fact. Nor did I know the precise manner of the boy’s death. These puzzling questions caught me in a state of bewilderment, from which I could not move. It was the perfect opportunity for something to approach from behind.

“Do not be afraid,” a woman’s voice sounded from the steps. “He was afraid. He did that to himself.” A knife lay beside the boy. Although I suspected it was correct, I could not bring myself to face what spoke to me.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

“To care,” the creature said. “You are hurt and alone. Let me fix that.” Its voice drew closer, and I had not yet surrendered to the ever nearing certainty of my demise. So, I forced myself to face the threat, all the while clinging to my fleeting sanity.

The Lady of the Mist was an eldritch monstrosity of many limbs grafted one on top of the other. Her ribs, lengthy and discolored, protruded out of her abdomen and curled in on themselves like a basket. For a face, two distended and inflamed eyes sat above a gaping slit of a mouth which recalled something more than vaguely sexual. It was an abomination by any description, and to think, it instructed me not to be afraid.

There were two sensible decisions to be made. Edwin made the first, and I made the second by sprinting out of the lighthouse. I would swim back to Dimwater if necessity demanded it. What I saw, however, confounded my meager intelligence and struck me of all hope. Outside of the lighthouse was a world of realities stacked and woven one through the other. Cobblestone paths led over the sea through cities of glass and stone. Forests drenched in shadow lay below, where fish swam unaware of the earth hidden on top of their own. One of these ways might have led back to Dimwater, but for the life of me, my feeble mind could not guess which to choose.

Even so, it was a non-issue. I would never make it. To my unrivaled terror, every square foot was occupied by the Ladies of the Mist. At once, they saw me like a tourist lost among their city streets. Some rushed towards me, assuring me I, a lost soul, would be lost no longer. Others were satisfied in themselves. Grasped among their ribcages were yellow sacs filled with fluid. And inside people swam with fraught faces begging for freedom, yet too weak to pierce the membrane that bound them. They were small, weak, and wasting away. In distressed tones, they begged to be alone. But the creatures caressed their prisoners and cooed as would a mother to her child.

I ran back into the lighthouse, where my lady waited for me. She watched with her bulbous gaze and let me pass, knowing no action could change my fate now. I fled to the room marked with ink, and barred the door with the rocky slate. I pulled out the boy’s journal and began writing this account. She is outside now, waiting patiently for me to come to terms with the truth. To be clear, this is my method to cope, not a warning, for if you are reading this, you are already far too gone to help.

The ladies are everywhere. They have always been there, in every city and town, in every empty expanse of salt and sea. Now that I have gained this knowledge, I cannot unsee them. The more I see, the more I learn, and the more I learn, the more I see. My brain is expanding and slipping out of grip. I feel it pressing against the inner confines of my skull, fracturing it and bubbling forth like steam between the cracks.

She comforts me. Together we will not know neglect or isolation. Never again will I suffer the silence of lifeless rooms and the hurt of departed relations. My horror is a phase to pass. But she cannot see the truth that something has already taken the place of fear. She cannot understand the comfort of quiet and self-company, of which I will never know again.

One of my favorite stories, The Yakutia Incident, is now on YouTube. So, if you’re looking for something cryptic and spooky, look no further. You can also catch my stories on Spotify. Whatever way you choose to enjoy, I appreciate your support.