I took a walk in the woods. I love being out in the wild, the racket that nature makes when it's left alone. I live near a very large, state-protected forest, and while it's not exactly legal to do, sometimes I go along trails that aren't mapped. I've lived here my whole life, I know this area well. I'm used to going out and getting lost, though with GPS it's hard to get really, truly lost. It's relaxing to find myself in places I've never been, I don't find it eerie or intimidating. With my new job, I haven't had as much time to go out as I'd like. Adult life brings along things 'more important' than strapping on my pack and wandering out into nature with a can of bug spray and a book or two. But this weekend, I had some free time. So I went for a long walk. I live in the Northwest, and if you've been in the woods here, you know how dense the undergrowth gets in the summer. But it's fall right now, and while it's certainly still jungle-y out there, it's not impassible like it can be at the height of the growing season. I went along the mapped trail for a few miles, then struck out on my own. It was beautiful, the trees were on fire with bright orange leaves. A carpet of them had already fallen; they crunched under my feet in an entirely satisfying way. I listened to the birds calling, the rustle of small animals in the bushes. There's no more beautiful place on earth than a Northwest forest in fall.
I went for about four miles, going in no particular direction, before I stopped to eat the small lunch I'd packed. I sat on a rock and closed my eyes, the sun leaking through the canopy and warming pieces of my face. A squirrel screamed at me from somewhere above, and in time it prompted me to move on. I went another three or so miles before I stopped and set up camp.
Normally, I limit my trips to same-day excursions. But how could I pass up a weekend spent in the woods when it was so lit up, so dripping with fall? The night was clear, bitterly cold. I huddled in my sleeping bag and listened to the forest come to life around me. At some point, I heard the soft scrape of a muzzle against the side of my tent. A deer, coming to inspect the odd spot of green in the clearing. I slept very well and woke refreshed, feeling more myself than I had in a long time.
I walked through the woods at a casual pace, monitoring my progress with my GPS. By noon, I'd gone another four miles, leaving me about ten from where I'd started. Far from home, from the noise and bustle and anti-like stupidity of modern life. So it was a surprise when I stepped on something and heard the unmistakable snap of plastic shattering.
I looked down, coming out of my pseudo-trance. Lifting my boot, I saw a flash of bright blue pressed into the dirt. I bent down, picked it up. The cap to a ballpoint pen, now broken into several pieces. I stood up and glanced around. Litter isn't uncommon, we're a generally filthy species, but I'd rarely found it so far out before. I saw no signs of recent human activity, but the pen cap was new, hardly faded. I put it in my pocket with a small spark of irritation. It seems we can't go anywhere without leaving traces of ourselves behind. I kept walking. I had only gone another quarter of a mile when I saw the pen stuck into the ground, point up. I growled, honestly angry now, and pulled it out of the ground. I shoved it in my pocket, entertaining evil thoughts directed at whoever had been out here and felt it necessary to leave parts of their life behind.
Something glinted, sparked a beam of sunlight halfway up a tree ahead of me. I squinted, tried to make it out. It wasn't just one spark of light, I realized. Something reflective had been placed up the tree. What on earth...? I went closer, my neck craned up to get a better look. It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. Pens. At least forty or fifty. They'd been pushed into the bark of the tree, point first. All different kinds, from what I could tell. Cheap ballpoints, fine tip, gel, even one Monte Blanc. They bristled out of the tree like porcupine quills. I stood for a long time, my mouth screwed tight, brow furrowed.
An art project, I decided. Some sort of odd, modern statement of the banality of modern life against the harshness and beauty of nature. I lived in a hippie-centric area of the country, and this was just the sort of thing I could see someone doing. Coming out here, to this remote part of the woods, and filling a tree with pens. How many other people would ever see this? Maybe that was the point. It would certainly make an excellent story. I touched the pen in my pocket and moved on.
I walked through the woods, allowing my mind to clear again. But something had changed. The once calm, tranquil atmosphere of my walk had been shattered with the knowledge that someone else had been here. Could, I supposed, still be out here. And I began feeling something that I'd never felt out in the woods before. A tightness in my chest, the temptation to glance behind me. Sweat pooled under my armpits, ran down my sides. I was nervous. For the first time in my life, I was scared of the emptiness and simultaneous fullness of the forest around me. I hummed to myself, told myself I was being childish. But the image kept coming back to me: a hippie, their hair in long dreadlocks, lugging a bag full of pens into the middle of the woods. Following the exact non-trail I'd taken to end up here, so far from anything. How had they gotten that far up the tree? I imagined them scrambling up with a home-cooked device, using a hammer to pound the pens into the bark. The sound echoing around, slamming into the trees and ricocheting off like bullets. That, more than anything, disturbed me. The sound of a hammer in the wilderness. I was so deep in thought that I didn't notice I'd come to the clearing until I'd almost stepped on the shirt. I stopped just in time, my foot only an inch or two above it. I pinwheeled my arms, stumbling backward to the edge of the clearing.
My eyes focused, took in the scene in front of me. Blood rushed to my head, my hands and feet going cold. My hand went to my pocket, gripped the pen, as I scanned from left to right. The clearing was square. Almost perfectly so. The bushes, undergrowth, everything had been stripped away. All that remained was the rich, dark soil. In the middle of the clearing was a stunted, scrawny tree of middling size; the branches were knobbly, oddly twisted.
Beginning at the edge of the clearing, where I now stood, a spiral pattern had been created, winding around many times until it ended at the foot of the strange tree. Clothes. Laid out as if waiting to be put on. All different, but all belonging, it seemed, to men. The outfit nearest me closely resembled my own: a plaid shirt, workman's jeans, leather boots. Neatly laid out, free of any debris or fallen leaves. I followed the spiral, taking note of certain outfits. A very nice, expensive suit, complete with tie and leather dress shoes. A polyester fast food uniform. A blazer and slacks. A cotton t-shirt and sweatpants, the sneakers well worn. My gaze returned to the outfit at my feet, and at the collar of the shirt, it appeared something had been planted. A row of something, dull white. I bent down, the popping of my knees causing my heart to leap. I reached out, brushed one of the white things, before recoiling with a strangled yelp.
Teeth. Pressed into the dirt. The molars still had bits of food in the creases. The teeth were in order, evenly spaced in a horrible grin. The roots had been pressed into the soil, ensuring they would not be easily disturbed. I stood, gingerly stepped into the clearing, and walked along the spiral. Every outfit was complete with teeth. All evenly spaced, all accurate down to the last canine. As I got closer to the tree, shivering with a primal fear and dreadful fascination I'd never known, I began to hear a humming. It vibrated through the air and into the small bones of my ears. I could feel it deep in my head, in the darkest part of my brain. It was coming from the tree. I stood in front of it, carefully avoiding the cotton long-sleeved shirt at the base. The top of the tree was only a few feet above my head, and I was able to clearly observe the strange, shriveled seed pods on the tips of the branches. I'd never seen anything like them. Upon closer inspection, it seemed that they were almost impaled upon the points of the skinny, shriveled branches. One near my eye level was thicker than the others, more ripe. I reached out to touch it.
The surface of it erupted, exploding out toward me in a fury of humming and buzzing. I cried out, flinching backward, and felt the brush of wings against my hands. I looked at the seed pod, now clear of flies, and saw that it was not a seed pod at all. It was a tongue. One end ragged, as if ripped off by force. The flies began to return, crawling over the surface, lapping at the liquefying tissue. They clambered over one another in a frenzy, their awful wings humming and burrowing into my ears, my head.
It felt as if my head was coming apart. The buzzing got louder, and I felt a stinging sensation on my stomach. I stumbled back, my vision tunneling, and all I could hear was the resonating thrum of the flies. I slipped on a shirt, could feel the teeth under my boot, and I ran. I ran out of the clearing, crashed through the woods, but still I could hear the flies. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn't hear anything but the buzzing of the flies. I screamed and my head ripped apart inside. As I fell, I could feel thousands of tiny legs crawling on my face, into my ears. I blacked out, shrieking into the all-consuming rumble and thrumming of the flies.
I woke up, how much later I couldn't tell. I was on the trail, in sight of the entrance to the woods. I could not remember getting here. Could not remember my desperate flight through the woods that would have taken me back to where I'd started. I picked myself up, the scratches covering my face and arms burning. I limped back to my car. Drove home in a daze. I entered my apartment, heard from some distance the meowing of my two cats, angry about my late arrival and offended by their bowls that had only been empty for a few hours. I fed them to pacify them. I stripped my clothes off, dropped into a warm bath, and fell asleep.
I woke up a few hours ago. I have cleaned my scratches, thrown away my filthy, torn clothes. And I have only now noticed that the rash on my stomach is something more than that. In the mirror, it is reversed. But if I were able to step outside myself, I would be able to read what it says:
quiet
Hey guys! To celebrate my new Tumblr reaching almost 900 followers, I figured I’d go ahead and put down a story that I won’t share on Reddit to thank all of you! I have a close friend who grew up in the area I did, so we have some similar memories of the woods, and going out in them. He used to tell a story when were kids that I never believed because he was pretty infamous for making shit up, but I’ve been reflecting more on it as I’ve been writing these other ones. When he was about twelve, he belonged to a Boy Scout troop, and they went out to a campsite for a weekend retreat, or whatever you call those things. As I recall, he said it was him and about twelve other kids. He and like three other kids decided that after everyone had fallen asleep, they’d all get up and go fuck around in the forest, try and see which of them would wimp out first. They ended up waking up one other kid on accident, and he wanted to go with them, so they all headed out pretty late at night. He said he didn’t know exactly how late because he didn’t think to check the time, but he estimated that it was a little after midnight. Only one of them brought a flashlight, so they stayed pretty close together. They got out far enough that they weren’t afraid of waking anyone up, and they were horsing around and messing with each other, trying to spook everyone. My friend said it was actually really fun until one of the kids pointed ahead and said that he saw something. They followed this kid, and he led them to what looked like an old, big fire pit. The kid was standing over it, looking into the center of it, and he asked for the flashlight. Everyone gathered around, and my friend said it was the strangest thing. He said it almost looked like one of those old Warner Brothers cartoons, where there’s an almost perfect circle made of solid black on the ground. He said he actually bent down to touch it and see if it really was just paper, but his hand went right down into the ground. When they lit it up with the flashlight, they could see that it was, in fact, an almost perfect circular tunnel into the earth, but there were crude dirt steps carved into the sides, spiraling down. Now, the pit itself was about five feet wide, and the circle was almost exactly that, so it was plenty large enough for a small boy to go down in there. They did they typical things: yelling down into it, dropping a few rocks to see if they could hear it land, but they couldn’t see or hear where it ended, so the talk turned to electing a kid to go down in it. My friend begged out of it, and he got ragged on, but he said it just didn’t seem right, and he didn’t think any of them should be going down it. But the kid with the flashlight, who was sort of the unofficial leader, gave my friend the flashlight and said he was going to check it out. He climbed down into it and started following the stairs, which spiraled along the sides and down in a steep twist. He said once he got down far enough, he’d call for the flashlight, and my friend would toss it down. Stupid logic, but maybe the kid wanted to prove he wasn’t scared. They watched him go down, keeping the light on him, until they couldn’t see him anymore. Eventually, they could barely hear him, and my friend started asking him to come back up. They said the last thing they heard him say was something to the effect of: “It’s just going and going!” And then he vanished, and they couldn’t see or hear him. Not knowing what to do, but also not wanting to follow him down, the rest of the group waited by the pit for hours for this kid to come back. It was late, and they were little boys, so at some point all of them fell asleep. When they woke up, it was daylight, and the circle was gone. The ground was flat, like it had never even been there. They all panicked and dug down as far as they could, but there wasn’t even a trace of the tunnel. My friend said it wasn’t like a cave-in, it was like there’d never been anything there in the first place. They rushed back to camp, where everyone was just starting to notice their collective absence, and told the counselor what had happened. Now he didn’t believe the whole bit about the weird tunnel, but of course he could see that a kid was missing, so he called the police and a search was started. My friend and the rest of the remaining group led the searchers to the fire pit, and there was a massive excavation, but they never found anything. They searched the area for miles, investigated a lot of sex offenders in town in case it was an abduction, but they never found a single trace of that kid.
I loved my wife. I loved her so much. She was unspeakably precious to me and we were so happy. I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about how we met or our life before that house. It’s both unimportant and painful. But I must stress that I loved her more than anything in the world. I’d watch her sleep, her eyelashes resting on her cheeks, her lips parted while she snored softly. I adored her from the moment we met, and that over-the-moon feeling never stopped. She was beautiful. She had red hair that she wore in a braid over her shoulder. One had was slightly bigger than the other and we joked about it. She was small, but not bird-like. When she laughed, I laughed too. She had a habit of bumping into me when we walked together in public as if she was just making sure I was there. I’d never met someone that I’d shared that much joy with. Who was so easy to be around. I married her the second I got the chance. I loved her so much. She got pregnant four months ago. We agreed our apartment wasn’t going to cut it, so we looked around for a nice starter house in the country. Nothing huge, nothing fancy. Just a one-story box we could raise our child in. We ended up getting a great deal on a small house about twenty minutes outside of town. Since I worked from home, the commute wasn’t going to be an issue. And we both agreed that we’d rather raise our baby away from the inner city. My wife was raised on a large piece of property in Yorkshire, and was always talking about how nice it was. How you could go to sleep with your window open at night and only hear the sounds of the animals, the wind moving through the trees. The snow makes a sound when it falls. Did you know that? She asked me once. It sounds like moth wings flapping. Like sighing. I’d been raised in a high-rise in the middle of a huge metropolitan area. I did not know that the snow made a sound when it fell. I was charmed. We moved in around November, when she was about two months along, and the first night we were there, it snowed. I opened our bedroom window wide and listened. She held my arm. “See? It sounds like so many little things sighing.” We went back to bed and I held her close as I made love to her very gently. We set up the house, decorated with a non-specific but pleasing theme. We met our few neighbors, whose houses were spaced a good distance from our and each other. Everyone was pleasant and seemed happy to have a young couple finally join the community. A few of us agreed to exchange keys in case of an emergency or an accidental lockout. It tickled me. I wasn’t used to such open hospitality. My wife fit in wonderfully. A pretty young mother-to-be, our neighbors fawned over her. They showered us with cakes, dinners, casserole dishes, and hand-knitted gifts for the baby. My wife handled these gifts with her usual grace, and smiled sweetly when she received them. She’d hold the hand-made, misshapen clothes, and beam at the old women who delivered them. She’d make a great fuss, invite the women in for tea and make company with them, all the while exclaiming over the cuteness of the lumpy booties and bulbous hats. When the women left, she’d show them to me and we’d laugh, wondering about what monstrous child could possibly fill them. We were happy. My wife grew more and more radiant every day. Her small belly grew to a noticeable bump, and I’d walk in on her standing in the nursery, touching the walls, the crib, and whispering to the baby growing inside her. I held her at night, my hands protectively cupping her belly. I kissed her neck and was so overwhelmed with how much I loved her. I told her I’d protect her, keep her and our child safe. She curled her toes around mine and sighed deeply as she drifted to sleep. God, I loved her so much. The sleepwalking started around her third month. The first night it happened, I woke up in the middle of the night and sat up. It seemed like something had startled me out of my sleep. A sound or maybe a flicker of light I turned to look at my wife and found that she wasn’t there. I wasn’t alarmed at first. More and more she got up to urinate multiple times at night. As the baby grew, it pressed against her bladder. She complained about it in a good-natured way, shuffling off to the bathroom. I got up and knocked on the bathroom door. It opened. She wasn’t inside. Slightly more awake, I padded out of the bedroom and wandered the house, looking into various rooms. “Honey? What’s going on, are you okay? Where are you?” She didn’t answer. My heart stared to beat a bit faster. I opened the hall closet and jumped back, startled as a broom fell out. I caught it and stuffed it back in. Thoroughly spooked, I wandered the house, looking in the dining room, the living room, the spare bedroom and bathroom. My heart beat faster. My nerves rose with every space. When I flicked on the kitchen light, I yelped before I could stop myself. She was standing on the kitchen counter, her head cocked to one side as if she were listening. My heart dropped and I ran over to her. “Ellie, Ellie, honey, come down. What are you doing? Are you all right?” She didn’t respond to my voice or my touch. It took me a moment to realize she was still asleep. Terrified, I ran into the dining room and grabbed a chair. I walked over to her and with great difficulty I coaxed her to step down onto it. I scooped her up into my arms, holding her tightly and carried her back to our bedroom. Her eyes were wide open, unseeing .She mumbled something as I put her down and I shushed her as I tucked her in. She mumbled again, looked me in the eye, and went back to sleep. She was snoring before I was back in bed. Not bothering to go and shit off the kitchen light, I curled up beside her, holding her tightly against me. I stayed awake for an hour or so trying to see if she would get up again, but I was reasonably sure she wouldn’t. I fell back into a restless sleep. The next morning, when we woke up sweaty and tangled together, I asked her if she remembered anything. Her blue eyes wide, she searched my face for truth. And when she saw it, she covered her mouth with childish alarm. “You’ll have to start locking the bedroom at night, John.” She was adamant. She wouldn’t risk harm to our unborn child. I installed a lock that afternoon. But the sleepwalking continued. Almost every night I woke up to an empty bed, and I’d find my wife in various places around our room. In the closet, curled by the door, standing by the window. One particularly terrifying episode I found her on top of our huge bureau. She was hunched against the wall, her eyes wide and feral. I had no idea how she had got up there, and I had to go and get a ladder to get her down. As I helped her navigate the steps, she said something. Her small feet touched the carpet and she looked me in the eye with grave seriousness. “You can’t save us, John. But don’t worry. We’ll be waiting for you.” It was eerie. How her eyes looked when she said it. Lit as if by some weird radioactive light. I shushed her and tucked her back into bed. One night I found her at the window, opened, the curtains blowing around her like wings. I got up to help her and as I got nearer I saw that she was pressed against the windowsill. Her belly was crushed against it and her eyes stared out at the sleeping landscape. Her hands hung limp at her sides. I grabbed her harder than I intended and it woke her up. Alarmed, she gripped my hands which dug into her shoulders. Her eyes were hurt, terrified. “John?” Her knees gave out and I managed to catch her. She clutched her belly, moaning. I told her to hold still, to hang on, and to take deep breaths. She reached between her legs, and when she drew them back, there were spots of blood on her fingertips. She let out a breathy scream. The ambulance came and took my poor, terrified wife away. I rode with her, holding her hand, her smaller hand. Her eyes never left mine. The ultrasound revealed that nothing was wrong. The baby hadn’t been harmed. Spotting, the doctor, said was not unheard of in this stage. But, the doctor warned us, to keep him informed of any more incidents. We were beyond relieved. I kissed my wife as she wept, relieved, and I dried her tears. The doctor prescribed her a very mild sedative to help her sleep at night. She began taking the sedatives. As soon as it started, the sleepwalking stopped. She slept soundly, her hands curled under her chin. I watched her sleep, my heart full to bursting. I loved her so much. Shortly after my wife began to sleep at night, my nightmares began. They were always the same. I’d wake up and Ellie would be gone. I’d get up, frantic, and search the house for her. The rooms were empty, full of a strange, thick fog that burned as I inhaled it. It was caustic, smelling strong of ozone. The fog made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I ran through it, as if it where electric. It slowed me down, made it hard to search for her. Eventually, I’d end up at the back door and find the back garden had been replaced by a featureless, gray landscape. It was like stepping into thick mud, the way the earth grabbed onto my bare feet, wormed between my toes. I’d wander around the perimeter of the house, calling her name. The sky went on and on, cloudless and dark, and when I looked up with it I could feel a dizzying certainty that if I were to fall up into it, I’d fall forever. The only thing keeping me on the ground was the sticky, mudlike stuff. I’d call her name over and over, the sound falling flat in the still air. I’d end up back where I’d started, and my heart would start to race. Where was Ellie? Where was my sweet, pretty wife? I had to protect her from whatever was coming, and something was coming. I could hear it. The sound reverberated from the sky, rolling across the dead, flat land. A low, electric humming. The mud would cling to my feet, holding me in place, and I’d sense her behind me, as if she’d been there all along. “John?” I’d try to turn but could only move my eyes. Strain them, trying to look over my shoulder, to see her face. She’d lay her hand, her larger hand, on my shoulder. “I love you, John. I love you.” I knew it wasn’t my wife. I’d scream, and I could hear the roar as the sky began to fall, racing towards the earth, falling to infinity to crush me, crush her, crush everything. And the hand on my shoulder would grip me tighter, and… I’d fly upright, the sheets stuck to my damp skin, a scream caught in my throat. I’d immediately turn to her, my lovely, sleeping wife, and I’d touch her shoulder gently. She’d frown, her lips pursed into a child’s petulant bow, and roll over, farther from my touch. I’d lay back down and watch the rise and fall of her back, breathing deeply. I loved her so much. When we were reasonable sure her sleepwalking would not continue, my wife stopped taking her sedatives. They made it hard, she said, to get up and use the bathroom when she needed to. For the first few nights she was off them, I’d stay awake, watching her. My nightmares made sleep undesirable as it was, so I didn’t mind. Aside from her frequent trips to relieve herself, she slept soundly. I began to love these late nights, staying awake and watching her sleep. She mumbled sometimes, but nothing I could understand. I’d stroke her red hair, touch her skin. Sometimes she’d smile, sometimes she’d turn away. Most nights, I’d be awake watching her until midnight. It was peaceful, listening to her breathing, watching the moon slip behind the clouds. The owls hooted, small animals moved through the bushes. I could appreciate why some people chose to be nocturnal like them. But as sleep deprivation caught up with me, I began to drift off earlier and earlier. Her leaving always woke me up, but slowly, our routine began to go back to the way it had been before the sleepwalking, before the nightmares. We slept soundly, our rhythms in sync once again. And, I loved her. I loved her more every day. Two weeks ago, I woke up after midnight. It was snowing. My wife wasn’t beside me. I sat up and air felt thick about me, palpable. I felt an odd sense of calm, an almost medicated feeling. I had been deeply asleep, I supposed, but despite the drag of sleeping wanting to bring me back to the covers, the warm pillows, I waited for her to return. I waited. I watched the minutes pass on our small digital clock. I got out of bed and went to the window. I opened it. The sky was gray, lit with a dull light from the towns not far from us. Snow was falling. I could hear it settling on the branches of the trees, the half-buried grass. She was right, I thought. It sounded like the sighing of many small things. I watched it for a while, listening to the sighing snow. The land around us, our neighbors, tucked in and quiet. All of us in hibernation, waiting for the sunlight to tell us to come out, to see the new day. The air was cold in my face. After some time, how much I don’t know, I closed the window and turned back to the room. It had been quite some time. I felt the pull of my wife, somewhere in our house. I opened the door and padded into the hallway. It seemed to me that I could still hear the sighing of the snow even through our walls. It was so quiet. The light at the end of the hall was on, our spare bathroom. I stood in front of the door and listened, hearing nothing but the small sighing of the many things outside. I knocked gently and the door swung open, and for a wonderful moment, the last one, everything was still wonderful. My sleeping wife, my lovely child, my beautiful wife, must have gotten sick and gone here to avoid waking me. I wanted to comfort her. I held my hand out to touch her back, which was facing me. She was curled by the toilet, her face in her hands. It was so sweet of her to think of me, as the illness, which came so rarely now, gripped her. Her head in her hands, her red hair flowing over her shoulders and hiding her face, she was so small. So lovely and innocent. Her head bobbed and my heart ached for her. I loved her so much. Her hands, which were cut at her mouth, holding in the sickness. I loved her so much. I looked at her, down at my hand which reached out to her. Saw the blood that I had been standing in that had tracked onto the bottom of my trouser legs. I said her name, her name, that I whispered in her ear as I made love to her, her name that I turned into Ellie-Bellie when I was teasing her, I said her name and she looked up at me, her blue eyes so wide with wonder and that queer light. Her face was smeared, covered with something more red than lipstick. It was on her hands, trailed from her past my feet, out of the door. Her hands that I loved to kiss and hold had something cupped in them. She smiled up at me, her wonderful child smile, red was on her teeth. She smiled and the red dripped down her pretty face. “John, I love you, John.” Her head dipped, brought the red mouth with the red teeth inside to the red hands. She bit, and swallowed, smiled up at me, dipped her head, bit, swallowed. I watched her delicate throat move with each mouthful she took. I fell to my knees, into the red that tracked up her shins, her thighs, and was slowly trickling out of her darkening her nightie. She smiled at me again. The red, the dark, dark, red, was caught in between her teeth. “John, I had to get it back inside. I had too. Don’t you see? I had to get it back inside.” She held her hands out to me, one hand bigger than the other, just slightly. I looked at what remained and all I saw was red. Dark, dark red. She smiled. My innocent wife who I loved so much. “I had to get it back inside.” And as she swallowed the rest, the rest of that dark, dark, red, I could hear the sighing outside turn into a low rumble. A roar. The sound of the sky coming down upon us. Coming down to consume me and my beautiful wife. Who I loved so much. The sky fell upon us, and I cried her name out into the dark.
I'm writing this out of the absolutely desperate hope that maybe just one of you will be able to read this.
I woke up just a little over a week ago and everything was normal. I live by myself in an apartment on the outskirts of town, and I don't really get out much aside from work and socializing with a few friends. I got up this particular morning and everything seemed fine. I checked my phone, and didn't have any messages, which was slightly odd, but it was a Sunday so the lack of any email or texts wasn't entirely out of the question. I was getting into my car when I noticed, in that sort of off-handed way one notices such things, that one of the neighbors across the street was mowing his lawn. I waved, but he didn't look up from his mowing. I just shrugged it off and went to work.
When I got home, he was still mowing his lawn.
I got out of my car and stood in the parking lot, watching him. I tried to think of any reason he might still be out. There was no way this dude had been out there for going on nine hours, just mowing the same patch of lawn. But all of the grass was cut, and it looked like he was just going in the same back-and-forth pattern. I checked to make sure my phone was in my pocket and I walked over to see what was up. It was just too weird not to ask about.
When I got closer, I could see that the top of his bald head was blistered from the sun. It was a hot day, and his shirt was soaked completely with sweat. His eyes were glazed over and dry looking. I didn't think he'd blinked in quite a while.
'Hey.' I said over the sound of the mower. He didn't answer, just kept mowing. 'Hey! Are you okay, dude?' Nothing.
I stood there for a while before I called the cops. I figured he'd had some weird psychotic break, or maybe he was on drugs and didn't know how much time had passed. When they showed up, they tried to get him to stop, but he just kept mowing. Eventually, they called an ambulance, and it took three cops to get this guy to let go of the mower and climb onto the gurney. Watching him move, it was like his muscles were locked. Like they were trying to move a corpse going into rigor mortis. And the guy never made a sound. Never blinked. I gave my statement, and when the cops left, I went back inside. It shook me, but I tried my best to brush it off and relax. I drank a few beers and went to bed.
I woke up the next morning, like normal, and checked my phone. No messages. I got dressed, walked out to my car, and started to drive to work.
And that's when shit hit the fan.
Not even a block from my apartment, I started seeing devastation. Cars had crashed into buildings, embankments, road signs. Debris covered the street, knocked out of garbage cans and thrown from popped trunks. I slammed on my brakes and stared. It was like my mind wouldn't process what I was seeing.
All the people I could see, all of them, were frozen in place.
They were still inside the ruined husks of their cars. Just sitting there. On the sidewalks, people had stopped mid-stride. I saw one man who was frozen in a half crouch. He was going to tie his shoe.
And I could hear the strangest sound. Like a hodge-podge of voices, all mixed together, but not saying anything. I walked over to the man tying his shoe, and I pinpointed one piece of the sound coming from the woman walking closely behind him.
She had a cellphone pressed to her ear. Her mouth was open, frozen in the middle of a word. She was making a non-stop, drawn out 'aaah' sound. You know how sometimes, a video game will lag, and the character dialogue will freeze on one sound? It was like that. I listened to this woman make that sound for five minutes. I timed it. She should have run out of breath. But she didn't. She just kept making that sound.
I don't remember much about what I did for the next few hours. I know at some point I got back in my car and drove into town, avoiding the cars that had crashed and the people who had frozen in the middle of the streets. I stopped in the middle of town and left my car running. I ran into every business, on both sides of the street, hoping to find even one other person who was moving. I didn't find a single one. And it seemed like it was just the people who were frozen. I could hear birds chirping, and I saw a few dogs running, their leashes trailing behind them. The wind still blew, the trees moved, but all the people had stopped.
At the movie theater, the popcorn still turned in the kettle, blackened and smoking. I dumped it out and turned off the machine. I don't know why. I guess it felt good to do something, anything, that felt normal.
I went to a restaurant and ate a slice of pizza next to a girl in the middle of a bite of salad. I put my arm around her and talked to her. 'Come here often?' I said. I groped her breast. Pulled her shirt down. I was hoping she'd wake up. Slap me. Do anything. But she just sat there, her forkful of salad barely touching her lips. I slapped her. Hard. It was like slapping a mannequin. I left after that.
I walked around town until it got dark. Listening to the odd, laggy sounds of half-finished words coming from the people I passed. In the less reputable part of town, I could hear a drawn-out scream. In another house, the unmistakable sound of an orgasm, never finished.
I ended up in the suburbs again. As I was passing one house, I heard a new sound. My gut knew what it was, and even though I wanted so badly not to confirm it, I couldn't help it. I had to see for myself.
The door was unlocked, so I went in. I followed the sound upstairs into a little bedroom. The walls were a sunny yellow. The curtains billowed inward, the breeze puffing them out. It was a happy room. Warm, inviting. The crib was bright white. There were wooden letters on the wall, above it. 'Justin', they said. The baby was on his back, his head turned slightly to the side. He was dressed in a pale yellow onesie, printed with cheerful ducks wearing red rainboots. His face was bright red, screwed up in an expression of extreme distaste. His cry was needling, plaintive. I guessed that he'd woken up hungry from a nap, had just begun to cry when whatever this thing was happened. I touched his face. It was rigid.
I wandered through the house. His mother was sitting on the edge of her bed, her head in her hands. I crouched down, looked up at her from below. She looked tired. She must have been napping too.
I went back to the baby. For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to leave. I sat on the floor, his cry constant and driving. At some point, I curled up and passed out.
I've been in this house for going on a week now. The internet hasn't gone out yet, or the power. I figured it would have by now, but I guess things are running fine on their own for now. The water is still fine too. My best guess is that this thing, this freezing, happened right after the cops came and took my neighbor away. Maybe it spread like a disease, and he was one of the first to be affected. Maybe it happened so fast that no one had time to report it. I don't know for sure. I'm beginning to think I'll never know.
The first two days, I took my car and went into town. I wandered around the shops, took things I'd always wanted but never let myself have. I smashed windows, kicked over displays. I rode a shopping cart through the aisles of a store, knocking over a few people in the process. I brought trunkfuls of stuff back to the house, spread my loot out and looked at it all. It didn't make me as happy as it should have, and I broke a lot of it in a fit of anger.
The third night, the silence started to get to me. I went outside and walked down the street, screaming and shouting every obscenity I could, hoping someone would answer back. I climbed into cars and honked their horns. I punched people that I passed on the street. I hit them in their faces, their guts. I kicked men as hard as I could in the balls. I found a knife at one point and carved a penis into the face of a young man sitting on a stoop, smoking a cigarette. He bled, but he never moved.
That same night, I broke into an apartment building in a nicer part of town. I found a young woman in one of the apartments, lying on her bed. She was in the middle of sending a text. The battery on the phone had died, so she stared blankly at a black screen. I'm not proud of it, but I took the knife I found, cut her clothes off, and had sex with her. I wrapped my hands around her neck, swore at her, called her awful names. I cried as I used her. Her body was warm, but stiff. I didn't get off. Eventually I climbed off and curled up next to her. I held her, wept loudly into her hair. I begged her to talk to me. I apologized for using her. I ran my finger along her lips, and I fell asleep with my arms encircling her stone-like body, her hair damp with my snot and tears.
I tried calling my parents a few times. Their phones went straight to voicemail. Same with my friends, my coworkers. I dialed 911, and the phone just rang and rang. I let it ring until my phone died a few hours later.
I called my parents again and left them messages telling them I loved them. That I was sorry for being a shitty kid and not calling enough. I suppose I could drive out to see them, but somehow the possibility of them being un-frozen and just unreachable makes the situation better. I don't think I could stand to see them stuck like statues. My dad in his chair, reading forever. My mom in her garden, bent over her flowers in the dead of night. Parts of her eaten by wild animals, taking advantage of a warm, unmoving meal. I try not to think about it too much.
The last few days, I've just stayed inside. I play music on my laptop, which I went and got from my apartment. I eat mostly processed food out of cans and bags. I don't heat anything up. I don't have much energy anymore.
Every day, I post this story on various forums. Waiting for someone, anyone, to write me back. I refresh the pages of all the big news sites, all the boards on 4chan, my newsfeed on Tumblr. No one has posted anything. Whatever this thing is, it isn't just here. It's everywhere. Even on international sites, the pages are quiet. No one is posting.
I would give anything to hear back from someone. Anyone. I don't want to be alone anymore. Because the people around me, these horrible living statues, they're still being affected by time.
The mother's name is Vivian. I found her wallet and checked her license. Vivian's hair is starting to fall out. Her skin is shrinking around her bones, drying out. One of her nails came off yesterday.
Justin's voice broke three days ago. All that comes out is a horrible, cracked whisper. Like wind through dead grass. His little body is so small and dried up. His hands, his poor hands, the skin looks like bark. I give him water, but it just pools in the back of his throat. His diaper is still dry. I tried suffocating him. I put a pillow over his face. It didn't make him stop. I want him to stop. Please God, I want him to stop.
It's been a little over a week. Soon the voices outside, the few of them that remain, will go quiet. And I'll be the only living human in a world of corpses.
If anyone is out there, please, please write me back. I found a gun in the house next door. When Justin finally does stop making that awful whispering scream, and the house is quiet, I'm going to use it. First on him, then on Vivian, and then on myself.
If you are reading this, and you can move, please, write me. Help me.
It took us a while, but eventually we figured out how to get near them. The trick, we found, was to kill the running lights and let the sub basically go dead in the water. The only things we'd leave running were the absolute bare bones, the things we couldn't turn off for any reason. Once we did that, they'd come closer. The first one that did it was a fascinating shape. Like a square with little triangles cut out of it in arbitrary places. All right angles with no other form. It came up to the sub and circled it a few times, and we agreed it was checking us out. It paused in front of the camera at one point, and we got some amazing shots of it. At that distance, we could see that whatever it was, it had almost no density. It never turned it's 'back' on us, because the positioning of the cut-outs didn't change. No matter what angle we viewed it from it always looked the same. When we attempted to touch it with one of the arms, it took off. Not terribly fast, but at a good enough clip that we realized it had to have some kind of propulsion. What that was, we still don't know.
They're sensitive to electricity, I think, but they got bolder the more we were down there with them. And they started to follow us as they realized we weren't a threat. We started referring to them as 'Pollys' because we didn't know what else to call them. We started playing little games with them. We'd have them follow us to the surface, where we'd move the sub around and have them chase us. We got really fond of them, even though we didn't know what they were. We didn't have a clue. But they seemed to pose no threat to us or anything else. They were almost cute.
On a mid-afternoon dive, a school of bait fish came through the area while we were interacting with one of the Pollys. The school went around us, but a few fish got separated and passed right by us. As we watched, one fish broke off from the rest, and swam very calmly right up to the Polly. It almost seemed like it was lured to it by something. And the second it hit the surface of the Polly, something happened. The Polly gained density, that's the only way I can describe it. The fish fell into the Polly, and in a fraction of a second, it was crushed by some unbelievably great force into nothing. The only thing I've ever seen like it is the footage of the crab being sucked into a millimeter-wide crack of a pipe. One second the fish was there, the next it was compressed and was gone. Needless to say, we were both intrigued and alarmed. Looking back on it, I'm sure this was a deliberate display of what the Polly was capable of doing.
Things began to go downhill from there. Several physicists were called to help us, because we all agreed that whatever had taken place was way beyond anything we'd ever seen. No one could explain the footage we'd shot. There was a lot of talk of some kind of weapon, that it was something man-made. I'm not sure if we failed to notice it before, or if we were allowed to see it, but the Pollys started popping up everywhere, and much more frequently. When we dove to the sea floor, we'd find them laying flat on the sand, capturing and crushing whatever got near them. They'd float by us in the water, never coming close but always staying within sight range.
And they began to get bigger.
Soon, we were seeing Pollys bigger than the sub. Bigger than seals. Bigger than some species of whales. The variety and sizes were endless, never the same. People on the project started getting scared. The Pollys never attacked us, but we began to get the sense that we were being surrounded. There were so many. We were losing count of how many we were seeing. They were devouring the bait we'd bring down, opening themselves up and crushing the things inside them in fractions of a second. We started bringing rocks coated with a frozen layer of chum to see what would happen. The Pollys crushed them with no problem. We tried the same experiment with steel. Concrete. A very small piece of industrial-grade diamond. Everything we threw into them, they crushed.
The last night of the project, there was an accident.
As the sub was lowered into the water, a member of the crew got too close to one of the lines, and they got snagged. On the camera feed, we watched them hit the water. Another crew member threw a life ring down, and I moved the sub away as quickly as I could. As I did this, the camera arm moved, and the screen was filled with that color. That impossible Stygian Blue. The Polly, which was twice the size of the sub, rushed up from below me and headed straight for the crew member, who didn't see it coming. I radioed surface to get him up, to get him out of the water, but in the fraction of a second it took to do that, the Polly touched him. I watched his leg fall into the Polly, where it swung as if suspended in air. And in a fraction of a second, it was gone. The stump of his leg was wrinkled, like the end of a sausage. I don't even know that he had time to feel it before the Polly took him in up to the chest. It crushed him, and from the surface I could hear people screaming. I didn't see his face, but from what I gather, the force was so great that in the instant the Polly crushed him, what remained of his lungs was forced up out of his mouth. The pressure must have been immense, all of his remaining blood and tissue rocketing up into his throat, blasting out the sinus cavities and into the brain. I have to believe he was killed instantly. The rest of him collapsed down into the Polly, and in the split second I saw his head, I saw the scalp was split open at the top. And then he was gone, and the Polly sank back down until I couldn't see it anymore.
We haven't been allowed to dive anymore since then. We're heading back to the mainland, where we'll probably be debriefed. I can't imagine they'll let us keep our footage. And I imagine we'll all be required to keep tight-lipped about this until we know exactly what these things are. At night, when I go out on deck and look down, I can see them following us, just below the surface. It's amazing how clearly they stand out from the water. I would never have known that there could be anything darker than the ocean at night.
Until we know what they are, until we can figure out how to keep them away and we can confirm that they don't exist anywhere else, I don't know that I'll feel safe. Because from what we can tell, they don't need water to survive. From what we can tell, the only reason they're in the water is because that's what covers most of our planet. I really, really hope we're wrong. But for now, all I can do is warn everyone and advise that whatever you do, you avoid open water. Please. Please avoid open water.
He had to cut through several police lines to approach the news crew, and later no one could be sure how he’d done it without drawing attention.
The crew was standing on the street in front of a burning house, filming a report. They had to speak loudly to be heard over the shouts of the firemen, the hoses running, the engines of the trucks. The man’s polyester suit was ash-smudged and he was missing a shoe. The young reporter was in the middle of a take when he interrupted her by tapping her on the shoulder.
She turned around. His hands hung loose at his sides.
The camera zoomed in on the piece of toilet paper still stuck to his neck, the razor burn dotting his jawline. The man squinted at the reflection off the lens and the camera tilted.
“What?” She said. She took in the cheap suit, the scuffed loafers, his Basset-hound eyes. He just stood there. His comb-over blew slightly in the breeze, and the smoke became thick. She coughed and waved her hand in front of her face.
“Let’s move a little, yeah?” The cameraman nodded and hefted the camera on one shoulder. They started to walk away.
“Wait!” The man said, reaching for her. He caught the sleeve of her salmon-colored blouse and she flinched. The man, hands raised, backed away. His mouth hung open slightly, revealing pink gums and small teeth. “Sorry.” He said. Sorry.”
The reporter inspected her sleeve and rubbed it between her fingers.
“You need something?” The cameraman approached, camera swinging heavily from one hand.
“I just wanted to-”
“We’re not doing interviews.” The reporter said.
“Oh.”
She turned back to the camera, fixed her hair in the reflection.
“Larry, let’s go on three, yeah? Can you see behind me okay?”
Larry gave her a thumbs-up.
“On three.” He said. “One-”
“I did it.”
The reporter turned to him.
“What?”
“I’m the one who…” He pointed behind them.
No one said anything.
“What?” She blinked. “Wait, you’re the one who…?” She looked over her shoulder at the flames then back at him, her eyes wide.
The man nodded.
“Are you serious?”
The man nodded again, eyes down.
“Oh my God. You’re serious, like really serious.”
“Yeah.”
“Do they know?” She pointed behind her.
“No.”
“Oh my God!” She spoke to Larry. “Do not let them hear us. Okay? Do not let them near here until we’re done.”
The man’s eyes darted between the reporter and the camera.
“I mean- wow! You’re serious. You’re not joking?”
“I’m serious. Yeah.”
She leaned in close, her eyes fixed on his.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why’d you-?” She gestured at the house. A beam fell into the blaze, sending up a shower of sparks. Somewhere close, a woman wailed. The reporter wheeled around. “Is that her, Larry? Is it her house? Get a shot.”
Larry moved off, camera held to his face.
“Why’d you do it?” She asked again. “Why would you?”
He started to open his mouth.
“What’s your name?”
“Melvin.”
“Melvin?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, so? Why’d you do it?”
Melvin looked back at the fire and coughed when the wind blew in their direction. He watched the flames licking the neighboring houses. From every direction there was yelling. Neighbors huddled on their lawns. Some were in chairs, others clutching each other, talking but not taking their eyes off the unexpected display. One or two glanced at him, lingering on his bare foot. He patted his comb-over.
“I just got tired.”
“Tired?”
“Just really tired.”
“Of what? Was she loud or something?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged.
“Yeah, but what did she do? Was she doing drugs or something?”
“No. Her garbage cans, and her dog. It was always barking. At night.”
“Her dog was barking at night.”
He nodded hesitantly.
“You lit her house on fire because of her dog.” The reporter cocked a hip. “Are you really the one who did it? If this is a joke-”
“No!” Melvin held his hands up. She raised her eyebrows. “It just everything I guess.”
The reporter didn’t say anything.
“I was just tired. Of everything.” His hands swept in a wide circle, including himself. He looked down at his remaining shoe. One of the tassels was missing.
“Well where do you live? Which one?”
Melvin turned, scanned the block. He pointed at a large two-story at the end of the street. No one was on the lawn.
“You’re not even close, though. I thought you said something about her garbage.”
His leg started to bounce. “It was ugly.”
“You live alone?” She’d noticed the empty lawn too.
“No. My wife and sons. One’s eight and the other’s five.”
“Well where are they? Do they know?”
“My wife is picking them up from school now.”
She shifted her weight and glanced around for Larry, who was talking to a woman in a housecoat. She was crying and clutching what looked like a photo album. The reporter and Melvin watched her. Larry caught her reaction as the roof collapsed. The woman turned and ran toward the fire. A firefighter who was nearby caught her and prevented her from going any farther. She wailed. Melvin watched, his face unreadable.
Larry came back over, his camera swinging.
“You got all that, right?” She called to him.
“Yeah. Lady’s a fucking mess. He for real?” He tilted his chin at Melvin.
“What did she say?”
“Not much. Couldn’t understand her half the time. It’s loud.”
“What about the dog?”
“What?”
She flicked her hand at Melvin. “The dog. They get it out? Where is it?”
“She didn’t say anything about that. Sounds like she lives alone and left her propane on or something. I think that’s what she said, anyway. I don’t know, it’s loud.”
The reporter looked at Melvin. He swallowed. He was sweating.
“You said she had a dog.”
“What?” Larry said, looking between them.
“He says she had a dog.”
They waited. Melvin put a hand in his pocket and licked his lips.
“The dog died.”
“It died.” The reporter put a hand on her hip.
“Yeah. A week ago. I killed it.”
“You killed it.”
He nodded.
The reporter pointed down the street.
“Who lives there?” She asked the cameraman. He frowned and scratched his chest.
“No one, I don’t think. They put it up for sale a few months ago but I don’t think it’s sold yet. Why?”
“He said he lives there with his wife and kids.”
Larry shook his head “There aren’t any kids on this block. That’s why Jeff and his wife liked it here. Remember, at lunch they said that.”
She turned her eyes back to Melvin.
“He says there aren’t any kids living here.”
Melvin put his hand deeper in his pocket and ran the other hand over his head. Tendrils of hair fluttered across his pink scalp. The fire roared.
“So no one lives there?”
“Doubt it. Jeff said it’s been empty for months. Weird interior.”
Melvin wiped the sweat out of his eyes.
“You don’t even live here.” The reporter said.“Who even are you?”
“So, what, he’s lying, or-?” Larry asked.
The reporter looked disgusted. “Who are you?”
Melvin reached a hand toward her.
She turned to walk away. “We’re done.” Larry started to follow.
“Wait, please!” Melvin said.
“You’re lucky I don’t tell the cops.” The reporter said over her shoulder. “You’re lucky I-”
She stopped. Her hand shot out and grabbed onto the sleeve of Larry’s T-shirt.
Melvin had pulled a pistol out of his pocket and it was now pressed to his left temple. The fire reflected off the barrel and the reporter watched that.
“Please, wait a second.” Melvin implored.
Larry held up a hand.
“Hey, now-”
“Just wait.”
He gestured at the camera in Larry’s hand. Larry put the camera to his face. The lens clicked as it zoomed in.
“Listen, man.” Larry took a step closer. “Put it down.”
“Just wait.”
Melvin fumbled the safety off. The roar of the flames pressed in on them and a rush of hot wind ruffled their clothes.
The barrel dimpled the skin on his temple.
“Just wait.” He begged again. He was crying.
“Please.” The reporter said.
“Wait.”
On a lawn behind them, someone cheered and clapped.
He pulled the trigger.
Blood exploded out of his nose, his mouth. He fell to the grass in a heap. The reporter began to cry, her fist against her mouth. People on the lawns cried out, ran inside.
A policeman ran over.
“Hey! What the hell happened?”
There was commotion. An ambulance, which had only left a few moments before, now pulled back in. Two EMTs leaped from the cab and rushed to the body. Once they got a good look, they took their time going back for the white sheet, which they draped over it untidily. It began to stain red. The policeman began to string up tape in a square around it. The reporter and Larry were led away.
“I wasn’t filming.” He kept saying. “I wasn’t even filming.”
People came back onto their lawns and stared at the white sheet and whispered to each other. Then the walls of the burning house began to crumble. Sparks blew on the breeze and set smaller fires on the lawns, which were quickly stamped out.
Two more policemen appeared and milled around the body. They watched the fire, which had begun to consume the houses around it.
“Who the hell is that?” One of them asked, gesturing at the sheet.
The other shrugged. “No idea.”
“Huh.”
They turned their backs on the body. The house burned out of control.
I like walking at night because you can do stuff you can’t normally. You can walk in the middle of the road and no one honks at you or tries to hit you or anything. One time a guy did that to me, tried to hit me I mean. I was thinking and I didn’t hear him, so he came up next to me and tapped me with his bumper, and I fell down. Now I walk at night. The only things out other than me are the Bird People.
The first time I saw one it was right before the first big snow. All the lights from the town were bouncing off the sky like it was a big ceiling, and I saw someone standing out in the old vacant lot where a burned-out store used to be. He was looking around and then scratching the dirt with one finger. I thought maybe he was drawing something, but it was pretty peculiar to be drawing out in the middle of the night. Then all of a sudden he leaned his head back and he made a bird call. It sounded just like one of those little dusty-looking birds that hang out with a million other ones in bushes. He looked like he was waiting for something, and then he went off toward Maple. Just then a raccoon knocked over some cans and someone stuck their head out their window and saw me, so I had to run home before they recognized who I was.
The next night I got up to leave for a walk because Ma and Pop were fighting again. My little sister, Annie-Lou, wanted to go with me but I said no. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go so I went down toward the park. I sat on the swings but they were creaky, so I sat on the grass instead and just listened. I heard a little bird somewhere calling. I remembered that guy from the night before, and I saw a lady come up the road, walking in the middle of it like I do. She was making that little bitty bird call and kind of hopping along, like her shoes were tied together. Then a man, not the same one from the other night, came out from behind the city hall building and he called back the same way. I got up real quiet and hid in a bush. They met up by the monkey bars and they stood real close together, and the lady was nodding her head all the time, like she was agreeing with what the man was saying. They were talking in bird language to each other.
After a while they left in different directions. After they were gone I got up and went to the place where they were standing. I stayed there just touching the grass and thinking until it started to get light out and then I went home.
Annie-Lou started having bad nightmares, so I’d go and sit with her instead of walking. I opened the window in her room and listened instead. You can hear them if you listen. I think most people just ignore them, or maybe they don’t hear them, because no one ever says anything about it. They’re always real quiet, the Bird People, but they move around all strange. The hopping lady I saw a lot, almost every night. There’s a little fella with a missing arm who shakes his head real fast, like he’s saying ‘no no no’, and another lady who bends in half but sideways, like an 'r’. I’ve seen a few up by the church under the angel statues. You hear them chirping and then one by one they come to wherever the first one was, and they stand around in a big group and talk in bird language.
I found an old bird call in Pop’s junk box but it sounded like a duck, and the Bird People don’t sound like that. I asked him once after work if he could show me how to do a little sparrow call but he just told me 'go on, son, I’m busy’, even though all he was doing was sitting on the porch and looking at nothing. Davey next door can do a whistle with his fingers, so I got him to teach me how to do it and it sounded pretty good. One night after that I got out and went down to where the Bird People were, and I hid behind a big bush and I made that call to see what they would do. They stopped talking and looked all around like they were nervous. I did it again, and one of the men made a call back but it was different, it was kind of more drawn out. I called back but he started doing it over and over, and soon all of them were doing it, and my heart starting beating real fast. I saw a big woodpecker trapped in our sun porch one summer. It was beating itself to death on the windows and making that same sound. Pop caught him and put him in a tree, but when I went back later he was dead. I turned and ran back home. After that I didn’t talk to them anymore, I just watched.
After about a month I started naming them. The lady who hopped I called Baby because she sounded real little. There was a big man I called Buster because he flailed around a lot and I wondered if maybe sometime he’d bust someone a good one. Then there was a tiny little gimpy man with something wrong with his legs, so I called him Stump. I don’t think they knew I was hanging around, or maybe they just got used to me. What I liked was, they seemed happy to be around each other. I stopped going to school much. Sometimes I’d have dreams about them. They’d see me and they’d let me in to the circle. I couldn’t understand them, but it was nice being with them that way, even if in real life they’d never let me do it.
Then one morning Pop caught me coming home. He must have gone in my room for some reason and seen that I wasn’t there. He hollered at me and cussed and Ma got real mad at him for yelling, so she hurried us into my room. Annie-Lou was crying when she fell asleep, and she didn’t wake up until Pop came in later to nail my window shut. After he left, Annie-Lou asked if my friends were going to come visit me tonight. I asked what she meant and she said sometimes when I was asleep she’d hear birds outside the window, and she’d see people standing in the yard. She said they were always looking in my window and that they just stood around and took turns watching me sleep. I went and put my ear to the window, and the glass was cool and nice. I stayed there for a long time and listened for the sound of birds calling.
She answered on the third ring.
“Hello, this is–”
“Sheila?”
She pressed the button on the side of the plastic receiver to lower the volume.
“Yeah, it’s me, Ma.”
“Did you get my messages?”
“Yes.”
“You could have called back.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Well.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No. Daddy says to say hello.”
“Listen, can we talk later?”
“It’s been months.”
“I called last week.”
“That wasn’t a real talk, that was medical talk.”
“So?”
“Well.”
“I’ve gotta go.”
“So will you visit soon?”
“I don’t know.”
“We miss you.”
“I know.”
“Daddy’s been doing well. They’ve got him on a new medication, I can’t remember what it is. He’s been out in the garden, it’s been so nice.”
“You know he likes being outside, he’s told you that a million times.”
“You’re upset.”
“No, I’m not!”
“This is why you need to come visit. Then you’d see it was the right thing to do–
“What was the right thing to do?”
“Moving him.”
“You moved him? You promised you wouldn’t move him!”
“Oh, please.”
“I told you I wanted to be there!”
“He hasn’t moved yet!” Her mother insisited.
“What?”
“I meant he will be happier, when we move him!”
“So you haven’t moved him yet? He’s still home? Put him on, I want to talk to him.”
“He’s out on a walk.”
“You told me he can’t even get into the kitchen anymore!”
“Well, he’s walking in the garden!”
“You’re acting strange.”
“No I’m not!”
“Yes you are!”
“I’m just a little tired.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t sleep well. You’d know that if you visited.”
“I can’t just leave.” Sheila said.
“Well, I’ll let your father know. I’m sure he’ll be disappointed.”
“Don’t guilt me!”
“I’m not trying to guilt you, Shelby, I’m just–”
“What did you call me?”
“What?”
“You called me Shelby.”
“Well, I told you, I’m tired.”
“Are you sure nothing is going on?”
“Yes!”
“Just tell me if there is.”
“I’m tired! You’d see how hard things are if you visited.”
“Don’t!”
“He just wants to see you while he’s able to enjoy you. Before the cancer gets worse.”
“Cancer?”
“What?”
“Daddy has cancer?”
“What are you–”
“I knew it! I knew you were hiding something!”
“–talking about?”
“You’ve been so strange, I knew something was wrong!”
“Stop! He doesn’t have cancer!”
“What?”
“Daddy’s fine! He doesn’t have cancer!”
“You just said he had cancer!”
“No I didn’t! I told you, everything is fine!”
“Hang on a second.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s in the driveway.”
“Who?”
“Did someone take your car?”
“What?”
“Your car is in the driveway.”
“Well, that can’t be right. The car is right outside.”
“It’s your car, it has that dent on the front.”
“That’s not possible.”
“They’re getting out.”
“Who? Who’s getting out?”
“You are.”
“What?”
“It’s you. You’re outside.”
“Well, that’s not possible.”
“It’s you. You’re right there. It’s you.”
There was a queer doubling as identical voices issued simultaneously from the phone and from the porch.
The door opened.
Both mothers called the wrong name.
If I was going to pick a single thing, I guess it would have to be the one who came back. I've been doing research for a personal project and I came across a listing for a traumatic brain injury group in my area. I recognized it as being the home of a young man who I'd recently come across in the news, and I reached out to see if I could meet with him. Since he's relatively cognizant and only suffers from physical issues and impulse problems, he's allowed to make his own decisions on things like this and after I told him who I was he agreed to meet with me on the condition that his mother could also be present. We met in a coffee shop, per his request, and I bought him a black coffee that he dumped sugar into until his mother gently stopped him. She said very little through the entire visit, and appeared to be there solely for moral support. Occasionally he grabbed her hand or made child-like noises of discomfort and buried his misshapen head in her chest while she soothed him. His appearance was startling. The front of his forehead appeared to have been shaved cleanly off, and what remained was completely flat, and noticeably lower than the bone around it. Of course I wanted to ask why it hadn't been properly repaired but the chance never came up. Along with his forehead, the tip of his nose was also strange. It had been sewed back on, and the scar tissue had healed badly, giving it a bulbous, lumpy texture. His appearance combined with his strange vocal tics attracted attention but he didn't seem to notice. He was entirely focused on telling me his story. He and his mother were hiking the AT for her 65th birthday, something they'd been planning on doing for years. The hike was going spectacularly, and they were making great time. I'm familiar with the section of trail they were on; it's incredibly remote, as much of the AT is, but the land is relatively flat and it's a great place for the less serious hikers. Prior to his incident, there were very little problems here. One evening, they chose to camp off the trail rather than press on to the next shelter. They set up camp about ten yards from the trail and went to sleep shortly after dinner. At some point in the night, he told me, something woke him up. As he sat up in his bag, he had the sense that whatever it was had just ended. The air had a strange vibration to it and he had a distinctly uneasy feeling that something was nearby. Exiting the tent, he remembered being suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling he had trouble describing. Whether due to his injury or genuine loss for words, he struggled and became frustrated until his mother reminded him of how he'd described it to her. Holding him against her chest, she explained that before being packed up and whisked away by Life Flight he had told her it was like being wrapped in a warm, thick blanket. It was a deliriously calming feeling, and when he found himself moving deeper into the forest he wasn't afraid. Picking up from there, he recalled only patches of the walk. He remembered stepping on something, a twig as it turned out, and feeling it spear into his foot, but there was no pain so he kept going. He seemed hesitant to describe what he found after an undetermined time but I didn't need him to explain because I already knew. He described them as being from his childhood home in the Smokys. When he began climbing them, the third step squeaked just as it had back then. His narrative became jumbled here, as he tried to explain what happened next, but from what I could piece together this is what he saw: As he reached the top, he found himself instantly and bafflingly back on the trail, but although he recognized where he was, something was very wrong. As he described it, there was something wrong with the light. As if the air was full of smoke, giving the light an eerie orange quality. But there was no smell of burning, no heat, and the air was clear. When he looked at the sky, here too he sensed something horribly unfamiliar. He sensed a great chasm behind the sky, as if the clouds were only painted onto a false ceiling suspended above the earth. He made a reference to 'that smart rat in the maze, with the man', which I've interpreted as a comparison to the titular mouse from Flowers for Algernon. Somehow, he had gone somewhere and had found himself here, where he'd began but somehow infinite distances away. When he screamed the sound came from behind him. He does not remember how he got out, or how much time he spent in that place, but he suspects that it was a substantial amount. Lifetimes. Millennia. He does not feel the same person that he was before he left. When he was found at the edge of camp, he was unconscious and bleeding heavily. The ridge of his forehead and the tip of his nose were gone, as if shaved away by a laser. The pieces were never found. In recovery, his brain damage became evident, and after considerable attempts were made to reverse it he was placed in the TBI home, where he has lived ever since.
I've stayed in contact with him and his story has never changed. As of now, he's the only person I've been able to talk to who knows where they go.
I was a bad kid. I got in trouble. One night, three men dragged me out of my bed and threw me in a van. After an endless drive through the dark that ended miles from paved roads, I was informed that I'd been sent to a camp. A camp for bad kids.
They'd set up nice and cozy in an old wash. A demented child's version of Tent City. Right away we ran into problems with the dirt, which was like broken pottery that our boots shattered into puffs of dust. Everything was coated in that dust, and another layer of sand on top of that. We dug did manual labor and drills in the baking sun, with the dust continuously choking us and the sand grinding away at our skin. All of us sported varying degrees of a kind of road rash on our palms from the friction on the handles of our shovels and spades.
The desert brutalized us. The sun beat down on us as soon as it rose but the heat was fickle, and at night we shivered in our bags, arms wrapped around us in a futile attempt to stave off the bitter cold. Cacti stabbed at our heels and every scrubby plant was guaranteed to have a coating of thorns. One unfortunate boy was the recipient of home surgery in the hour before bed when he discovered a thorn had become lodged in his perineum after a fall. We sliced open an aloe and applied it to the wound and hoped for the best.
And oh, how much we hated them. Our abductors kept watch from the shade, stepping out only long enough to haul whichever one of us had fallen to their feet and shove the handle of the shovel back into their hands. Showers were a luxury rarely earned. Food was never a given, and many of us took to slicing our belts in half to make them fit. Every day was the same, and the time was measured in scabs and the issue and eventual disintegration of our uniforms.
And then one of us went missing. A very small, quiet boy who blended in perfectly with the sand and parched dirt. We looked for him for days, the counselors barking over our shoulders into the smothering heat- but we found no trace of him. Survival was not possible. We watched for vultures as we dug up succulents and replanted them away from camp but the desert was quiet.
I didn't know the girl who woke up screaming but I recognized her as she fled, her bright red hair like a flame against the pitch of the night. A counselor took off after her and her tent was inspected. Someone else was inside. An unrecognizable, filthy creature that shivered, unprotected against the cold, beside her bag. He was removed and taken to the nurse, supported on both sides by reluctant hands, while the rest of us were ordered back into our tents.
He was reintroduced into the general population again once he had been cleaned and checked but there was something wrong with him, some kind of smell that was repugnant to the point of being unbearable. His eyes had developed a strange twitch, and they bounced constantly without ever settling. His hair was thin and the bones of his spine jutted from his heavy striped shirt. He refused to eat, as if the food didn't interest him. At night he whimpered and screamed despite the heavy sedatives. Rumors of other inmates observing him plucking off and eating the thorns and spines of cacti circulated. A close look at his gums confirmed the story. He was put on constant observation but this didn't deter him. He was quiet to the point of invisibility, and losing track of him was inevitable. He grew thinner and thinner. His skeleton jutted painfully outward, pulling the skin tight. The massive eyes rolled and slid from place to place and even the counselors began to be frightened of him. No one spoke to or approached him. He was not instructed to work. He simply stood at the edge of the city, staring out into the desert with those ghoulish eyes, while wind-blown sand pooled in the hollows of his collarbones. His corneas clouded with infection, scarred by the dirt and sand. Strange growths appeared all over him, hard, yellowish protrusions that broke through the skin and bled when nicked with a scalpel. The nurse refused to touch him after this and he was left alone to stand and stare blindly into the desert, his eyes milky but still twitching, sliding from point to point.
Something brushed against the side of my tent one night. It snagged the material, rasping across it just above my head. I peered out into the darkness and could make out the figure of the boy about two tent lengths away. He was moving toward the edge of the city.
The growths had grown, completely taking over the surface of his skin. They were sharp, pointed, and they tore cruelly at his skin as they emerged. Mesmerized, I moved closer. He heard me and turned, his useless eyes fixed on my face in a rare moment of stillness.
What's out there? I heard myself ask.
It was difficult for him to speak- the growths were inside him too- but I made out what he croaked from around the growths:
Nothing.
He turned and continued to make his way. This time, he didn't pause as he reached the edge of camp. The darkness was think and oily and he sank into it until there was nothing left of him. I waited for him in front of my tent until sunrise but he didn't come back. I waited every night until the camp was raided and we were returned to our homes with the promise of future justice.
We didn't talk about him. It didn't need to be discussed. It was best to leave it unsaid.
Even if you don't know it, you've been in one before. You might be in one now. It's easy to check- it only takes a second.
Do you ever feel as if you're being watched?
Have you ever seen, felt, or heard anything unexplainable?
Have you ever lost time within the house?
Has a child ever died of SIDS within the house?
Any of those seem familiar? If you said yes to more than two then let me be the first to suggest Two Guys and a Truck. Fantastic moving company, I can't recommend them enough. I'd suggest calling them today, right now ideally. If you're smart you won't waste the time reading the rest of this, but I'll admit it's hard to take my word for it so I don't blame you for being skeptical. But my advice is very, very serious. Everything I'm going to tell you is fact.
Imagine a Venus flytrap. The Venus flytrap is an amazing little plant that possesses no brain, no blood, and no organs, and yet it's carnivorous. It survives by catching and liquefying anything unfortunate enough to be caught. Even more remarkable, tiny hairs on the inside of the plant's mouth are so sensitive that they can distinguish between a drop of water and live prey. The plant wastes no energy on a worthless meal. In this way, the plant is intelligent, despite the fact that it has nothing we humans would consider even remotely close to sentience.
Halfway houses are, as we like to say, 'the ultimate urban predators.' They are completely invisible in plain sight. We assure them that their failure to spot any danger wasn't their fault. I mean, who would ever think to check a house for reflex points? You can do that, by the way. Tap on the walls until something groans or creaks in an 'unusual' way and there you go. You found a reflex point.
Like their very very distant Venus flytrap cousins, halfway houses aren't intelligent in the way we think of intelligence. They are very much alive, and they are aware of us, but possess no 'soul' or personality. We suspect they're able to communicate with each other through the earth itself via infrasound -which itself, as I'm sure you know, causes paranoia, anxiety, and the feeling of being watched. As for where they come from- that's always the next question- well, that's still being disputed. Not enough research has been done for us to be sure if the houses are somehow altered by an outside force, an invasive species, or if they are, perhaps, an organism that lives in common building materials like rock or wood. A kind of termite swarm, if you will, that lives inside the building material and can influence it. For a while we were almost convinced of the latter but as the internet has become more common it's clear that halfway houses can pop up anywhere and in just about any form. Even storage sheds made of solid metal were observed hunting.
Hunting, by the way, is a catch-all term for any action that the house takes against its occupants. Most commonly this takes the form of a haunting. Strange noises, lights flickering, pipes rattling. The house, of course, has total control of itself and acts autonomously. Hence why a door that was closed can open seemingly on its own. Some homes prefer to hunt in a less brazen fashion and slowly leach lead or other contaminants into the drinking water. They can even use chemical warfare by breaking gas lines or filling the interior with carbon monoxide.
There are, of course, more tragic cases. Homes that are particularly vicious are responsible for these. Homicides, murder-suicides, SIDS. We suspect that a famous multiple-infanticide may have been prevented had the family moved out sooner. I only bring these tragedies up as a warning, not to shock you.
To an ant, an elephant seems to move painfully slowly. To the elephant, the ant zips around at a breakneck speed. Although both perceive time, they perceive it differently. To the houses, we move blindingly fast, our lives over in a day. You will never outlast one. It will not get better the longer you wait. They're very, very good at what they do. Like I said, they're the apex urban predator. A dinosaur in a wooden body. They'll wait for the perfect moment before the jugular strike. A heart attack in the night. A baby dead in his crib. A fall down the stairs. They only need to eat once a day, and can go a lot longer than that if they have to. They can, and will, out-wait you.
Here's my advice: Super 8 motels are cheap and offer good extended stay plans. Roll your clothes, don't fold them- it saves space. Call the company and get them out today, tomorrow at the latest. It'll be pricey but better than the alternative. Tell the kids it's an adventure. Go where you've always dreamed of going. You'll miss the money and the home but your life is worth more. Just remember to check for reflexes in the next house you buy.