tenorstorm: has anyone heard about this one online ritual? i think it was called the can something ritual?

vibr@ntfogs: i think i know what you're talking about, the candle ritual?

tenorstorm: OH MY GOD YES THAT

vibr@ntfogs: yeah, there used to be a forum about it, but it's long gone now

tenorstorm: why wtf happened?

vibr@ntfogs: no idea, it just disappeared one day with no warning

tenorstorm: damn

tenorstorm: wait if you know about it do you know how to do it?

vibr@ntfogs: u actually want to do it?

tenorstorm: yeah overheard some classmate talking about it

tenorstorm: figured i might as well do something to kill time

vibr@ntfogs: alright lemme fill you in on how it works, it's actually really simple

vibr@ntfogs: first you need a candle. if you can't find one in your house try looking to see if a store has some.

vibr@ntfogs: then you gotta do it somewhere around 10PM, and you need to be completely alone, if there's anyone else with you or if you do it before or after 10PM it won't work

vibr@ntfogs: now you gotta light the candle and place it in front of you, then sit in front of it and close your eyes and say 'bring me to her'

tenorstorm: who's her?

vibr@ntfogs: i was just about to get to that part idiot

vibr@ntfogs: once you finish saying that sentence the moment you open your eyes you'll find yourself in a dark hallway, there's nothing you can see or touch, and i mean nothing

vibr@ntfogs: it's gonna be like youre in a LITERAL void

vibr@ntfogs: but there's gonna be a light in the distance, and you gotta walk to it until you a see a small candle on a wooden table, and this woman in white is sitting there, waiting for you

vibr@ntfogs: and i mean LITERALLY in white, her hair all the way down to the clothing she's wearing is purely white

tenorstorm: is she hot?

vibr@ntfogs: dude

tenorstorm: just wondering

vibr@ntfogs: forget it

vibr@ntfogs: she's going to gesture for you to sit down and she's going to look you in the eye and ask you a question

tenorstorm: which is?

vibr@ntfogs: "What wish do you yearn to be granted?"

tenorstorm: what? so she's basically like a genie?

vibr@ntfogs: you can say that

tenorstorm: so like what happens when you tell her your wish?

vibr@ntfogs: you wake up where you were and the candles are blown out

tenorstorm: damn you were right about it being simple

vibr@ntfogs: yep, and you just gotta wait a full day for your wish to be granted

tenorstorm: huh

tenorstorm: how do you even know so much about this?

vibr@ntfogs: my brother told me about it, he's the reason i kinda got into learning about the candle ritual in the first place

vibr@ntfogs: but get this, he had a friend who did it and he went from a D student, to a freshman at STANFORD

vibr@ntfogs: wanna know what happened to him?

tenorstorm: he got a degree and went on to live a happy life?

vibr@ntfogs: he's in a mental hospital

vibr@ntfogs: lost his damn mind

tenorstorm: holy shit really?

vibr@ntfogs: yeah, and even had a total breakdown about how there's too much in his brain and even tried to lodge a pencil into his head before his parents stopped him, and he kept on screaming about how he needs to get it all out

tenorstorm: jesus

vibr@ntfogs: yeah, and you wanna know the crazy part? as they were trying to get him under control they noticed this marking on his wrist that resembled a flame and i kid you not it actually felt HOT to touch too

tenorstorm: is he still there or

vibr@ntfogs: my brother hasn't spoken to him in a while, don't blame him though

vibr@ntfogs: *doesn't know if he got better, or if he got worse*

vibr@ntfogs: really messed up shit man

vibr@ntfogs: you still thinking about doing it though?

tenorstorm: eeeeehhh i'm not sure now, don't plan on ending up like that dude

vibr@ntfogs: don't you think you should warn your classmate though?

tenorstorm: well it's not my issue if his brain gets messed up

vibr@ntfogs: true lmao

It was Hailey’s turn. She laughed and said, barely pausing, “Oh definitely the barf. It keeps appearing and vanishing in my bedroom- and it stinks! Like real barf! I think the poor soul must have died of some horrible disease - but at least it's not contagious! You can’t touch it! I tried cleaning it!”

There was silence. The mood of the party slightly shifted, the alcohol-laced laughter quietening. Except Hailey- she giggled nervously, and the giggle turned into a loud braying peal of laughter which she tried to stifle with a hiccup. 

Then Sally said “Guests. Hailey, the question was guests. What was the most disgusting thing guests did in your house!”

Hailey’s eyes widened. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again. “Well, you could say the ghosts are a kind of guest. In my house. It is my house. And they are there.” The loud braying laughter again. 

Natalie, always the peace-maker, said "My turn! One time my baby cousin poo’ed in the-”

But Sally, who had been sick of Hailey’s shit for some time now, wasn’t ready to drop it. “Hailey- what the fuck are you talking about?” Her words cut through Natalia’s soothing babble about her baby cousin’s digestive issues. 

Hailey hiccuped again. Then she turned fully to Sally. “You know Sally- my place is haunted- I told you guys that. It is. And one of them barfs on my bedroom floor- I think that’s how they died. I thought that was what the game was- sorry.” The look on Sally’s face prompted Hailey to add “sorry- I just misheard-” 

Natalie exclaimed “ooh- blue cheese- I can never have it at our place because Paul says the smell makes him feel sick-” she stopped speaking, and began stuffing her mouth with the cheese.

Sally couldn’t or wouldn’t let it go. “Hailey- I know you’ve kept on telling us there are ghosts in your house. But there isn't. You know that, right? There are no ghosts in your place. It’s just a normal house.”

It had never gotten this far. And now Hailey, emboldened, said loudly “Sally- what’s your problem? There are! Is it so hard for you to accept there are ghosts, period, or that my house has ghosts, and I can see them” her voice dropped and she added a wavering "sometimes" almost as an after-thought. 

Sally stood up. “I care about you! I don’t care about the ghosts- you just won’t shut up about the- instead of getting help- ”

Hailey cried out “I don’t need help!”

Sally gasped, and doubled over, clutching her stomach. A voice echoed around the halls -

“She doesn’t need help”- 

Natalie screamed, and the sound jerked Hailey awake- she sat up in bed, drenched in sweat. 

Reality hovered and settled in her- and the smell of fresh hot barf hit her before she saw the grey puddle in the middle of her bedroom floor- fresh and wet, just deposited. 

My daughter Emma has recently discovered that toy stores exist.
This is a problem.

Because now every time we go anywhere that even vaguely resembles a place where toys might be sold, she suddenly develops a very intense emotional connection to something she saw approximately five seconds ago.

Most of the time I can steer her away before things escalate.
But last month she found something I unfortunately could not argue against.

It happened at a flea market about twenty minutes outside town.

My wife loves those places. Old kitchen stuff, antique picture frames, things that somehow cost more because they’re older.

Emma is six, which means flea markets usually bore her to death.

She spends the first half hour dragging her feet behind us while my wife looks through tables and boxes full of things that apparently belonged in someone else’s house thirty years ago.

Eventually Emma finds something she can pick up.

That morning she found it sitting on a folding table between a cardboard box full of plastic dinosaurs and a pile of stuffed animals that looked like they had survived several generations of children.

It was a Furby.

Now look, I know people joke about those things being creepy.

But I remember when they first came out. Every kid wanted one.

I never actually owned one myself, so when Emma picked it up and immediately started laughing at the weird noises it made, I didn’t really think much about it.

The guy running the table said we could take it for two dollars.

Emma looked at me with that hopeful face kids instantly produce when they think they’re about to hear the word “no.”

Two dollars seemed like a small price to make her happy for the rest of the day.

So I paid the man and we went home with what Emma had already decided was her new best friend.

She named it Oliver before we even pulled into the driveway.

The toy looked a little worn, but otherwise fine.

Some thin patches in the fur.

One eyelid blinked slightly slower than the other.

But when Emma put batteries in it the thing immediately came to life and started speaking in that weird nonsense language they all seem to know.

For the next hour she sat on her bedroom floor talking to it while my wife and I made dinner downstairs.

Every now and then we could hear her laughing through the hallway.

At one point she came running into the kitchen just to show us that it could dance if you tickled its stomach.

I remember thinking it might have been the best two dollars I’d spent in a long time.

That night when I tucked Emma into bed she asked if Oliver could stay in her room.

I didn’t see any reason to say no, so I placed the toy on the dresser across from her bed, turned off the lights, and closed the door while she was already halfway asleep.

Sometime around two in the morning I woke up because I thought I heard her talking.

At first I didn’t get out of bed. Kids talk in their sleep sometimes, and Emma had done that before. But after lying there for a minute I realized the voice I was hearing sounded… strange.

It had that slightly mechanical tone toys make when the batteries are starting to die.

So I got up and walked down the hallway.

When I opened Emma’s door the room was dark except for the small nightlight beside her bed.

She was asleep under the blanket, breathing slowly, and the Furby was sitting on the dresser exactly where I had left it.

Its eyes opened.

Then it made a soft giggling sound.

I figured the thing must have turned itself on somehow. Considering how old it probably was, that didn’t seem impossible, so I picked it up, opened the battery compartment, and removed the batteries before setting it back down.

The eyes closed immediately and the toy went quiet.

Problem solved.

Or so I thought.

The following night I heard the sound again.

This time it wasn’t laughter. It sounded more like whispering, very faint, but definitely coming from Emma’s room.

I got out of bed and walked down the hallway thinking maybe the batteries hadn’t been completely dead the night before and the toy had somehow managed to start itself again.

When I opened the door the room looked exactly the way I had left it.

Emma was asleep, the nightlight was still glowing beside her bed, and the dresser stood across the room where it always had.

Except the Furby wasn’t on it.

For a moment I assumed Emma must have knocked it over earlier and I simply hadn’t noticed.

Then I saw it.

The toy was sitting on the floor near the foot of her bed.

That alone didn’t bother me. Kids move toys around all the time.

What bothered me was that it was facing the doorway.

Its eyes were open.

The whispering stopped the moment I stepped into the room.

I picked the toy up and checked the battery compartment again just to make sure I hadn’t imagined removing them the night before.

It was still empty.

I stood there for a while listening to Emma breathing before finally putting the toy back on the dresser and going to bed.

By morning everything felt a little less strange.

Emma woke up in a good mood and immediately carried Oliver downstairs with her, talking to it while my wife and I spent most of the morning cleaning the house.

For most of the day nothing seemed out of place.

Emma sat in the living room with the toy beside her while she colored, occasionally pressing its stomach to see if it would start talking again.

Without batteries it stayed quiet, which was reassuring enough that I eventually stopped thinking about it.

At one point Emma asked if we had seen our neighbor’s cat.

It was a big orange thing that wandered through everyone’s yard and usually ended up sleeping somewhere near our back fence.

I told her I hadn’t seen it that day, and the question didn’t really stick with me at the time.

Later that evening, after dinner, I took the Furby out of Emma’s room and put it in the hallway closet.

I didn’t tell her the real reason.

I just said Oliver probably needed a rest for the night.

She looked disappointed but didn’t argue, which I took as a small victory.

Sometime after 1 AM, I woke up to a faint rustling sound coming from the yard behind the house.

That night was warm enough that we left the bedroom window open, and the sound really travels in the dead of night.

At first I stayed in bed, listening, trying to decide whether it was just something moving along the fence line.

The noise continued for several seconds, uneven and shifting, like something moving through the grass.

Then I heard the whispering again.

It was the same one I had heard the night before.

It was a thin, uneven murmur that drifted through the open window.

I got out of bed and walked to the back door.

The moment I stepped outside the sound stopped.

The yard was still and quiet, the grass barely moving in the faint breeze coming through the alley behind the houses.

I walked along the fence line and looked around for a minute or two but didn’t see anything out of place.

Eventually I went back inside and closed the door, telling myself it had probably been a stray animal passing through.

The next morning our neighbor knocked on the door.

He asked if we had seen his cat.

Apparently it hadn’t come home for more than a day.

The two of us walked around the yard for a while checking along the fence and behind the shed before we found it lying in the grass near the back corner of the yard.

Something had gotten to it during the night.

The orange fur around it was flattened into the dirt and the body looked badly torn up.

My neighbor let out a quiet sigh and rubbed the back of his neck while he looked at it.

We both stood there trying to figure out what could have done it.

The strange part was that nothing about it made sense for this neighborhood.

We don’t live near woods, and the dogs around here are all pets that belong to families on the street.

My neighbor didn’t say much after that.

He looked at the damage for a long moment and muttered that maybe a raccoon or a coyote had passed through during the night, though neither of us had ever seen one anywhere near the neighborhood.

We ended up digging a small hole near the edge of his yard and burying what was left of the cat before either of us went back inside.

I didn’t mention the noises I had heard during the night.

That afternoon Emma spent most of her time in the living room coloring while my wife worked in the kitchen.

The Furby stayed in the hallway closet where I had left it, and I tried not to think about it too much.

Later that evening, after tucking Emma into bed and finishing up my work, I heard the whispering again.

This time it wasn’t coming from outside.

It was coming from the hallway.

I stepped out of my study and listened for a moment.

The sound was faint, but it was definitely coming from the closet where I had left the toy.

When I opened the door, the whispering stopped immediately.

Inside the closet the Furby was sitting on the shelf where I had placed it.

Its eyes closed a second later.

The plastic beak twitched slightly, as if something inside it had just finished moving.

For a moment I could have sworn the toy had been looking straight at me before it went still.

I reached in and picked it up.

The battery compartment was still empty.

But around the edge of its beak there were several short strands of orange hair caught between the plastic seams, and something dark had dried along the corner.

When I saw the fur caught along the edge of the beak, something in my stomach dropped.

I stood there in the hallway holding the toy for a while, turning it slightly in the light and trying to convince myself I was overreacting.

But the more I looked at it, the harder it became to ignore the feeling that something about the situation had already gone too far.

I didn’t want that thing anywhere near Emma.

So later that night, after everyone had gone to bed, I took it outside.

I walked a couple of blocks down the street with the toy tucked under my arm until I found a garbage bin sitting behind a row of townhouses.

I dropped it inside, made sure it landed near the bottom, and stood there for a second listening to the lid settle back into place.

Then I went home.

For the next two days nothing happened.

Emma asked about Oliver once or twice, and I told her the same thing both times — that it had stopped working and I was going to take it somewhere to see if it could be fixed.

She looked disappointed but didn’t push it.

By the second evening I had almost convinced myself that the whole thing had just been a series of strange coincidences that I had allowed to get into my head.

That night I was sitting in my study finishing up some work when I suddenly heard Emma laughing and squealing with excitement from down the hallway.

I walked toward her room expecting to find her playing with something she wasn’t supposed to have taken off a shelf.

Instead she was sitting cross-legged on the floor with Oliver in her lap.

She looked up at me with a huge grin.

“Daddy, thank you for fixing him!”

For a second I didn’t say anything.

The toy looked… different.

The thin patches in the fur that I had noticed the day we bought it were gone.

The fur looked thicker, almost clean, like it had just come out of a box.

Emma held it up happily.

“See? He works again.”

Then the Furby made a small choking noise.

Something fell out of its beak and landed on the carpet between Emma’s knees.

She giggled.

“Oliver spit something out!”

I stared at the floor.

It was a feather.

Small, grey and white.

I forced a smile and crouched down.

“Hey Em,” I said gently, reaching for the toy. “Let me put some new batteries in him so he works properly again.”

She handed it over without thinking.

The moment I stepped into the hallway I walked straight for the back door.

Outside the air was cool and quiet.

I stood on the patio holding the toy for a few seconds before I noticed something lying near the edge of the grass.

It was a small bird.

A sparrow, from the look of it.

It lay twisted on its side beneath the fence, its feathers ruffled and scattered across the ground.

For a moment I just stood there looking at it.

Then I looked down at the Furby.

Its eyes were open.

The corners of the plastic beak were slightly raised, and I could have sworn the thing was looking directly at me.

I didn’t go back inside.

Instead I walked straight to the shed at the back of the yard and set the toy down on the wooden workbench.

For a few seconds it sat there quietly.

Then it made that same faint whispering sound.

I grabbed the hammer hanging from the wall and brought it down as hard as I could.

Plastic cracked under the first blow.

The second split the casing open.

I kept swinging until the thing was nothing but broken pieces scattered across the workbench.

After that I gathered what was left, put it in a box, and drove out of the neighborhood.

I didn’t stop until I found a construction dumpster several streets away.

I threw the box in and didn’t look back.

By the time I got home the house was quiet again.

Emma was already asleep.

My wife was sitting on the couch when I walked in.

“Where’d you disappear to?” she asked. “Emma wanted Oliver earlier.”

I shrugged and set my keys down.

“Yeah,” I said. “It wasn’t really fixed. I left it in the shed. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

She studied me for a moment like she knew there was more to the story, but eventually she just nodded and let it go.

I went upstairs a few minutes later and checked on Emma before heading to bed.

She was asleep, curled up under the blanket.

For the first time in a couple of days, the house was completely quiet.

The next morning Emma left for school before I really had to deal with her.

I stayed in the kitchen longer than usual while my wife helped her get ready, pretending to read something on my phone while they talked near the front door.

I knew the moment Emma saw me she would ask about Oliver, and I didn’t have anything ready to say that wouldn’t sound like another lie.

She left for school without asking.

That almost made it worse.

After the door closed my wife stood there for a second looking at me across the kitchen.

She didn’t say anything, but the look on her face made it pretty clear she expected an explanation sooner or later.

She also knew better than to push right away.

I’ve always been the kind of person who eventually explains things when they’re ready to come out.

Still, I could tell she didn’t like the way I was acting.

Most of the day passed quietly after that.

I tried to focus on work, but every time the house creaked or something shifted outside the window I caught myself listening for that whispering again.

Nothing happened.

That evening, just before dinner, someone knocked on the door.

When I opened it one of the neighbors from a few houses down was standing on the porch holding his phone.

“Hey,” he said. “This might sound weird, but my dog’s collar has one of those tracker things on it. It’s been missing since this morning, and the app keeps saying it’s somewhere around here.”

I frowned and stepped outside with him.

He showed me the map on his phone.

The little blue dot sat almost directly on top of our house.

“That doesn’t really make sense,” he admitted, glancing around the yard. “But I figured I’d check before assuming the thing was broken.”

We walked around the property for a few minutes looking along the fence line, under the porch, and near the shed.

He even checked along the bushes near the side of the house.

There was nothing there.

Eventually he shrugged and said the tracker was probably glitching.

We talked for another minute before he headed back down the street, still staring at the screen on his phone like he couldn’t quite figure it out.

I didn’t tell him about the bird.

Or the cat.

That night I couldn’t sleep.

Sometime after midnight I ended up standing near the window in our bedroom, looking out over the yard the same way I had the night I heard the rustling outside.

For a long time nothing moved.

Then I saw it.

The Furby was sitting in the middle of the lawn.

It wasn’t moving.

It was just sitting there in the grass, perfectly upright, its head tilted slightly back as if it were staring up at the sky.

For a second I wondered if I was imagining it.

Then the toy lowered its head.

Even from the window I could see the curve of the plastic beak, the shape of the eyes reflecting the faint light from the street.

It looked like it was smiling.

The Furby jerked once, the way it did when the gears inside it started moving.

Then something dropped out of its mouth.

I watched it fall into the grass.

When the toy lifted its head again, the thing lying on the lawn caught the light.

It was a dog collar.

The metal tag glimmered in the moonlight, slick with something wet.

The Furby turned its head slightly.

And for a moment I had the unmistakable feeling that it was looking directly at me.

Then, it blinked.

I knew my wife was perfect for me on our very first date; the thought of wondering if I would ever be happy in marriage was replaced with a calm warmness of knowing that I’d be happy to drop out of the dating game forever if it meant waking up every day next to her. So I never thought I’d be praying for her quick death – but seeing her doubled over in complete anguish, dark blood pooling across her stomach, all I wanted was to end her pain.

“I know you must hate me,” the wiry-haired man cooed as he slurped up his errant drool, “but you fail to appreciate the lives sacrificed for your modern conveniences.” He scraped a yellow glob from his ear and sniffed it. “The world we be forever changed when I prove that the dead can be made to walk, that countless folk tales are based on something achievable.” He licked his dry lips. “Your hearts will stop beating, and your bodies will only work to eat living flesh, but the brain can remain active after death! Think of yourselves as Laika, the Russian dog who went into space before any humans and was forced to die of thirst.”

Then he drove a knife into my wife’s heart. Her face fell, and she died without looking at me.

The man spun around to face me, eyes ablaze with maniacal glee.

“You don’t have any power over me.” Spittle flew from my lips as I forced the words from my mouth. “Marissa was the only woman I ever loved, and I don’t want to live in a world without her. You can torture me as much as you want, but I won’t care. I’ve just gone through the worst pain I could ever feel.” I spat on his face. The man didn’t wipe away the jiggling phlegm. “Do your worst, fucker.”

I could tell that my heart wasn’t beating before I opened my eyes. My body was too cold and empty.

All I wanted was to eat.

I blinked and stared around the room. I was leaning against a brick wall with my hand shackled to a chain embedded in that wall. My heart would have skipped a beat if it were still alive as I saw Marissa directly across from me. She was also chained to the bricks. She was also dead.

Her eyes fluttered open. “Hey, babe,” she whispered. “I’m hungry.”

The wiry-haired man closed and locked the door behind him, sealing all escape from this windowless room. “It was worth it,” he whispered in a reverential tone. “I’ve mastered what the greatest minds of our species have only dreamed.” He threw his hands above his head in exaltation. “They have whispered of immortality. I’ve captured it.”

He walked to and squatted near where I remained on the ground by my chains. “I was right about everything,” he sighed with a breath that reeked of fecal cheese.

“Yes,” I croaked. “You were.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“You expected the brain to keep working after death, which means I remember what you did.”

His eyes grew wide.

“And you knew that we would be driven by a taste for flesh.” I raised my arm to reveal a bloody stump where my hand used to be, my own tooth marks still fresh on the bone. The man stared down in horror at the loose chain that had once held me in place. “And don’t expect mercy from a man without a functioning heart.”

He buried the knife between my ribs as I lunged at him, but I felt no pain. We rolled furiously across the floor, evenly matched, until slamming against the opposite wall.

The man screamed, eyes bulging, as Marissa sank her teeth into his thigh.

In our new state, Marissa and I felt an absolutely insatiable hunger for live flesh. It’s a good thing that he locked the door behind him; after I wrestled the key away, there was no escape.

His desperate resistance made the meat so much sweeter. Beginning with his fingers and toes, we ate inward so that he would stay alive as long as possible.

It took nineteen hours and thirteen minutes for him to die.

I never believed in those creepy “phone glitch” stories you read online at 2 AM. I always thought there was a logical explanation behind everything—software bugs, accidental recordings, or maybe people just making things up for attention. But something happened last month that I still can’t explain, and honestly, I’m not sure I want to.

It started on a normal Tuesday night. I live alone in a small rented apartment, and like most nights, I was just lying in bed scrolling through my phone. Around 1:30 AM, I remember feeling really sleepy, so I plugged my phone in, turned off the lights, and went to sleep. Nothing unusual. No calls, no messages, nothing that could have disturbed me.

The next morning, I woke up late for work. As I grabbed my phone, I noticed something strange—there was a call recording saved at 3:17 AM. The file name was just a timestamp, like any normal recorded call. The weird part? I never record calls. In fact, I don’t even have auto-recording turned on. Confused, I checked my call log, but there was no outgoing or incoming call at that time.

At first, I thought it might be some kind of system glitch. Maybe the phone updated something overnight, or an app malfunctioned. Still, curiosity got the better of me. I plugged in my earphones and played the recording.

The first few seconds were completely silent. Just a faint static noise, like bad network interference. Then I heard breathing.

It was slow. Uneven. Like someone was standing very close to the microphone.

I paused the recording immediately. My heart was already beating faster, but I tried to stay calm. “It’s probably just background noise,” I told myself. Maybe the phone recorded something from the room while I was asleep.

I played it again.

This time, I listened more carefully.

The breathing continued for about ten seconds. Then, very softly, I heard a voice.

“Hello…?”

It was my voice.

I froze.

I knew how I sound. Everyone does. And that was definitely me. But I had no memory of making any call, let alone talking in the middle of the night. I kept listening, trying to make sense of it.

There was a pause… and then another voice answered.

But it wasn’t clear.

It sounded distorted, almost like multiple voices layered together. I couldn’t understand the words, but the tone—it felt wrong. Unnatural. Like something trying to mimic human speech but failing.

I wanted to stop listening, but I couldn’t.

Then “my” voice spoke again in the recording.

“Why are you in my room?”

I swear to God, I never said those words.

My hands started shaking. I immediately looked around my apartment, even though it was daytime and everything seemed normal. Doors locked. Windows closed. Nothing out of place.

But the recording wasn’t over.

There was a sudden loud static sound, like interference spiking. And then… a whisper.

This time, it was clearer.

“I’ve always been here.”

I pulled off my earphones so fast that they almost broke. My chest felt tight, and for a moment, I just sat there, staring at my phone like it was going to do something on its own.

I tried to think logically again. Maybe someone hacked my phone? Maybe it was edited? But why would someone do that? And how would they get my voice so perfectly?

I checked the file details. It was recorded using my phone’s default recorder app. No third-party apps. No unknown activity. Just a normal file, created at 3:17 AM.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

I kept the lights on and stayed awake, constantly checking my phone. Around 2:50 AM, I started feeling that same uneasy silence you only notice at night. The kind where every small sound feels amplified.

At exactly 3:17 AM… my phone screen lit up.

I didn’t touch it.

There was an incoming call.

From my own number.

I just stared at it, my finger hovering over the screen. It kept ringing. The vibration echoed in the quiet room, making it feel even louder than it actually was.

After a few seconds, I did something I regret.

I answered it.

For a moment, there was nothing. Just silence.

Then I heard breathing.

The same slow, uneven breathing from the recording.

And then…

“Hello…?”

It was my voice again.

But this time… I hadn’t spoken.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even hang up. I just sat there, frozen, listening to my own voice coming from the other side of the call.

Then, very softly, that other voice returned.

“You listened.”

The call disconnected.

My phone screen went black.

Since that night, I’ve never played that recording again. I haven’t told anyone in real life either, because I know how it sounds.

But here’s the worst part.

Every night at 3:17 AM…

My phone screen still lights up.

And I’ve stopped answering.

The musty smell of forgotten memories clung to the air as Ben lugged the final wooden crate from the basement into his childhood living room. The house felt smaller now that his parents were gone—not because it was empty, but because the silence was heavy, as if the walls themselves were mourning.

He had expected to find tax returns or old Christmas decorations behind that false panel in the furnace room. Instead, he found the crate. It wasn't cardboard; it was reinforced oak, fastened with a padlock that looked far newer than anything else in the cellar.

He’d spent the afternoon hacksawing through the bolt, hoping for some hidden family history—maybe some old stocks, or even the jewelry his mother had claimed she "lost" years ago. What he found was far more disturbing.

Inside, tucked into custom-cut foam inserts, were hundreds of VHS tapes and MiniDV cassettes. They weren't the vibrant, commercial sleeves of B-movies or recorded sitcoms. They were stark and clinical. Each one bore a white adhesive label with a date and a timestamp, written in a cramped, precise hand that Ben didn't recognize.

The first tape he pulled out was dated November 14th, 1992.

He puts it in, hoping that it might be a family video, a way for him to see his parents again; however, what he got was nothing like what he'd hoped for.

He inserts the tape, and is confused. The tape is just a staticky image of his childhood bedroom, the same one less than twenty feet away from where he is sitting. The camera angle does not change, the video keeps going on, just pointing at the sleeping form of me as a baby.

The flickering light of the VCR cast long, dancing shadows across Ben’s face, mirroring the unease churning within him. Tape after tape, the same nauseatingly familiar scene replayed: his infant self, gurgling and reaching in his crib, blissfully unaware of the unseen presence filming from above.

He jammed another tape into the machine. The static cleared, resolving into the now sickeningly familiar pastel vista. This one was dated 1989. He was almost two. He watched himself, toddler-Ben, stumble across the room, grab a plush bunny, and nuzzle into it. A lump formed in his throat. It was him, but it felt… wrong. Like watching someone else’s life, a distorted version of his own.

Then, on this tape, something shifted. A faint scratching sound emanated from the crawlspace access visible in the top corner of the frame. A shadow flickered. Ben leaned closer, his breath catching in his throat. He rewound, playing it again. The shadow was there, undeniable. It was fleeting, just a glimpse of something moving inside the crawlspace.

His heart hammered against his ribs. He felt cold, a bone-deep chill that had nothing to do with the late hour or the drafty living room. He tried to rationalize it. Maybe a mouse? A bird that had somehow gotten in? But the angle, the deliberate framing of the crib, screamed premeditation, not accident.

Driven by a morbid curiosity he couldn’t suppress, Ben grabbed a flashlight and a crowbar and headed upstairs. The nursery was long gone, converted into a guest room, but the access panel remained, a small, square door set high in the wall. Ben looks to the corner of the room and sees a small camera, unnoticeable unless you were looking for it, clearly not something put in by his parents. He wedged the crowbar into the seam of the access panel and pried it open.

A cloud of dust billowed out, filling the air with the scent of decay and forgotten things. Ben coughed and shone the flashlight into the darkness. The beam landed on… more tapes. Hundreds of them. All neatly stacked, labelled with dates that stretched forward, far beyond his childhood. 1995… 2002… 2010…

Alongside the tapes, a sleeping bag and cans are up there too. A couple of them are half-eaten, and clearly recent.

My daughter Cleo turned 12 not too long ago. She has lived in this house her entire life, and now we’re moving out. It’s not anything dramatic; we’re just moving into a bigger place. She’s growing up and deserves a better space, and Molly and I are in a position where we can afford it. But as we’re packing up our things and looking to the future, I want to acknowledge something that happened in this house when we first moved in.

Cleo was closing in on her first birthday. Molly and I were working around the clock juggling a child, two full-time jobs, and a remote part-time job on the weekends. It was rough, but that’s to be expected. We had planned for this family, and we were ready to pay the price. Doesn’t mean we weren’t acknowledging the hardships.

We’d just moved to this house on the northern edge of Tornado Alley. While it did get the occasional storm, the place itself was safe enough that the house had never needed any serious repairs. Not from the weather, at least.

 

We got the place a little cheaper than expected. It was an 80’s style brick-and-mortar kind of building with a solid concrete storm cellar. One floor, separate garage. Solid outer walls; cheap interior. You can feel the heat from the kitchen while standing in the hallway, all the way through the paper-thin faux wooden wall panels.

That first month, as we moved in, we ran into our first problem. The storm cellar was having some trouble with cracks in the northernmost wall. Nothing serious, but just enough for there to be a sort of bulge. We had a guy check it out, and he acknowledged that it needed to be reinforced if we wanted to utilize the space safely. Luckily, we caught it early.

The neighborhood was great though. We lived at the end of the street near five other houses. Identical style, different colors. Ours was the green one.

 

While fixing up our storm cellar, we had our first reminder of just how close to Tornado Alley we were. While those across the state line to the south were bunkering down for a possible tornado, we only had to prep for a nasty storm. Perfect start to the summer.

On the day of the storm, we had a neighbor come by. Clyde. Salt-of-the-earth kinda guy, had lived there his entire life. Just a couple of years short of retirement, Clyde had the proportions of a walking meatball sporting a baseball cap. And yet, he always seemed to be out and about, mucking around in the garden and carrying things in and out of his garage.

Clyde stopped by our place and handed me a walkie-talkie.

“Everyone on the street has one,” he explained. “Just so we can stay in touch if things get bad.”

“You guys thought of everything,” I smiled.

“Stay prepared, you don’t gotta get prepared.”

“Boy scouts?”

“YouTube.”

He winked, gave me a pat on the shoulder, and lumbered away. Now I had a fancy new walkie-talkie. Nothing expensive, and the channel was a preset, but it carried a bit of weight. Solid stuff.

 

Molly called out when she noticed the first drops of water on the kitchen window. I was already downstairs, doing my best to prepare us for a long night ahead. There were three rooms; one of which we were later going to turn into a laundry room. That’d have to wait until we fixed the wall though. For now, I had to make sure Cleo would be comfortable, and that we had all the supplies we needed.

I tested the walkie-talkie a couple of times and got a response not just from Clyde, but a couple of other neighbors too. An older woman jokingly telling us she’d come by with a casserole once the storm was over, and a grumpy middle-aged man that firmly reminded us that the channel was for emergency use only.

Once everything was prepped I waited upstairs. Cleo was having the mid-day fussies. Molly was firmly fixated on the kitchen window, looking out. She had this cat-like feature, like she was seeing something I wasn’t. I half-expected her to tap at the window.

“You alright there?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she mumbled. “I just don’t like how it looks.”

The dark clouds were closing in. We were at the birth of the storm, but that didn’t mean we’d have a walk in the park. Things could get bad, and we couldn’t take any chances. Not with Cleo.

 

The wind picked up. I changed Cleo and got her things all packed up. I pulled Molly away from the window as we hurried out back. The storm cellar had this thick tilted metal door. We hurried downstairs, and I locked the door from the inside. Not that there was a reason to; it’s just what you do.

Cleo settled down. I’d brought down an air mattress, and there was a cooler with a couple of drinks, baby food, and snacks to keep us going. We were gonna fix the place up later, but this would have to do for now. Cleo had a cozy little cot in the corner; a plastic thing that we usually brought when we traveled. Not that we had a lot of time for that kind of thing.

I did a double-check on all the lights and our chargers. There was this large locker in the far-off room with the bulging wall. I presumed that locker held the fuse box. The thing was old as hell, and the warning stickers had long since faded, so I didn’t want to touch anything. Still, I figured it was good to know where to go if the power cut out. We didn’t get very good reception down there, but Molly had a couple of shows preloaded on her iPad so we could watch some reruns later in the night.

The wind kept going. I could hear it cut along the corner of the house, rattling the gutters. The raindrops had gone from tapping on the door to passing us by, as the rain turned sideways. Staying down there was just a precaution, but by the way things were going, we had the right idea.

 

It got pretty bad, pretty fast. People started talking over the walkie-talkie. Even the grumpy middle-aged guy.

“Looks like the tree in the yard is going down,” someone said.

“Fence is shaking something awful,” another one said.

Clyde, on the other hand, just kept checking in with people. We had an hourly roll call, and when he noticed one of us weren’t responding, he decided to go do something about it. There was this older man living down the street that hadn’t picked up, and Clyde was getting worried.

“Old guy lives on his own, surrounded by floppy disks and TV dinners. I’ll head over to check on him in a bit.”

A couple of people protested, but Clyde wasn’t having it. Apparently, he used to be an army medic.

 

Molly was sitting in the other room, rocking Cleo back and forth. She had this song about a blue sunflower that her parents taught her, and it always put Cleo to sleep. A couple of tunes from that lullaby was all it took. It was like a magic trick, or an off switch. I sat down next to them as the wind raged outside. Molly turned her attention to me.

“Did they say anything?” she whispered.

“About what?”

“About what’s going on up there.”

“It’s pretty rough,” I admitted. “Clyde is heading out to check on someone.”

“Did something happen?”

“Not sure. Maybe. They’re not responding.”

Molly nodded, looking up, as if staring out an invisible window.

“I dunno,” she whispered. “I got this bad feeling. Like today is special.”

As if responding, the electronics locker in the other room made an uncomfortable noise. A stark reminder that this was just the beginning.

 

The sun was setting, but the storm raged on. It wasn’t speeding up or slowing down, but there was this constant pressure on the side of our house. You could hear the way it was blowing, pulling at the roof tiles. Every now and then you’d hear something heavy fell over or scrape against the façade.

Molly was taking a well-deserved nap with Cleo while I was sitting in the other room waiting by the walkie-talkie. I wasn’t exactly expecting anything, but someone had to stay prepared if something happened. So far, we were doing pretty good.

There were a couple of alarming sounds coming from the locker, but I chalked that up as protests of an old house, or cheap wiring. As long as the light stayed on, I wasn’t touching it. Breaker boxes and I don’t get along.

The others were chatting a little back and forth, checking in on each other and waiting for Clyde to return. When he finally did, I could tell something was wrong. He was winded.

 

“Someone broke in,” he wheezed. “Front door’s busted, the whole place has been turned upside down.”

“Holy shit, you sure?”

The middle-aged grumpy guy quickly changed his tone.

“There’s blood on the floor, but there’s no one there. I don’t know what’s going on. I called the police, but they can’t do anything until the storm passes.”

The old woman chimed in.

“Everyone make sure your doors and windows are locked tight!”

As we reassured one another, I could hear one voice disappear into the background. I wasn’t sure about who they were, but I could tell I’d heard them a couple of times prior. They were a neighbor, but I couldn’t pinpoint their house.

“Someone’s knocking,” they said, trying to speak over the buzz of voices. “Someone’s knocking on my door.”

“Don’t open,” Clyde said. “You stay right where you are. Storm’s getting bad, I barely made it back. Ain’t no way no sane person is running around out there at this hour.”

“You sure it’s someone knocking?” the older woman asked. “It’s not just a branch?”

“I’m sure,” the man repeated. “They did the tap taptaptap-tap thing.“

“Just making sure you heard me,” Clyde repeated. “You don’t open that door.”

“I hear you.”

 

A storm can easily play tricks on you. If you listen long enough, you can start hearing things. It’s like watching static on a TV; after a while, you start imagining one side gaining strength, or conscious movement. The same goes for a storm. It can almost seem alive.

Cleo woke up for a little while. I made sure she was fed and cared for, giving Molly some well-earned rest. Baby in hand, I wandered back and forth, listening. There were these little creaks and cracks everywhere. The bulge in the wall. The metal door. The roof tiles. Anything could be a knock, or hide a careful step. What had happened to the old man down the street? Had Clyde really walked in on the aftermath of a murder?

Cleo wasn’t happy about being carried, so I turned to get her back to her mother. As I walked past the stairs leading up to the cellar door, I stopped. Looking up, I perked my ears.

Was that a knock?

 

Strange things were being talked about on the walkie-talkie. Someone else had heard a knock. The old woman wasn’t sure, she might have heard one too. And most recently; one of them stopped responding entirely. They tried to discuss the disappearance rationally, but Clyde wasn’t having it.

“There ain’t nothing wrong with my walkies,” he stated. “If someone ain’t responding, something’s wrong. He’s been here all day, I can’t see why he’d go away now.”

“Didn’t he say he heard a knock too?” the old woman added.

“That don’t mean anything,” the middle-aged man sighed. “Be prepared.”

“I’m calling the police again,” Clyde said. “Soon as the weather clears, I want cars lining the street.”

I didn’t know what to think. It could be nothing. There could be a hundred reasons why you stop responding. The button could be broken, or the battery ran out. Maybe he fell asleep, or left it in the other room. But then again, why would he? It was a tense situation, and we all knew it. No one was taking this lightly.

As I checked in on Molly, I noticed her mumbling in her sleep. Nothing big, but it was unusual for her. She was a heavy sleeper. As I backed away to give her some space, I noticed the pattern of what she was saying. She wasn’t just mumbling nonsense. She was talking.

“Come in,” she mumbled. “Come in.”

 

As the hours passed there were less voices on the walkie-talkie. A couple might have fallen asleep, but I got the feeling that there was something more to it. Clyde was having the same idea, but couldn’t bring himself to go back out. It’s one thing to be out in the storm, but another thing entirely to be out in the dark.

“I’m telling you, there’s something out there,” Clyde said. “There were tears in the wallpaper. The kitchen door was pulled straight off the hinges. Someone went berserk in there.”

I’d been quiet for some time. I didn’t want to wake Cleo, but she was out cold.

“You sure it wasn’t the storm?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Clyde responded. “A storm don’t break down the front door and leave the living room, you know.”

I was about to respond when I heard something. I turned my head and took my thumb off the receiver.

That was definitely a knock on the cellar door.

Tap taptaptap-tap.

 

I sat there, listening. After a couple of seconds, the knock came back. Twice, this time. Harder. Then I noticed something in the other room; Molly was getting up. She held Cleo tight and walked towards the stairs. She must have heard the knocking. There was no way she’d miss it.

“Honey? What are you doing?” I asked.

It took me a moment to realize she had her eyes closed. She was heading for the door, still mumbling to herself.

“…come in.”

 

I put my hand on her shoulder and saw the white in her eyes light up. She turned my way, blinking away the sleep.

“What are you doing?” I asked again.

“What?”

She looked around, just as confused as I was. Once she realized she was on her feet, she turned back towards the mattress without a word.

“Were you going upstairs?” I asked.

“It felt like the right thing to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I’m tired. Don’t listen to me.”

The moment she sat down, the knock came back. Louder this time. Insistent.

 

I walked up the stairs and made sure the door was locked. I could hear the wind outside, threatening to grab hold of the door and break it open. But there was another sound, too. Something just on the other side.

I’m not sure if it was some kind of breathing, but it was something heavy. Something that didn’t have the same rhythm as the storm. Then again, I could just have been listening for too long. It’s like when you say a word too many times and it starts to sound like a noise.

Going back down, I peeked in on Molly. She was out like a light.

“Clyde, you there?” I said, whispering into the walkie-talkie.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“There’s someone out there,” I said. “There was a knock.”

“Who the hell is outside in this weather?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it. I don’t know what to do.”

“I’d come over, but it’s too risky.”

“What do I do?”

 

Clyde came up with a couple ideas. He suggested I make sure I knew where the flashlights were in case the power cut out. I wasn’t too worried about that, seeing as I had the locker with the electric stuff in the other room (presumably). He also suggested keeping a low profile, but only up until the point where someone is clearly trying to break in. If it was a burglar, making your presence known would probably scare them off.

I didn’t tell him about Molly, and her unusual behavior. I didn’t know what to make of it, and just talking about it out loud would make me sound paranoid. Maybe storms make people behave strangely. They say crime goes up during full moons, who’s to say sleepwalking doesn’t go up during storms?

“If it’s you they’re after, and not your things, be prepared,” Clyde said. “They’ll try to trick you. They’ll probably pull the power, or do something to grab your attention. Don’t fall for it.”

“Grab my attention? Like what?”

The moment I said it, a new noise cut through the wind; my car alarm.

 

I asked Clyde if he could see it from his house. Turns out, he could. My car was in the driveway, flipped over. No other car on our street had flipped over. I could hear the wind scraping against the walkie-talkie as he called back to me.

“It’s on the side!” he gasped. “Driver’s side!”

The storm wasn’t strong enough to do that. But then again, neither was a person.

“You see anyone? Anyone at all?”

“It’s hard to tell. There’s just this big clothesline.”

“Clothesline?”

“Yeah, there are these gray metal poles sticking out, I think it’s-“

There was a short pause. We didn’t have a clothesline. That’s what our upcoming laundry room was for. Clyde’s voice came back.

“Nevermind, must’ve been debris. It’s gone. I can’t see shit.”

 

Over the next hour, things started getting weird. I heard glass shatter upstairs, and what sounded like someone climbing in through a window. There were footsteps, and the sound of furniture falling over. Someone slammed a door. Molly and Cleo slept through the whole thing. I wanted to wake her, just to make sure she was prepared, but something didn’t seem right. She wasn’t herself. None of this was normal.

I was trying to hear Clyde, but I could barely make out what he was saying. I had to hold the walkie-talkie up to my ear as the noises grew louder. He was telling me to keep quiet, to listen, and to wait. If they were ransacking the house, they most probably wouldn’t be looking for me or my family. Hopefully, it was just some opportunist trying to make a quick buck.

Then the power cut out.

 

“Molly?” I whispered.

She didn’t answer. I fumbled for my flashlight as I held down the button on the walkie-talkie.

“Power outage,” I said. “Is it just me, or did you-“

“No, it’s just you,” Clyde interrupted. “You know where the breaker is?”

“Yeah, it’s right here. I’m in the cellar.”

There was a pause. I turned my flashlight to the big locker.

“No it ain’t,” Clyde said. “It’s near the back door.”

“You sure?”

“Our houses are built the same. The breaker is by the back door.”

I would have to go upstairs if I wanted to turn the power back on. That made sense. I’d mixed up the breaker box with some kind of storage locker. I’d imagined hearing all kinds of weird electrical noise coming from it, but that’s just the kind of tricks the storm plays on you. I figured I might check it anyway just to be sure.

I placed my hand on the locker. As I did; another knock.

Tap taptaptap-tap. An echo from the cellar door, right upstairs.

 

The wind suddenly intensified as a gust rushed down the stairs. Hurrying out to see what was going on, I realized the cellar door was wide open. Sweeping the rooms with my flashlight, I couldn’t see Molly. I called out to her and Cleo, but there was no response. I checked every corner to make sure, but there was no doubt about it; she was gone. My mouth went dry as I ran up the stairs.

Poking my head out into the storm, I noticed a small silhouette walking away in the distance. It was holding something. It had to be Molly. I called out to her again, but still, no response. I followed her into the storm, feeling the water rush through my shoes. The wind almost overwhelmed me, but I managed to keep my balance by leaning into it.

There was no way she could hear me. I could barely hear my own breathing. I tried to hold on to that phantom image of Molly and Cleo, but they were getting further and further away.

 

Now, I didn’t know the area that well, but I knew there was a wheat field straight ahead. There was also a storage shed. I couldn’t imagine what compelled her to head that way, but it was the only structure out there. In the moments where I lost sight of her, I headed for the shed. That would get me a glimpse of her again and again, making me think that’s where she’s headed.

My feet were going numb from the cold, and my teeth kept chattering. I didn’t know if it was just the cold, or the stress. I couldn’t think straight. There was no world where my Molly would take our daughter into a raging storm.

The walkie-talkie crackled and complained. I crossed a knee-high fence swaying in the wind, raindrops peltering the left side of my face, as I saw the shed further down a trail. And right next to it; Molly.

 

I hurried up to the shed, dashing through the wheat, letting it soak straight through me. I got to the door, slammed it open, and hurried inside.

Molly was right there, curled up on the floor right next to boxes of farming equipment and old iron tools. She was sleeping soundly, and Cleo was too. They were both soaked right through, but neither seemed bothered. I got down on my knees and wrapped them up in a hug, trying to whisper through my panting breaths.

“What were you thinking?!”

Molly didn’t wake up. She just adjusted herself, sound asleep, muttering.

“Mothers know.”

 

The door swung wide open; I must not have closed it enough. Something snagged on it and the wind grabbed hold. I looked back at Molly, but she didn’t seem bothered.

Turning around, I could’ve sworn I heard something through the rush of the wind. The windows were shaking in their frames, and the wheat swayed back and forth, but there was something else. Something rhythmic. Footsteps?

There was movement in the corner of my eye. Someone outside the window. I got up, grabbed a spade from one of the shelves, and readied myself. My blood ran cold as my teeth kept chattering. The adrenaline was getting to me. My fingers cramped around the handle of the spade.

Another thump. Something was on top of the shed.

 

I saw a hand. A big, gray, hand.

It reached down from the roof, down the front of the shed. I could see it in the open door. The arm was impossibly long, and single-jointed. Thin, like a broom handle.

I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Slowly but surely, it grabbed a hold of the door and gently closed it with a firm click.

Seconds later, it climbed down. As it did, I heard Molly stir. She mumbled again.

“…thank you.”

A noise in response. A knock.

Tap taptaptap-tap.

 

I sat next to Molly and Cleo for hours as the storm died down. We spent the entire night in that shed. It wasn’t a bad idea to take shelter there; this thing had been built to last. If something can survive 40 to 50 years of bad weather without toppling over, it has to be doing something right.

Clyde’s voice came through somewhere around 4 am. The police were coming; they just had to clear the roads. Apparently, there’d been other people calling about disturbances. Home invasions. No one seemed to be hurt though, they were all counted for. The middle-aged grumpy guy and old lady included.

When Molly finally woke up, she seemed just as confused as I was. As the wind died down, she looked up at me with half-closed eyes.

“I had the strangest dream,” she yawned. “Where are we?”

 

Going back to the house, I got a clear view of the damage. Something had torn through our back door and ransacked our house, just like Clyde described. Molly didn’t want to go inside, thinking it probably wasn’t safe for Cleo to be around a bunch of broken furniture and glass, so she decided to wait in the car. Turns out she hadn’t heard the part about it being flipped on the side. She settled on waiting at Clyde’s place for the time being.

Meanwhile, I went into the storm cellar to check the extent of the damage, and to get Cleo’s things. But just a couple of steps down the stairs, I noticed something.

Blood.

Turning on my flashlight, I went downstairs, being careful not to touch the red trail. At the bottom of the stairs, it took a sharp turn to the right. It lead straight to the storage locker. The one I thought had been the breaker box.

There was a dead man in it.

When I say dead man, I don’t know for certain. The body was completely destroyed. A couple of limbs lay strewn across the floor, and most of the skin around the face had been peeled back like a ripe orange. And there, by what I guess had once been his feet, was a gun. A loaded handgun. I could barely see it for all the viscera.

 

I ran out of there as fast as I could. When I saw the squad cars, I pointed and screamed. When I got to Molly, I held her close and stroked her hair; more so to calm myself than anything else. She was safe. Cleo was safe. That’s all I cared about. As I held her close and watched the flashing lights descend on our house, she whispered to me.

“I dreamt there was someone coming to warn us,” she said. “Someone who lived with an old man, and was terribly, terribly, sad.”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to tell her what I’d seen. Not yet. There’d be plenty of time to look into it later, but for now, I just held her. The future could wait a little longer.

 

In the days that followed, a lot of details emerged. The old man Clyde went to check on had been found shot. It seemed to be a failed home invasion. The perpetrator had fled, as if chased by something. He had hidden in our basement. He must have slipped in while I was going up and down, moving Cleo’s things. Bad timing, I suppose. He probably just saw an open door and rushed inside. He must’ve been desperate.

He’d hidden in the storage locker, waiting for the night to pass. He’d been a couple of feet away all night, with a loaded weapon, ready to take me down if I so much as touched the handle on that locker. He probably would’ve done it, too. He had plenty of ammo to spare, and he was known to be a decent shot.

But there was something else. Something I can’t quite explain.

There had been something out in the storm. Something he was fleeing from. Something that had come to warn us, knocking on that door, trying to find a way to get to us. It had been looking for him all down the street, tearing through every house to find him. Even flipping a car, like he was checking under a carpet.

Not to hurt us. Not to tear us apart, but to stop him. And for one reason or another, Molly heard that warning. I suppose, in some ways, mothers just know.

The strangest detail is his death though. Despite all that gore, the man in our storm cellar didn’t die from having his arms torn off. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

 

Now that Cleo has turned 12, we’ve decided to leave that house. The storm cellar looks very different today than it did all those years ago. The storage locker is gone, and the laundry room is all set up. The wall is fixed; haven’t had a problem with it for a long time. Whoever buys the place will have a very different first impression of it.

Clyde is still around. Our old neighborhood is pretty close-knit, and I’m sad to leave them all behind, but sometimes you have to trust your gut. Even when it tells you to move. Or more importantly, when it tells you to walk into the storm.

Cleo is almost a teenager now. It’s impossible that she would ever remember something from that night, but I still get the impression that it left something with her. Whenever she knocks on a door, she uses that same pattern. Tap taptaptap-tap. And sometimes, in her sleep, I hear her mumbling like her mother did that night. Just little things.

“I’m okay.”

“Sleep tight.”

“See you tomorrow.”

 

Looking back, there are so many things that scare me about that night. The thought of losing my family. An armed man waiting for an opportunity. A long gray arm, opening a door.

…and what it did to a man it despised.

I was reading about the Enfield Poltergeist case online, and honestly it might be one of the craziest ghost stories I’ve ever seen. People said furniture moved on its own, strange voices came from one of the girls, and there were even claims of levitation. Whether it was real or fake, the story is wild.

So now I’m curious, what’s the craziest ghost story you know? It can be something famous from the internet, a local legend, or even something that happened to you or someone close to you.

What’s the one story that really made you stop and think maybe ghosts could be real?

A year ago, Crystal Skyler, a well-known celebrity streamer, took her own life in front of 50K viewers, after detailing her harassment.

Her video went viral, parents across the nation coming to a grim conclusion.

Their children were corrupted.

Poisoned.

And we needed to be… fixed.

So, a streamer died, and it was our fault.

Officially, it was called The Social Alignment Program.

Created for the sole purpose of “smoothing” us down, removing the parts of us that judged, that looked down on people, that insisted on hierarchy.

Crystal’s video didn’t just go viral. 

It gave the government an incentive to cut out bullying once and for all. Literally. But I never bullied anyone. I did tease kids.  I called Jesse Harlow stuck-up in eighth grade. I shoved Sam Holland into a classroom because my friends thought it was funny. But I wasn’t bully, right? Wasn’t bullying just… natural?

Sitting in an uncomfortable chair, my wrists were gently pinned down.

The room was clinical white. The chair was ice cold, uncomfortable leather.

The device was kind of like a halo; it descended from the ceiling and settled over my skull, coming apart like a vice, and gripping my entire head. My reflection in the equipment mirror stared back at me, a trembling seventeen year old trying to stay calm. “Allison,” the nurse gestured for me to lean forward and rest my chin on another piece of equipment, placing my head between spinning metal structures, a blinding white light piercing my right eye.

I wasn’t alone.

Across the room, a boy sat cross legged on an observation bed, arms folded.

Whenever a nurse came near him, he started screaming.

“I have rights,” he kept repeating, an almost hysterical sobs slipping through his words. “You can’t freakin' do this to me, because I have RIGHTS! You fucks!”

I watched him jump off the observation bed and sprint out of the room while his nurse fumbled with an IV. Part of me cheered him on. The rest thought he was a moron.

I tried extremely hard not to notice the foam disks pressing against my temples.

“Okay, Allison, can you look straight forward, please?” the nurse instructed from behind a pale blue mask. “Directly at the bright flash, and try not to blink!”

I couldn’t choke back my cry, my eyes stinging, the bright light pulsing. “I want my Mom,” I whispered, trying to pull my head back. “Let me go!” I screamed, thrashing at velcro restraints pinning my wrists. “I want to go home! I want to fucking go home, right now!”

“It’s okay, Allison,” the nurse cooed. “We’re almost there. Relax.”

Her voice faded as a sharp pain scratched the back of my head. 

Deeper. 

Like it was digging through my…

Brain.

Wait, what was I…?

“Why don’t we talk about your favorite thing?” The nurse’s voice was ocean waves crashing into my skull. “Children undergoing alignment surgery tend to respond better when they’re engaged.”

That sharp scratch became a lightning bolt rattling my skull. 

I could no longer blink, my body paralyzed. “Speak, Allison. We need to know the Smoothing has been successful.”

I blinked again, sensation flooding back.

But not normal sensation. The nurse gently led me back to the chair. 

It didn’t feel cold. 

It didn’t really feel like anything. 

She tied a bracelet around my wrist, her gloved hands still slick with my blood. 

I strode toward the door and accidentally trapped my finger in the hinge. The nurse paled. I knew the pain was there. But I was numb. “Allison, are you... all right?”

“Yes,” I said, smiling at my bulging red thumb. “I’m fine.”

I walked home in the rain and didn’t feel it soaking through my clothes.

Mom slapped me across the face. “You’re no daughter of mine. You’re a shell.”

That was… fine.

Days collapsed into a blur of nothing. Ice cream tasted like cardboard. Every time Mom screamed at me was… grey.

When I visited my aunt, she showed me a picture of a political figure, laughing.

“Oh my god, look at the state of his hair!”

I wasn’t sure why she was laughing.

To me, the person looked… fine. 

In class, every student sat and listened and kept their heads down.

At lunch, the same boy from the procedure room bumped into me.

I noticed the bandage wrapped around his head, burns staining his temples. “Sorry,” he smiled. “That was my fault.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

Then one day, heading to gym class, he elbowed me in the eye. Pain struck. Nuclear pain, so visceral my legs gave way. I glimpsed him through flickering lashes; his nose was bleeding. Color. 

Bright red color bleeding into the endless grey. “Sorry,” he said, but didn’t walk away.

He wound his fist back and swung it into my face. I screamed. Numbness became sensation. Sensation became emotion. 

Pain. 

Glorious. 

Filthy. 

Agonizing.

“Are you... okaaaaaaaay?” His voice bled unmistakable mockery.

“I'm... fine,” I said, and realized I was grimacing. He shoved me again.

Something ignited.

“Prick.” The name spluttered from my lips. “Watch where you’re going. Are you blind?”

He smiled. “Bitch.”

I shoved him, choking on hysterical giggles. “You look like a toe.”

He punched me again.

I enjoyed the sting.

“I hate your fucking ponytail,” he spat.

Somehow I was nose to nose with him, my skin on fire.

“Well, I hate your face!”

He grinned.

“Oh, yeah?”

I wrapped my arms around his waist, pulling him closer. I ran my lips across his neck, a shiver sliding down my spine.

“Yeah,” I said, and ripped his throat out.

But his teeth were already piercing mine. 

His giggles were muffled, manic, as he burrowed into me, and part of me, this feral, animalistic part of me, squealed in delight. He  chittered happily, feasting on me. I'm not sure when I stopped thinking.

What I do know is that beautiful, cavernous hunger took its place. 

They should have just given us counseling.

​

I was dating a married man. I know that sounds wrong and makes me seem trashy.

Don't jump to assumptions about me as a person yet.

The marriage wasn't exclusive. It was a open marriage.

He explained to me that I wasn't the first woman he's dated during the marriage. He's brought home a couple of different girls.

I tried asking numerous times about what happened to the other girls. His answers always lacked details.

Another odd thing was the behavior of the wife.

She enjoys getting to know the ladies. She pampers them. Bakes them sweet treats, makes nice meals, and gives gifts.

I oringally thought it was a weird mistress kink or fetish.

I wish it was that simple. It's way more sinister than what I had imagined.

I figured out their dark secret by eavesdropping.

I heard them talking about me and coming up with ideas on how to capture me and what their viewers would think of me.

I even heard them mention the names of what I presumed to be the ladies he dated in the past.

They were reminiscing on their past killings and how this murder website makes them so wealthy.

Their name on the website was, “The Death Of Mistresses”

Apparently a lot of people took a sick pleasure in watching them kill people.

The words that made my fight or flight go off is when I heard the wife make a loud announcement.

“Hello everyone!! Welcome to the stream! We have another mistress that is gonna deal with karma. I'm thinking that we should use one of the weapons we received from a fan!”

I remember the terror rushing through my veins. I instinctively grabbed the sharpest knife in the kitchen and then hid.

Being at the house a couple different times proved to be useful. It gave me familiarity with the place itself. I knew where a lot of things were.

Hearing the wife's voice call out my name in a innocent tone still haunts me to this day.

The images of her blood getting all over the place flood my mind from time to time. I don't have flashbacks out of guilt. I don't regret jump scaring her and slicing her open.

I sure as hell don't regret murdering her husband with the same knife shortly after I killed her.

The memories just stick with me. The images of what it all looked like, the sound of her voice wanting to lure me to my death, the smell of the food she had prepared lingering into my nostrils, and the way it felt to hold the knife and kill them.

I suppose the explanation is trauma. The incident traumatized me.

I wish the trauma could die with them but it is likely going to be part of me for as long as I live.

The worst part is that I never figured out the name of the website. The police couldn't either. They said that it wasn't on any of their electronic devices and that their internet history looked normal.

I never understood how they couldn't find anything. I never touched their devices after killing them. I'm pretty sure they didn't delete anything before being killed.

There's two possible explanations. The website is powerful and can control itself like a entity or the police are protecting the murder site.

Both scare me. Both make me question reality.

I always thought it was just an old superstition. My gran used to say you should never leave a mirror facing an open window after dark, or it becomes a "trap." I never believed her until I started looking into the story of a student named Sophie who disappeared in the mountains years ago.

The details are haunting—scratch marks found on the inside of the glass, and witnesses claiming her reflection started moving on its own before she vanished. The weirdest part is that she genuinely looked like she was struggling against something inside the mirror.

Does anyone else's family have weird "rules" about household objects that they take deadly seriously? I'm starting to think these superstitions exist for a reason.

I can’t remember the exact results that popped up when I searched that, but something did. I was a bit weirded out. What were the odds that someone had the same issue?

It wasn’t just a matter of “oh, silly me, I took it with me to the bathroom and left it there when I was done taking a shit.”

I took a sip of coffee and gently placed the mug back on the coaster. When I checked to see if it was centered two seconds later, it was gone.

That exact thing had happened to someone online, or at least they claimed it. Tragically, they’d gotten no replies.

After a few moments of disbelief, I gaslit myself into believing I’d taken it downstairs and simply imagined taking that last sip.

I searched the sink, the tables, the fridge… hell, I even checked inside the fireplace. It was a plain, white mug with a cat sticker.

Its color contrasted with most of the furniture, so I quickly dismissed it. If it wasn’t downstairs, then it had simply disappeared and it was no longer my problem. I had work to get back to.

Then I faced a choice. I could either head upstairs or make another coffee first. I chose the latter.

At this point, I have to mention that every glass or cup I own is different in its own way. I don’t even have two identical mugs.

So when I opened the cabinet, I certainly didn’t expect it to be filled to the brim with those boring, plain white mugs. In fact, every single cabinet was.

My initial reaction was to rub my eyes, hoping I was dreaming. When I concluded I wasn’t, my curiosity was replaced with something I’d never felt before.

It wasn’t fear. It was something more primal. A gut-wrenching sensation that made me want to crawl out of my skin.

In my delirium, I started ravaging the entire kitchen. Sure enough, it wasn’t just the cabinets. The fridge I’d checked just five minutes prior was also overflowing with them. I find it ironic that none of them was the cup I was looking for.

There were many hopes I tried to cling to, but I couldn’t help dismissing them. No one was pulling a prank on me; no human could do something like this. And I wasn’t imagining it.

I could physically feel my blood running colder with each new mug I found. They weren’t limited to the kitchen. They appeared in places I had checked just minutes before. I must have looked like a lunatic trying to keep up.

At the very least, the breeze from the AC brushing my neck grounded me to reality. I took a deep breath and tried my best to think of a possible explanation. When nothing came to mind, I decided it was best to lock myself in my bedroom. Maybe if I felt safer, I’d figure out a way to overcome… whatever this was.

Before doing so, I turned off the air conditioner. At the very least, I had control over my electrical bill.

It felt like a wave of derealization. My heart pounded against my ribs, threatening to break them. My breathing became uncontrollable and jagged. For a moment, it felt as if I were looking at the already switched-off AC in third person.

There were no open windows. No ventilation. The AC was off. Someone had been breathing on my neck.

I rushed toward the stairs, desperately climbing them on all fours, and when I finally reached my room, I locked the door without looking back.

The false sense of safety quickly escaped me in the form of fast, erratic inhales and exhales. I had just trapped myself. I called the authorities and told them someone had broken into my house. There was no way in hell they would believe my story.

Not knowing what to do, I paced the small space in anticipation. I regret looking at my window.

Two handprints, the remnants of hot breath between them, and a note. Unmistakable. I dropped to my knees, my eyes fixed on the brutal sight. Had I lost it?

My window is about 20 feet above ground. There was no ledge, no balcony, or anything to stand on.

The thought of someone looking at me through my own window, impossibly elevated above ground, was enough to make me want to jump off.

The note. The note was the worst part.

"Find the mug, or you're next."

Are we fucking serious? Something with incomprehensible abilities was stalking me, putting me through an impossible situation, and the only thing it had to tell me was to find a stupid mug? And what did it mean by "I'm next?"

A sudden noise from right behind me made me jump back. It took all the strength I could muster to turn around. A trail. A trail of plain, white mugs, the same ones that took over my house. It was leading to my closet.

"Yeah, fuck that, I'm not doing that," I remember telling myself in my disbelief.

It wasn't one of those slow and chilling door openings you see in movies. It was loud. Violent. It sounded like a kick.

That was when a thought crossed my mind.

What if the trail's end was at my feet and not my closet?

What if I wasn't meant to follow the trail, but whatever was inside my closet was?

What walked out was the most visceral being one could imagine. It was myself. A mutilated, grotesque version of myself.

My eye sockets were forcefully stretched to house two white mugs. My jaw was broken, and my mouth looked too big for my face to accommodate it.

Its voice came out distorted and unnaturally high-pitched, saying things like:

"It hurts! It hurts so much!"

"Kill me!"

"Oh God it hurts!"

My chest tightened and the room started to spin. I think I took some steps back, and I ended up falling out my window, which I don't remember ever opening.

I was found by the police officers once they arrived and then rushed to the hospital. Despite the fall, my injuries were minor, although I did undergo cardiac arrest from the sheer terror of the encounter.

I'm writing this from a hospital bed. The police told me that someone had been living inside my walls for the past twelve years. There were tunnels connecting my closet to the attic, and the downstairs bathroom.

I know that this is nothing to take lightly, but it doesn't explain anything I went through. No normal person should have been able to do any of that. What was the thing I saw? That mortifying version of myself is still out there.

I'm so desperate to find answers that I'm going to do what the note told me to. I don't want to find out what "or you're next" means.

I don't think it's impossible that the mug is across the world right now. It's a custom-made white mug, with a sticker of a tuxedo cat. I know that the description isn't helpful at all, but there's really nothing more to it.

Please help me, I'm desperate and don't know what to do.

EDIT: This might be a coincidence, but every single person here drinks from the same mugs that flooded my apartment. I'm so fucking scared.

“Wow,” my best friend, Macy, said, “Your stepmother is one cold-hearted bitch.”

The two of us were standing next to my father’s casket as they were about to lower it into the ground. Anna, my stepmother for all of two months, was standing on the opposite side of the casket from us with a look of boredom on her face.

“Why is she even here? She clearly didn’t give a shit about your dad,” Macy continued, “She hasn’t shed a single tear.”

A fresh round of sobs racked my body.

“Sorry,” Macy quickly apologized, “I shouldn’t have said that out loud.”

I wiped my eyes and sniffled, “It’s okay. You’re not wrong.”

Once the ceremony was over and we were walking back toward the parking lot, Macy put her arm around my shoulders and said, “Why don’t you come over to my house?”

“I can’t,” I replied, “Anna wants to talk to me about something.” I glanced across the lot to where my stepmother was leaning against what used to be my dad’s car, waiting for me, “I’ll call you later,” I promised.

“You better,” Macy said before leaving to catch up to her parents.

Anna and I didn’t say a word to each other until we got home.

“Would you do me a favor?” Anna asked as we walked through the door.

I turned to face her and didn’t say a word. I wanted to hear what the favor was before committing to doing it.

“Upstairs on the shelf in my closet is a jewelry box,” she said, “Can you bring it down here?”

Why can’t you go up there and get it yourself? That's what I wanted to say to her, but I couldn’t bring myself to be that rude and instead said, “Sure.”

The box she was talking about was made out of wood and was about eight inches long and four inches wide. Various flowers were intricately carved on the outside of it.

It was actually quite pretty.

I tried to open it to see what was inside, but I couldn’t figure out where the lid was.

When I got back downstairs, I found Anna sitting at the kitchen table.

“Here it is.” I placed the box in front of her.

She placed her hand on top of it and pulled it closer.

“I know you think I’m a heartless bitch,” she said, “And you’re partially right.”

She grabbed the edge of the box, lifted the lid that I couldn’t find, and then pushed it back toward me so I could see what was inside.

I gagged and had to look away when I saw the still beating heart inside.

“I am heartless,” she explained, “But I’m not a bitch, I’m a witch.”

I heard her close the box and slide it back across the table.

“Why did you show me that?” I asked.

“Because I think you deserve to know the truth,” she said, “Your father was not the man you thought he was.”

She paused for a moment to let her words sink in.

“Do you know how your mother died?” Anna asked.

“She was in a car accident.” That was what my father always told me.

“That’s not entirely true,” she said, “There was an accident, but your father staged it after he poisoned her.”

“You’re lying,” I snapped.

“It’s true,” she said, “He did it for the insurance money.”

I turned and started to storm out of the room.

“Your mom was my sister,” Anna called out.

I stopped and turned back to face her.

“She’s the reason I’m here,” she revealed.

I returned to the table.

“Your mother turned her back on our ways. Otherwise, she would have been able to protect herself from your father.” Anna placed her hand on the box that held her heart. “Your father tried to do the same to me, but this protected me.” She patted the box, “As long as my heart beats in here, no harm can befall me.”

“Did you kill him?” I asked.

“I did,” she admitted, “A lot sooner than I’d intended. I was planning on making him suffer for what he did to your mother and my sister, but then I found this.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a document, which she handed to me.

“Your father took out a life insurance policy on you,” she continued, “Trying to kill me was proving to be too difficult for him so he decided to go after you instead. So, I killed him before he could kill you.”

I opened the document and looked at it. Apparently, my life was only worth $100,000.

“You now have two choices,” Anna announced, “I can leave you here with the insurance money I’ll be getting from your father's death to live your life as you please, or you can come with me and learn how to do things like this.” She tapped the wooden box.

There's an old urban legend in my town, whispered for decades, about a little girl who never grew up. They say she died in the summer of 1963, during the county fair. She had collapsed suddenly on the carousel. Doctors claimed it was some strange illness, but no one really knew. Her family, stricken with grief, buried her quickly in her favorite frilly pink dress. Some say she wasn't dead yet.

The story goes that if you walk alone near the abandoned fairgrounds at night, you'll hear footsteps behind you soft, uneven, like a child in patent shoes. When you turn, nothing's there. But if you keep going, she gets closer. And if she speaks to you, you must never answer.

I used to laugh it off. A ghost in a pink dress? Sounded like small town nonsense. But curiosity gnaws at you. And one summer night, I decided to test it for myself. The fairgrounds were nothing more than rotting wood and weeds now, the skeletons of rides rusting against the moonlight. The Ferris wheel loomed like a broken crown, and the carousel poles were bent and splintered, horses frozen mid gallop with paint peeling from their faces. The air smelled like damp earth and mildew, thick with the buzzing of cicadas.

I walked down the cracked pavement, my flashlight trembling in my hand. At first, nothing. Just the crunch of gravel beneath my shoes. Then faintly, behind me Tap... tap... tap. I froze. The night seemed to hold its breath. Slowly, I turned. Nothing. Just empty shadows stretching across the rusted gates. I told myself it was an animal. Or my imagination.

But when I started walking again, the sound returned closer this time. Tap... tap... tap. My stomach dropped. My throat went dry. And then I saw her. She couldn't have been older than ten, standing a few yards away. Her skin was pale, grayish, with shadows under her eyes. Dirt clung to the folds of her faded pink dress, once frilly, now frayed. Her head tilted unnaturally to the side, studying me with hollow curiosity.

"Have you seen my mommy?" she whispered, voice thin and dry, like leaves scraping the ground. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but my legs locked in place. Her shoes scraped the pavement as she moved closer. Soil and worms trailed from her dress. "I can't find her... will you help me?"

Something deep in my gut howled *don't answer*. But my lips betrayed me. The word slipped out before I could stop it: "No."

Her expression twisted, her jaw unhinging far wider than human. Her eyes rolled white, and her voice became a chorus of echoes, rising from beneath the ground itself: "Then stay with me instead." Her hand shot out, cold and rough with dirt, seizing mine. I remember her grip pulling, dragging, burying. Darkness closed in.

When I woke, the sun was rising. I was lying on the fairground path, throat raw, fingernails caked with soil as though I'd been digging. Around my wrist was a pink ribbon tied in a perfect bow. No one believes me when I tell them. They laugh, say it's just a story. But sometimes, late at night, I hear it again outside my window. Tap... tap... tap.

So one time when I was 9 I was at my aunt's house 2 hours away from home

half of the people living in the street moved only leaving their big complex apartment to rot and decay and stay empty

one night (it was a full moon) I was at the balcony and my neighbor was on the other side we kept talking and stuff and eventually I saw a hand from the window of an opposing abandoned house

it was black and white and smokey like and it was waving at us

just a hand that seemed to come from the ground

I thought I was imagining things until my neighbor said did you see that? and we immediately scrambled back inside

The legend goes.... There was a man who lived in Terre Haute, Indiana, whose name was Martin Sheets. Sheets suffered from taphophobia, which is the fear of being buried alive after being incorrectly pronounced dead. This may seem a little odd, but this was a surprisngly common fear in the 19th and 20th centuries!

Sheets had a mausoleum built in 1910, and within this mausoleum, he had a working phone and working lights included inside in case he were buried prematurely. Some versions of the legend claim that he also had a chair and a bottle of whiskey put in the mausoleum so he could relax while he waited to be let out. Interesting, right? And what's even more interesting is that that's ALL TRUE. I know, it isn't spooky yet, but we're getting there.

Anyway, a few years later, Sheets passed away. He was placed in the mausoleum, and luckily, he never made any phone calls. However.... a few years later, his wife died. She was found at home, clutching the phone, with a look of terror frozen on her face. They say she was gripping the phone so tight that it had to be pried from her hand. What did she hear on the phone that literally scared her to death?

Can you guess what happens next?

When workers went to prepare the mausoleum for her body's arrival, they made a startling discovery: the phone inside was actually hanging off the hook.

This is a legend I heard about when I was a little girl, and I thought it was so fascinating when I learned that it was actually true. (The part about Martin being a very real person and the phone being in the mausoleum.)

Share your thoughts on this legend, and also, if you have any questions about the legend at ALL, I did so much research on it, it's crazy! I'd also love it if you'd share some local legends around your area as well! :)

***I have the newspaper clippings that talk about the mausoleum being built, in case anyone is interested in seeing them.

It was soon after I pulled up my leggings that I felt a slight scratch on the lower side of my thigh just above my knee. By then I had already headed out of the door and was running late for work. I touched the scratchy place over the fabric and felt a little hard bump there, almost as if a big crumb had found its way inside my leggings where it lay on the floor overnight and was now nestled against my skin, held in place by the tight fabric of the leggings.

Or it might be some sand. We had visited our local beach yesterday and you know how sand gets everywhere until late fall, after these summer beach trips.

It had been such a nice day! The memory of rolling about in cool waves on the hot sunny day held me as I trudged through my work day. We live by the North Atlantic, which is generally far too cold to swim in, but Sunday temperatures had reached record highs and the ocean was a welcome haven from the relentless heat in a city simply not built for it.

We played in the waves- I don't remember being able to plunge so comfortably in the ocean here ever before. There were all sorts of floating seaweeds in the waves and I even caught sight of flashes of silver.

It all seemed like a distant memory now as I went about my daily tasks. Once in a while the scratch bothered me and I would pull at my leggings, trying to dislodge the crumb. Then I would become absorbed in my tasks and forget about it again.

It was an overwhelming day, the kids more needy and grabby than ever, all over me with their clammy hands and snotty noses- most of them hotly sniffling in the germ-soup that is child care.

The scratching was becoming more pronounced. I couldn’t wait to strip off my leggings and pick at the crumby grain that had been digging in my thigh all day.

And then I saw before I felt anything.

A glossy dark green flat strip of what looked like sea grass slid out of my leggings, slithered across my sockless foot and reached out to Crissy and before I could move, it slid up Crissy’s legs and disappeared under the hem of her denim shorts.

Crissy didn’t seem to notice anything.

Before I could decide what to do, another one slid out and disappeared into Cal’s Spiderman sleeves.

I put down Mary -not before I noticed a flicker of dark green go down her collar- and ran to the bathroom. From the corner of my eye, I saw the kids fretfully pulling and tugging at their clothes.

I pulled down my leggings all the way, and stared horrified at the legions of seagrass-like creatures slithering from the scratchy place on my thighs, wrapping round and sliding down my legs to find new humans to latch on to.

There’s a road…

somewhere in rural America…

A road that doesn’t appear on most maps.

A road… people don’t talk about anymore.

They call it…

Black Hollow Road.

And if you ever find yourself there…

after midnight…

You don’t stop.

You don’t listen.

And whatever you hear…

…you don’t answer.

Daniel Harper had left that place years ago.

Fifteen years… to be exact.

He traded silence… for noise.

Darkness… for city lights.

He thought he had escaped it.

But some places…

don’t let you go that easily.

The call came late in the evening.

His younger brother. Ethan.

His voice… shaking.

“Dad’s not doing well…”

A pause.

“You should come back.”

The drive felt wrong… from the beginning.

The highway ended too soon.

The roads grew narrower.

Quieter.

Lonelier.

Cornfields stretched endlessly… on both sides.

And then…

That sign appeared.

Welcome to Black Hollow.

By the time Daniel reached home…

The sun was gone.

And the silence…

had already settled in.

Ethan stood outside the house.

Waiting.

He looked pale.

Tired.

Like he hadn’t slept… in days.

“You made it,” he said.

But his eyes…

They weren’t relieved.

They were… afraid.

Daniel frowned.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Ethan didn’t answer.

He just looked past him…

Toward the road.

That long… empty road… disappearing into darkness.

“Good thing you came before midnight,” Ethan said quietly.

Daniel let out a small laugh.

“What happens at midnight?”

Ethan looked at him.

For a long moment…

He said nothing.

Then…

“You’ll remember.”

That night…

Daniel couldn’t sleep.

The house felt the same…

But different.

Like something was… off.

Watching.

Waiting.

Then…

It started.

A sound.

Faint.

Slow.

Dragging footsteps… outside the house.

Daniel sat up.

Listening.

The footsteps stopped.

Silence returned.

He exhaled.

“Just an animal…”

Then—

Knock… knock… knock.

Three slow taps.

Too deliberate.

Too… human.

Daniel froze.

No one should be out there.

No one.

The knock came again.

Softer.

Patient.

He stood up.

Walked toward the door.

Each step… heavier than the last.

“Ethan?” he called.

No answer.

The house felt empty.

Then…

A voice.

Soft.

Broken.

Familiar.

“Danny…”

His breath stopped.

No one had called him that… in years.

“Mom…?”

But she was dead.

She had been… for a long time.

“Danny… open the door…”

The voice sounded real.

Too real.

Warm.

Gentle.

Exactly the way he remembered.

His hand…

Slowly…

reached for the doorknob.

“OPEN IT.”

The voice snapped.

Distorted.

Wrong.

“DON’T.”

Daniel turned.

Ethan stood in the hallway.

Eyes wide.

Face pale.

“Don’t open it,” he said again.

The knocking stopped.

Instantly.

The voice… gone.

Silence.

The next morning…

Daniel demanded answers.

They sat outside.

Sunlight everywhere.

But it didn’t feel warm.

“It started years ago,” Ethan said.

“There was a girl… Lila Carter.”

“She lived near the road.”

“Near the forest.”

“One night… she disappeared.”

“No signs.”

“No trace.”

“Then… the knocking began.”

Daniel felt his chest tighten.

“People heard voices… after midnight.”

“Voices of people they loved.”

“Some opened their doors…”

Ethan looked at him.

“…and they never came back.”

That night…

The knocking returned.

Knock… knock… knock.

This time…

Daniel didn’t move.

But the voice came anyway.

“Daniel…”

Weak.

Strained.

His father.

“Help me…”

Daniel clenched his fists.

His father was inside.

Sleeping.

This wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be.

“Please…”

The word broke something inside him.

He stood up.

Walked.

Slowly.

Toward the door.

The air grew colder.

Heavier.

“Just open it…”

His hand touched the doorknob.

For a moment…

Everything felt… peaceful.

Then—

He stepped back.

“No.”

The voice changed.

Twisted.

Angry.

The knocking exploded.

Loud.

Violent.

The door shook.

Then—

Nothing.

Silence again.

On the third night…

Daniel stepped outside.

He stood on the porch.

Facing the road.

Midnight arrived.

And the world… stopped.

No wind.

No sound.

No life.

And then…

He saw her.

A girl.

Standing at the edge of the road.

White dress.

Hair covering her face.

She didn’t move.

But she was… waiting.

Daniel stepped forward.

Behind him…

Ethan shouted—

“DON’T GO!”

But it sounded far away.

Distant.

The road stretched endlessly.

Longer than it should have been.

The girl was closer now.

“Why?” Daniel whispered.

She slowly lifted her head.

And Daniel felt his blood run cold.

Her face…

Was empty.

No eyes.

No mouth.

Just darkness.

And from that darkness…

Voices.

Dozens of them.

Crying.

Begging.

Whispering—

“Stay…”

“Stay…”

“Stay…”

Daniel stumbled back.

This wasn’t a ghost.

This was something else.

Something that used…

love…

memory…

grief…

To pull you in.

A hand grabbed him.

Ethan.

“RUN!”

They ran.

The whispers screamed behind them.

Shadows stretched.

Reaching.

Grabbing.

The house came into view.

Light.

Safety.

The moment they crossed back—

Everything stopped.

Silence.

The next morning…

Daniel left.

He didn’t look back.

Not at first.

But just before the road disappeared…

He checked the mirror.

And there…

At the edge of Black Hollow Road…

Something stood.

Watching him.

Waiting.

Years later…

He still hears it.

Late at night…

When everything is quiet…

Knock… knock… knock.

And a voice…

Calling his name.

Because some roads…

Don’t let you leave.

They just wait…

For you…

To come back.

About a month ago, I was watching TV at my place home alone and I have a daily routine of locking up the house before I sleep. The road I live on is fairly quiet with almost no noise at night besides the occasional car drive by. that night, I was locking up my house, and my ring doorbell camera went off because of motion. being in the upstairs bedroom, with a full view of the front of the house, I looked outside the window and saw the silhouette of a man standing in my driveway. I had instant chills down my back and my hair just stood up. so I turned on my front lights and this guy, jumps backwards like landing on his back, lays there for about 5 seconds and then slowly walks down the street. I heard one from one of my friends down the street, that apparently not too long ago, that same guy was apparently trying to open his front door until he shouted out to him, making the man apparently turn around in an extremely distorted manner, before walking off into the night. my whole street is starting to get scared now of whatever this thing is. let me know what you guys think this is.