Entry 1 – 14 June 2027
San Diego, Recruit Training Depot
Day 3. They shaved my head. I look like a pissed-off bowling ball. Drill Instructor Morales already hates me. Mom cried when I left. Dad would’ve been proud—if the cancer hadn’t eaten him alive six months earlier. Stage four. I drove him to every appointment, held the bucket while he puked blood, listened to him joke through the pain. He told me to enlist, to not watch him rot. I signed the papers two weeks after we buried him. I keep telling myself he wanted it. But sometimes I wonder if I just ran.
Entry 62 – 12 September 2027
Marine Combat Training, Camp Pendleton
They gave me 1371—Combat Engineer. I wanted infantry, but they say we go where the infantry goes and blow the path open. Ramirez got it too. We’re tight. Chaplain Kane quoted Psalm 23 today. Felt like armor.
Entry 115 – 20 December 2027
Home Leave, Texas
Mom made tamales. Little sister thinks I look mean now. Told them about my MOS. Mom lit candles and cried. I read Psalm 23 out loud for her. The guilt about Dad sat in my chest like shrapnel. I left him dying in that hospital room so I could play hero.
Entry 172 – 10 April 2028
Inbound to Theater
Plane’s dark. We’re deploying. Rumors of “unconventional threats.” I keep the pocket Bible close.
Entry 196 – 5 May 2028
Objective Church Raid
We hit the enemy base at 0300. I set the shaped charge—perfect breach. Inside the old church: black candles melted into puddles of wax, bodies arranged in a circle, throats slit ear-to-ear, blood still steaming. Five robed figures chanting around a stone altar. A kid—no older than my sister—lay there with his chest open like a book. The leader smiled at us with blood in his teeth and kept chanting while we opened fire. I put four rounds into his chest myself. We cleared the rest in twenty minutes. No prisoners.
We painted over every symbol, hauled the altar away, pressure-washed the blood until the stones looked new. Smelled like incense and cordite for days.
Entry 204 – 12 May 2028
Route Clearance, Valley Road North
Found two IEDs. Routine. But one Marine from 2nd Platoon—Private Ellison—stepped on something that wasn’t there. His leg came off at the knee in a spray of red mist and bone fragments. He screamed for his mom while we dragged him back. Died in the medevac. We all heard faint chanting on the wind afterward. Just the wind, we told ourselves.
Entry 217 – 25 May 2028
Bridge Demolition
Charges detonated clean. Echo kept rolling like chanting. Corporal Torres said he heard his wife’s voice begging him to come home. We sandblasted fresh carvings off a nearby rock.
Entry 248 – 25 June 2028
Night Raid Support, Suspected Cache Village
Infantry took point. We breached. One of their guys—Lance Corporal Brooks—got pulled into an alley by something we couldn’t see. When we reached him his face was gone, peeled off clean, eyes still blinking in the ruin. Blood pooled black in the dirt. He whispered my name before he died. Ramirez and I looked at each other. Same dream last night. Same kitchen table, Dad’s voice.
Entry 255 – 2 July 2028
Another Bridge
Boom. Then dead radio silence. Hayes recorded the echo—played it back and it was just normal explosion. He deleted it. That night I dreamed Dad sitting on the altar stone, black fog pouring from his mouth, tubes still in his arms. “You left me warm in that bed,” he said. I woke up standing at the wire with my boots on.
Entry 268 – 15 July 2028
FOB Perimeter
Hayes died on patrol today. Fog rolled in thick. We heard him laughing, then screaming. Found him hanging from the MRAP by his own belt, intestines looped around the bumper like Christmas lights. Autopsy said suicide. We all knew better. The painted church walls are starting to bleed symbols again.
Entry 282 – 30 July 2028
Northern Valley Spur
Torres froze mid-sweep, staring at a rock that looked like Dad’s hospital bed. Whispered, “He’s here.” Then a mine that wasn’t on any detector took his left arm and half his face. Blood everywhere. He died cursing me for bringing the church curse with us. Guilt feels like it’s eating me from the inside the way cancer ate Dad.
Entry 296 – 13 August 2028
FOB Pre-Dawn
Ramirez found me puking after another dream. Dad on the altar, healthy, then rotting while black fog spilled out. “You left me to die alone.” I threw up hospital antiseptic and valley dust.
Entry 310 – 27 August 2028
FOB – Final Entry
Word came down: AO stabilizing. Fog thinner. No symbols under the paint for days. Ramirez laughed at chow—real laugh. Hayes and Torres are gone, but the rest of us feel lighter. Dad came in the dream last night and just nodded, walked away. I slept through the night. Tomorrow we push deeper into the valley for one last clearance op. Feels like we finally outran it all.
I thought I escaped. I thought I beat it.
The Valley – Final Push
The next page is torn. Blood and black wax stain what remains.
We rolled out at 0400. The fog came down like a curtain.
It started with Ramirez. One minute he was checking his charges beside me; the next his skin split open along the seams like overripe fruit, black fog pouring out while he laughed in my father’s voice: “You left me warm, mijo.” He turned his rifle on the squad. Three Marines died before we put him down—heads exploded like melons, brains painting the inside of the MRAP.
Then the Shepherd came.
It rose out of the valley floor wearing Dad’s face stretched over something taller, horns curling like a ram’s, body made of writhing shadow and candle wax. Every Marine it touched came apart: limbs yanked off in wet pops, guts uncoiling across the dirt, screams turning into wet gurgles as their mouths filled with incense and rot.
I was the last one standing.
The staff in my hands glowed white-hot. I planted my boots in the bloody mud and screamed the Psalm at the top of my lungs while the Shepherd laughed with Dad’s mouth and lunged. Its claws raked across my chest, opening me to the bone. Blood poured hot down my flak vest. Pain like fire.
But the staff flared. Light exploded outward. The Shepherd shrieked—a sound like every funeral, every hospital beep, every whispered guilt I’d carried since I left Dad’s bedside. Its borrowed face melted, revealing the thing beneath: a hollow-eyed shepherd with a crown of black candles.
I drove the staff into its chest like a spear.
It exploded into black fog and screaming candle flames. The valley answered with one last roar, then went silent.
The fog lifted. Sunlight—real sunlight—touched the ridgeline for the first time in months. Bodies lay scattered behind me. My squad. My brothers. My fault, some of it. But the Shepherd was gone.
I dropped to my knees in the blood-soaked dirt, staff still glowing faintly in my hands, and whispered the Psalm one last time.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
I survived.
But some nights, when the wind moves just right, I still hear Dad’s voice on the breeze, soft and disappointed.
And I wonder if the Shepherd ever really died… or if I just brought a piece of it home with me.