Fearsome

EMILY

HALLOWEEN, ONE YEAR AGO…

As they neared the end of the street, Emily in her skeleton suit, Kayla in her witch costume, the wind picked up a little slip of paper from one of the trick-or-treater’s buckets and threw it square into Emily’s face. She yelped and nearly fell over; Kayla caught her, but couldn’t hold her, and they slowly slid down onto the pavement. The piece of paper fell onto the humerus painted on her sleeve; it was a tattered little comic titled THIS WAS YOUR LIFE.

“Ugh, sorry,” drawled an older boy dressed as Rick and/or Morty. “There’s this freakin’ house down the street giving out religious comics.”

Emily kicked the comic onto the sidewalk. “Ugh. I hate that.”

“Good thing we didn’t go that way,” Kayla said, helping Emily to her feet, dusting off her skeleton-arms.

“Yeah. This is like...the last Halloween we’re young enough to do this, and getting something like that would...it’d suck,” Emily said.

“Yeah,” Kayla said. “Last Halloween trick or treating. We’ll be too old soon…some of the parents are looking at us funny now, too…”

“It’s late, we should head back?” Emily said.

“No,” Kayla said. “Um. Hey, we don’t...we can keep going a bit!”

“Yeah, we can go a little longer,” Emily said, and they carried off into the night…

“Hey, um…” Manuel idly wrung his hands behind his back. “If Jessie isn’t here, why was the gym unlocked tonight?”

“I…it’s always unlocked?” Summer countered.

“Not this late at night, if there’s nothing planned,” Manuel said.

“Yes, Manuel’s right,” Claire said. “The community center should be closed for the night. If Jessie didn’t invite us, and didn’t unlock the door, someone else -”

“Oh, can it!” Gef shrieked. “Why, what does it matter why we’re in a musty old gym? Goodbye! Goodbye! You may be haunted all you like, but Gef - Gef has the wisdom to leave!” Gef turned to escape, only for Laura to snatch him by the tail. “Un…unhand me! Witch woman! Devil in disguise!”

“Why don’t we leave? J…” Claire furrowed her brow for a few moments, shaping the words with her mouth. “Gef isn’t wrong, per se.”

“No, he’s not, and neither is whoever the heck Percy is!” Alice said. “It’s only some weird noises up above. Why’s that our busine-” A series of quick movements. Deeper in noise, and in rapid succession. Alice jumped. “I’m leaving. I’m-!”

Manuel watched Alice charge for the door, and flicked through his notebook, and wondered what it may be…

MANUEL

HALLOWEEN, ONE YEAR AGO…

“...Laura said she is going to a party, but I don’t think I’m ready to be around all those people,” Manuel said.

“We could take you,” his father said.

“You want our son to go to a party on Halloween?” His mother said, walking in the living room from the dining...not quite a room, but a little area by the kitchen where everything from dinner was still sitting, since everything ran together, really. “Most parents would be happy their children are staying indoors tonight.”

“It’s at a community center. It isn’t a real party.”

“If one of us could take him, maybe he could go.”

“I don’t have anything against staying home this year.” And every year, Manuel thought. Though, that was his problem, really, as he found himself so thoughtlessly drifting over to the safety of his bedroom and pulling out his laptop.

“...reported that the Tuttle Bottoms Monster was like an ape, but with an anteater’s snout…”

He had seen the video before. Several times, actually. It was on one of his playlists. He didn’t need to take notes with this one, because TEN MORE OBSCURE CRYPTIDS / DARK10 PARANORMAL was as burnt into his mind as his own name.

Huh.

“The Spinnenwechsel is a creature reported in Germany. Sightings are rare since most sources say it only appears once a year. This arachnid can…”

This is my last Halloween indoors. Next year you’re going to the party. You’re going to the party with your best friend. You. Are. Going to go.

Next year.

Manuel’s phone buzzed.

PARTY SUCKS, Laura reported; WAITING FOR MY DAD.

OH NO, Manuel replied; HOW LONG?

A WHILE :(

NEED SOMETHING TO DO?

WHAT ARE YOU DOING

WATCHING A VIDEO.

WHAT VIDEO?

ONE OF MY USUAL THINGS…

LINK IT

Manuel did. And they hit play together.

“The door won’t work,” Summer sighed.

Alice stomped her way back into the gym. “The door won’t work! It’s all…jammed up with something sticky.”

“We’ll have to do what it wants,” Summer sighed louder.

“Whatever this critter is, we’ve gotta find it! It wants something from us.”

“It’s some monster thing,” Summer sighed even louder.

“It’s…I hear you sighing, Sum.”

“Fine, Al. I hear you whining.”

“Sum.” Claire reminded.

“Ugh…yeah, sorry,” Summer reached out to shake Alice’s hand, but rolled her eyes as covertly as she could.

Alice shook it weakly. “What’s the plan?”

SUMMER & CLAIRE

SAMHAIN, ONE YEAR AGO…

“Your mom really doesn’t like my Babadook costume.”

“No, she…likes it, but she didn’t want you to get the makeup on her couch…”

Summer and Claire had planned to hang out at Claire’s house, but they found themselves sitting outside, waiting for a bus over to Summer’s house, which may be more amenable to Babadook makeup.

Summer was a white-faced figure in a top hat; she’d made the makeup from a tutorial online, and it seemed very…stuck, on her face. Claire was, meanwhile, also wearing makeup. Of a cat - in fact, one of the cats from Cats - but, unfortunately, her sisters had brought up the movie too many times, so her makeup shifted to a lower-case cat…

Well, Summer’s house turned out to be pretty quiet, so they continued wandering into…

“A graveyard?” Claire said.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t they lock them up on Halloween?”

“This one’s like, a park. So they can’t.” It was open…but wouldn’t it be closed? For this very reason…

“Why a graveyard? Don’t you think it’s…creepy?” Claire said, as they settled in between two tombstones and a memorial with a statue of an angel on top it.

“No -”

“Being alive is -”

“-being alive is…is creepy. Yeah. Am I that predictable?”

“No.”

“It’s…they’re dead, right? Dead people can’t do anything.”

“That’s…that’s right.”

“Dead people can’t do anything.”

“Yeah.”

“Living people, they’re creepy, ‘cause they’re not asleep underground.”

“Cicadas.”

“Cic…cicadas?”

“They’re alive and asleep underground.”

“They’re not people…people are creepier than cicadas.”

“Yes.”

“We have to be awake for it. They speedrun it.”

“What were we talking about?”

“I…something?”

“Living people can surprise you, yeah.”

“Yeah, they can.”

“They can do things that are unexpected.”

“Like?”

Claire quickly kissed Summer, and took her hand, and they sat there in the graveyard until someone chased them out because they weren’t allowed there that late.

“We can’t cut it with our claws?”

“No, Laura. We can’t - our claws are too big to fit in the locks.”

“But we can knock down the door?”

Talk, talk, talk! Gef scuttled up Laura and grabbed onto some of her hair for leverage. What did they come here for, to blather? No plan at all!

Laura batted her hands at him. “Gef, stop!” She grunted.

“I see - I’m no longer welcome at this get-together! Well - vanished!” Gef cried, before vaulting off Laura and landing hard on the floor. And hacking up his lungs from the must of it all. And suffering the slings and arrows of unappreciative dogs!

“Is he…is he okay?” Alice asked, arms crossed. Now, she looked worried!”

“Baaaaaby!” Laura stamped her feet. “You’re such a baby.”

Gef jumped up, smoothly. “Aye, Gef always lands on his feet – metaphorically speaking, of course. The Reaper’s scythe has no business with me! Now, future carrion, allow me to squeeze out and investigate! Vanished!”

Gef crawled up the wall, curling his fingers into the little gaps between bricks for leverage, and through a vent, and out into the ceiling. Into the place where he saw long, sharp, hairy shadows across the wall…

GEF

HALLOWEEN, ONE YEAR AGO…

Gef was lying in his nest. It was a safe nest, a proud nest, a glorious nest – and you didn’t think mongeese made nests, did you? But Gef had shifted through the cages for only the finest straw, and most of it was even clean! It was...it was quite comfortable, and Gef was ready to drift off to sleep for another night. Ready to embrace the inky blackness of sleep.

Then the lights went out.

Oh, Satan.

He jumped at attention. Anything could be lurking down here in the zoo – or the beasts he knew were down here would be – he knew them quite well, in fact – in fact the darkness held no mysteries before Gef -

A clattering against the bars! Shrapnel! Little shards of wood, daring to collide with Gef!

He jumped onto his feet, shook a fist at the darkness. “Braggart! Foul simian cretin!”

Another hand reached in from the darkness. A long, slender one, covered with thick reddish-brown hair. Its thin but strong fingers wrapped around his mongoose body.

“Unhand me! Unhand me!” He yelled in vain at the agropelter, too stupid to ever see reason. 

“UNHAND ME!”

It snorted, somewhere off in the darkness.

“Gef?” It was the goatkiller! The vamp! The homewrecking, blood drinking-!

The lights turned back on. The agropelter’s hand retreated in an instant, all traces of the creature vanishing back into its stump before Gef could process its features. Never hung around for a chat, that one.

Eliza leaned down, pressed her face against the bars. Her membranes flicked. “You know you don’t have to sleep in a cage, right? You’re a people.”

“Aye, believe me I know. But you’ve seen people – I’d take my odds with the hodags and agropelters any day.”

“How...many times has Lanky tried to eat you?”

“Assuming he wants to eat me and not just squeeze the life out of old Gef, eh? For the record, this was only the third attempt he’s made on my eternal existence!”

“Yeah, we’re all going to die and you’ll live forever. We know.”

“It’s a burden, being a living memento mori, but…”

Eliza sat down on the floor in front of Gef’s cage. “You really could sleep up in the tunnels, you know.”

Gef snarled. “No, no, I’ve made my choice! Don’t you have something better to do? It’s that one day, isn’t it? Halloween? Isn’t everyone enjoying their one night of freedom?”

“They are. I’m not, though.”

“Why, are you on alert?”

“No. Gef, it’s just…” Eliza clacked her claws together. “I don’t want to go out without Clive. Tomorrow it will be a year without him…”

“I know,” Gef said. “But you have to keep living, don’t you? You don’t have much time left on this rock – what, forty, fifty years? Practically nothing before it all slips into oblivion!”

“It isn’t just that he’s gone, Gef. I don’t feel safe anymore.”

“Go with the others then. Problem solved!”

“Gef…” She shook her head. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“Oh, I get it very well. Does the vamp forget that I, too, lost my friend? But he walked out on us. Seems odd to be so unswervingly loyal to someone who didn’t extend such loyalty to yourself!”

Eliza wrapped her fingers around the bars and started to stand up. “Stay in your nest, Gef. Stay with the animals.”

Gef tilted his head. “And you’ll stay in your room, all alone?”

“I guess I will…” Eliza turned and walked away – and Gef had an idea…to squeeze through the bars, out into the city.

For how late it was, the city did seem alive. Alive with the stench of alcohol, of desperation, oh yes, all the human failings – also the scent of plastic. Moving plastic. A squat white robot, rolling on wheels.

Gef leapt. Held on. Climbed atop it for a ride.

It left him half a block later.

Oh well.

He weaved between the legs of a man in silver armor and a green man with long, pointed ears, between a white-masked man in a jumpsuit and a -

Another chupacabra! He hissed up. The woman laughed and carried on as if she didn’t even notice him. But, as she passed, he could see she was no chupacabra. She was a human! Deception! Foul deceiving-!

Does anyone dress as Gef?

Only one way to investigate.

He had explored the city before. He was small and fast, and would be the ideal scout – if mongeese were native to this frigid hell. But oh, Malphas can scout for danger, nobody ever notices a corvid -

Malphas?

Where was he when Eliza was suffering, eh? Truly this was all his doing! It didn’t take long for Gef to find the wastrel of a crimson-eyed avian. There he was, by a popcorn shop pecking at stray, green-colored kernels. The real birds stayed well clear of him. But Gef showed no fear.

“Malphas, you coward! You monster! You unbelievable-!”

“Love you too, darling,” Malphas croaked back, before he resumed his pecking.

“I’m not your darling!” Gef cried. Malphas picked up a kernel; Gef knocked it out of his beak. “The goatdrinker is-”

“What a coarse nickname. But you always were unrefined!” He flapped his wings for no reason.

“The goatdrinker is melancholy! Yet you flock around out here, eating poisoned trash!”

“Poison? My dear, my beak is too distinguished to eat toxic -”

“WHY ELSE WOULD IT BE GREEN?” A drunken, swaying werewolf turned the corner; they ducked under a metal bench. “By the devil, you are allowing Eliza to rot away to nothing in her own cage!”

“You are the one who sleeps in a cage, mon chéri.” He picked up the kernel again, before spitting it out; it bounced over the curb and skidded into the street. “Merde! It is poison!”

No more cages. Last Halloween spent behind bars. “And you may eat the poison you apparently crave once we have done something about the goatkiller. Now – a plan!”

Malphas swooped in first; Eliza barely looked up from her bed on the floor. “Goatslayer!”

“Malphas…” He perched by her; she started petting his head. He looked so content and warmhearted, the freak. “What’s it like up there?”

He started to cough, and out came a bag.

“This…” She touched it, then wiped the spit off her hand, then put a towel around her hand and opened it. “...is candy?”

“Yes, my goatslayer.”

“I...can’t eat this.” She said sadly.

“But it is enough for everyone,” Malphas said, “and you would like to make them happy, yes?”

“Yeah…” She scooped up some of the candy, and let it run through her fingers back into the bag. “Yeah. I think I’d like that. Like trick or treating, but down here.”

Malphas bowed. “Also, we acquired some blood.”

“...is it human?”

“No! It comes from some animal.”

“One of the normal animals?”

“Variety is the spice of life, eh?” Malphas bowed towards Gef. “Gef has a present for you as well.”

“We went to the bar and found a gift!”

“Gef, I can’t drink-”

“It’s a man’s wallet!” He tossed it onto the floor. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

“GEF-”

Creaking. Rushing wind. And a

knock

knock

knock

all from the ceiling above. Alice rubbed her arms. It was cold in here.

“Should we be doin’ something or are we just waiting for Gef?” She said.

“We should wait for Gef, since he’s the one who can see what it was,” Manuel replied.

More creaking above. Alice clutched the cross around her neck. At least there wasn’t a seance this time. At least…

ALICE

REFORMATION DAY, ONE YEAR AGO…

Franklin opened his trunk, revealing a crate full of bags of candy; he put one in Alice’s basket and smiled. “You’ve had a growth spurt since you went up north.”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks,” Alice faked a smile. Everyone here was talking about how much she’d grown, but she’d only moved away a few months ago.

“Your daughter is growing up into a beautiful young woman,” he said, and Alice was on her way to the next trunk. Didn’t keep her from hearing her parents thanking him for the compliment.

First Halloween in her new home city, and her parents take her back home to their old church. Then again, she never had a Halloween before, so why did she think anything might change after the move? She wished she felt more about being back home, but all this was was a parking lot. Across the road she saw...an Arby’s, a truck stop…

She knew the parking lot well, though. Her town didn’t really have trick or treating, but her church really didn’t. Instead they had “hallelujah” night. Everyone was supposed to dress up as a Biblical figure, or at least something non-demonic or scary, but Alice didn’t know she was going so she didn’t have a costume ready. She did have her bucket, though, and they went from trunk to trunk like always. There were other events going on, but they weren’t going to be able to stick around for the movie or the apple bobbing.

“Al?”

“Huh?” It was a woman she’d never seen before.

“You aren’t Al…” She walked off into the crowd. “Al! Allan!”

Soon enough, well before sunset, it was time to get back in their own car and drive back home.

Alice hated Halloween.

She didn’t get to do anything, which she wasn’t too broken up about, since she didn’t totally not agree with all the talk about how it was really sinister, even if she didn’t really believe it was the Devil’s birthday, but…that was what church said, and she didn’t like to dispute it much.

She hated it ‘cause her parents made her hand out the candy, except they didn’t have candy. No, they had little comics. Comics with titles like THIS WAS YOUR LIFE and BACK FROM THE DEAD? and THE CHOICE, and one called HAPPY HALLOWEEN. And all the kids who came by got mad at her ‘cause of the comics her parents made her give out instead of candy. It was late in the night, and she’d heard a lotta grumbling, and had to get into it with a couple boys. More than a couple.

A young girl walked up. Gotta be one of the last trick-or-treaters. She was wearing a spider costume with eight legs splayed out like a skirt. She walked up to the doorway and smiled.

“Hi there!” Alice said. “What’s your name?”

The girl didn’t say anything. Just looked in the basket. “Trick or treat.”

Alice reached in for one of the comics. Searching for a THIS WAS YOUR LIFE and a BOO! And…

She stopped rifling through the bucket. “Shoot, looks like we’re all out of candy. Sorry.”

The girl smiled, swiveled around, and bounced on down to the next house.

Alice sat down on the stoop, bucket on her lap. She ran her hand through the comics a bit more. This is the last Halloween she spends like...the last Halloween she…

She got up and walked inside.

skitter skitter SKITTER skitter SKITTER…

“It’s getting faster!” Alice yelled.

“Fuck. I know,” Laura jumped up and down forcefully. “Gef! Gef! Get down here!”

“Um, Laura, maybe we shouldn’t be yelling, if there is some entity up in the ceiling…” Manuel stood next to her.

“I don’t think it matters,” Emily said; she was leaning against the jammed-up door. “It knows we’re here.”

“Why don’t we just leave?” Alice asked.

“Not without Gef!” Laura said. “...maybe without Gef? I don’t know, we-”

Something leapt out of the walls. Something with sharp points headed right for Laura…

LAURA

HALLOWEEN, ONE YEAR AGO…

Her parents drove away and Laura was all alone at the party.

“Party”. It was a teen Halloween event at the LGBT center. Her parents took her there to “socialize” and “get to know people” and because she wouldn’t have done anything else on Halloween, so.

But she wasn’t really getting to know anyone. They weren’t getting to know her either. She was, as always, sorta...hanging around the fringes, though it looked like most people in this conference room decked out with paper mache skeletons and pumpkins, and trans and progress pride flags on one wall, were hanging around the fringes.

“You’re a lion.”

“Uh…” Laura looked at who said it: someone with mussed up brown hair, wearing angel wings and a nametag saying ALLY SHE/HER. “Yeah. It’s the Lion King. The new one. The lion from the Lion King. It was all the store had. Nobody wants the new one.”

“I saw that one…uh…” Ally stepped closer to Laura.

“You’re an angel.”

“I…” She quickly felt her wings. “I am. Al…Ally. Not ally, like…Aleigh. Short for…Alicia.”

“Cool.”

“My parents think I’m at some church party. But my aunt took me here instead. I’m...not supposed to be here. How...how about you?”

“Me? My parents took me here.”

“They know...you’re…”

“I’m trans? Yeah. I’m gonna guess yours…”

“Don’t know, no. Nobody knows, except my aunt. This is...this is the first time I’ve been Ally, anywhere but my room.”

“Cool. Uh, I’ve been Laura all the time since middle school.” Don’t brag about it, geeze.

“Yeah, I’m -” Ally got to close and whacked Laura in the face with her right wing. “Oh. Sorry, sorry…”

“Don’t worry about it? Uh, do you know what we like, do here?”

“Uh...no. I was thinking...I thought you might know. Um, that you might…”

“I’ve never been here before.”

“Do we...dance?”

“For Halloween?”

“I’ve never done Halloween.”

“I’ve never been to a Halloween party. Maybe we dance?” Why. “You mean on our own or…”

“Um, I don’t know…” Ally rubbed her ears. “I think...I need to breathe”

“You want to go outside?” The staff let Laura walk out the door, and Ally followed. They couldn’t go far, but there was a picnic table right outside the building, in the greenspace separating the LGBT center’s building and an office block, and the offices from the airport up ahead, and Laura sat down on one side of it, and Ally sat across from her.

“Uh...it’s a night, huh?” Laura said.

“It is a night...it’s cold.” Ally fiddled with her hands.

“Yeah, it’s cold…” What do you say? “My parents made me go here. They want me to get to know people like me.”

“Your parents took you here?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to but…” Hey Laura. Laura. Hey Laura...

“I wish my parents were...were…able to take me somewhere like this.”

“...yeah. Yeah, it’s nice…did you want to get inside? I’m not meant to live in like...the fall. It’s not like that on the savanna.”

She smiled. “The savanna.”

“’cause I’m a lion?”

“Right!” She reached across the table. She reached her hands over to Laura’s. “I didn’t see that movie.”

“Neither did I.” Laura stared down at Ally’s hands.

“I…” Ally leaned over. Rested her hands on Laura’s.

“I...think...I’ll be right back,” Laura said quickly. “Seriously. Wait right here. I’ll...I’ll be right back.” She darted back inside the building. Into the bathroom by the library. Looked in the mirror. “What’s going on? What the hell is going on? Okay. Okay. Go back out there and...why did you run in here? Go back out there. Out there. Okay…” She unlocked the door. Went back outside. And…

She wasn’t at the table.

She ran back to the “party”. A few people remained, split off into different groups.

She wasn’t in any of them, either.

Laura ran back out to the picnic table. Never embarrass yourself like that again. Last time. Last time you…

She texted Manuel the truth. Manuel sent back the link. She hit play at the table.

“These odorous blobs were seen in the village of Domsten, in Norway…”

Manuel sent a quick text. Actually, it’s in Sweden.

Yeah? Laura texted back.

Yes!

The creature grabbed onto Laura’s face, yanked and…

“Gef!” Alice screamed.

“Gef,” Laura groaned, her face partially blocked by mongoose.

Gef let go, and Laura caught him in her arms. “You look like you’ve seen a phantasm.”

“All the noises upstairs…” Emily said, hiding the ouija board box.

“Only poor maintenance, and your good friend Gef!” He...came as close to smiling as he could, with that face. “Nothing up there but dust. Dust and cobwebs. Door - jammed, it was! Don’t worry, your dear Gef unclogged it. You do know the gym has more than one exit, yes?”

“...yes.”

“Time for us to make a defeated retreat, eh?”

“Yeah,” Emily said. “Guess there’s nothing here.”

“Gef,” Laura growled, “if the invite was from my account, that means -”

“Yes, all Gef! I snuck your phone out of your bag one night - wanted company, I did, and to waste your time!”

“What a waste of time,” Alice said. “You know, it wasn’t easy to get out tonight.”

“I texted my mom, she’s going to give us all a ride,” Emily said.

“Which mom?” Summer asked. “Beth or Rebecca?”

“Beth.”

“Cool.”

“Cooler than Rebecca?”

“No?”

“We were only here twenty minutes…” Manuel whispered to Laura.

Gef rocked in Laura’s arms. “Unhand me! I have more business here. I spied a tasty-”

“I don’t want to know what you eat! Just...don’t keep us waiting, ‘kay? We’ll be outside.” Laura opened the door, and was the first to step outside.

When everyone was outside, Gef scurried back up the wall – quite a bit of a workout tonight for an old mongoose – and back to that closet door.

“They’re leaving now,” he said to the darkness. “Sorry you woke up a month early, but brave Gef helped you get back to sleep, eh! I know quite how I feel when I’m stirred before the proper hour…good thing I heard your screams in the wind…”

The thing within the darkness clicked back a long series of slow moves of its pincers.

“Well...good night!”

“Yo, Sam!”

Glen, Sam’s boyfriend. Laura sighed and pushed Gef’s head back into her backpack; he bit her, but slunk back down. Laura gritted her teeth.

“These are your friends.” He looked both of them over, from top to bottom. Why. Is he judging us. What are the criteria. “Where are you going?”

“Is the football team out today, for practice?” Sam asked.

“Where else? Football team, football field. It’s their natural habitat. Why, you trying out? I hear they have an opening at RB.”

“I want to know what happened to Finn. Nobody’s telling me.”

“‘Cause he’s on meth or something and freaked out. None of the others want to give up their habit. Who gives a crap?”

“I do.”

“Bath salts. That guy who got his face eaten by a homeless guy who was a zombie.”

Manuel furrowed his brow. “Does…that sentence…relate to…anything?” He mumbled; Glen didn’t seem to hear.

“So who’re they?” Glen said.

“I’ve told you,” Sam replied.

“I wanna put a face to the name.”

“Laura, Manuel.” Sam gestured to each of them.

“Glen.”

“We know,” Manuel said quietly.

“Hey, maybe I’m curious too. I’ll tag along.”

That should’ve been a question. “Uh…” Laura looked to Sam for an answer.

“More the merrier.” Sam said joylessly.

“How do you two know Sam, anyway? She won’t say.” Why do you need to know, Laura thought? “You don’t play any sports or anything?”

“No,” Laura said, “I think me playing sports is a felony now.”

“Huh?”

“Uh…nothing.”

***

The players were out in the big, green field next to the stadium; a chain link fence divided them from the track and the bleachers and the field in the middle of them. It was far from that ditch where the Chosen had been keeping his victims, but Laura couldn’t resist a glimpse over there, just to check…

And she bumped right into one of those…football things with the mats on them that they…tackle? Manuel gently put a hand around Laura’s arm, and led her over to the others, where through pained blinks she saw Sam and Glen talking with a tall, blonde-haired boy.

“Finn? Don’t know what’s going on with him…” The boy glanced around at the others, his expression too open to disguise the suspiciousness of his hunt for approval. “I don’t know. None of us know.”

“Don’t you have soccer practice?” One of the boys said, and Laura’s ears picked up whispers: “Should we talk to her about…?”

Others: “No…girls don’t need any more power…we need the power…that’s what he said…”

Sam shot Laura a side-eye; she heard it all, too. Her face twitched, and she turned her gaze down. Sam went back to Laura and Manuel; Glen moved into her place, and was quickly drawn into their circle.

“Y’all notice something?” Sam said.

“Nope,” Manuel said.

“Uh, a lot of -”

“That boy over there. There’s a couple of them.” She nodded to a smaller group of players gathered underneath the bleachers, by the baseball diamond. “Looks like they’re hiding, doesn’t it?”

It did, and Laura and Manuel followed her over to the bleachers, where, luckily for them, Sam had broken the ice once again. “Sam.”

“Jabari,” said someone sitting by the wall, with short hair and a failed attempt at a beard. “You two?”

“Laura.”

“Manuel.”

“Let me guess. You came here to ask about Finn.”

“Yeah,” Sam said.

“And they stonewalled you. They’re gonna do that.” Jabari laughed.

“They’re hiding something.”

“And they can’t bluff. Too pigheaded. They’ve got their own little world and they can’t pull themselves out of it. Did they tell you any of that Elliott Moss shit?”

“...yeah. They did.”

“They worship the guy. Really worship him. I think they need to worship him.”

“Why?”

“Your team went to State last year, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Last time the football team went to State, Reagan was President. No correlation. God, I hope not.”

“Your team sucks.”

“It always sucks. If you’re good, and your parents have the money, you move out to the suburbs. I used to live in Texas. Grew up going to the high school games. 20,000 people went. It was all anyone talked about. And our school sucked, too. But nobody here cares. That eats away at people. It ate away at Finn.”

“What did it make him do?”

“If you’re barely holding on, and nobody cares, you’d do anything to stand out. Anything. Go talk to Finn. He’s over at Meriter. Thing is, he still might not talk to you. That’s how much they’re hiding it.”

***

Zach was catching his breath, over on a ledge by the basketball court - their ledge - when Sam found him.

“Hey,” Sam said. “You’re…cool, right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be cool?” Zach continued sitting in the grass.

“I don’t know. I need you to be cool.” Sam sat down next to him. “Zach, when did we start being friends?”

“Grade school.”

“Grade school. Just after I moved here. We’ve been friends that long and you won’t tell me what’s going on with Finn?”

Zach laughed, in a small, fake way. “What’s there to say? He freaked, man.”

“Was he on drugs?”

“No, no way.” Zach laughed, and…placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “How’s Glen?”

“Zach.” She tried to shake him off, but…couldn’t. “He’s over there.”

“Kinda a wuss, huh? He won’t be soon.”

“I’ve got to go…” Sam tried to stand up, but Zach was still holding on, and his grip felt…stronger…

“Sorry, sorry.” Zach let Sam go, and she rapidly went back to the stadium, keeping one eye on Zach.

***

Laura’s dad was coming around to pick them up. Laura, Manuel, Sam and…

Not Glen, who finally left, and gave Sam a quick goodbye kiss.

“If Finn’s dying, tell him I’m taking his PS5.”

Sam laughed faintly. “I will.”

Glen looked over Manuel and Laura. Again. “Have fun with your friends. Doing whatever it is you do with them.”

“Hey, have fun with Shawn and all them. Whatever it is you do with them.”

“I dunno. They wanted to talk to me.”

“About what?”

“I dunno. I’ll know when I know…” The football players called his name, and he started to run over, before pausing and waving to Sam. Sam waved back. They were all quiet, too quiet, but luckily, Laura’s dad came before too long.

“You’re visiting someone at the hospital.” Christian asked. “To ask him about a shadow man.”

“Yeah, dad.” Laura fumbled with her seatbelt; it’s her car, how does she not know…

“Uh…hi, friend of Laura’s.”

“She’s Sam.”

“I’m Sam.”

“Hi, Sam. Laura, this isn’t about the whole…dog thing is it? The dogs, dogwalkers -”

“Sam’s a werewolf too.”

“Oh, thank god.”

“No, it’s not a werewolf thing.”

“Yes, it’s about shadow people…” Manuel watched Gef crawl out of Laura’s backpack, eyes fluttering in the late afternoon sunlight, and crawl over to the dashboard and curl up on it.

Laura’s dad started to drive. “You should put on a seatbelt, you know.”

“You should try being immortal, you know!” Gef countered.

Laura’s dad rolled his eyes. “Laur, you have your paper for English done?”

“Uh…I’ve got time.”

“It’s due tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“Uh…I’m gonna put the last touches on it when I get back.”

“Laur, if you don’t do your homework, I’m not gonna drive you to hunt for shadow men.”

“You know…they care too much about standardized tests these days. Too much…it’s hurting student development. It’s too much of a flood to form proper relationships, like that education expert said on your show last week.”

“Thanks for the support, but…think of grades as the pledge drive tote bags of life. You have to put in the effort to become a sustaining supporter first.”

“Then shadow people.”

“Then you can hunt shadow people to your heart’s content.”

“Fine, dad.”

***

Laura’s dad waited in the parking garage while they ran into the hospital to see Finn. Once they were out of his earshot, they celebrated the lack of NPR in their ears.

Sam texted Finn on the ride over; he was excited to have a visitor. Looks like no one had gone to see him. Even his parents ditched after admission was over. Sam led the way, once again.

He didn’t look too bad; some cuts healing on his face, and some bandages on his arms, but he didn’t look like he was in mortal peril or anything. Laura could see Camp Randall from the window; but from Finn’s perspective in his bed, he could only see the wall of the parking garage. She’d be desperate for visitors too.

“Hey, Finn. This is Laura, and that’s Manuel.”

He tried to wave at them, but winced in pain, and leaned back. “I’m not dying.”

“Good. Your PS5’s safe from Glen.”

“I wouldn’t have given it to Glen…Tyler maybe.”

“Tyler?” Sam laughed. Laura really wished she understood what was funny about Tyler. “So what happened?”

Finn grimaced, but it wasn’t from pain. “You really want to know?”

“I watched you scratch yourself and scream about shadows, and the way it’s shaping up, it doesn’t seem like you were on something.”

“I was on something. But it’s not a drug. It’s not even illegal yet. They don’t even know about it yet. It’s these mushrooms, from South America…”

“You’re on shrooms.” Sam said flatly.

“No. It’s these spores you inhale. According to Shawn, they make you…faster, stronger.”

“Performance enhancing mushrooms.”

“That’s what we thought. Shawn and I, Zach, Ethan, Ty, all the boys…when you take it, it feels great at first…but soon I started…we started…some of us got angry, some of us got scared. I got scared. They started to fight, I started to see…something out of the corner of my eye. I kept taking the spores, and it kept…I kept seeing it there. Every time. During the game, it…it started coming towards me.”

“What was it?” Manuel pulled out one of his notebooks, and held it against his backpack for a solid surface.

“This…it was a human shape, but all in shadow. It had a cape, and something on its head, like a helmet. I hadn’t seen…before, I hadn’t seen it was holding…a sword. A long, curved sword. No matter where I looked, it was there, and it was getting closer. It was over by the sand pit where they do long jump, it was over on the track, it was in the endzone…it was there, in the huddle with us. Nobody…nobody else saw it, but it…it came right up to me, and I…woke up here.” He rubbed a hand over his scratches. “I don’t remember making these…”

“Was that the last time you saw it?”

“No…no, after I woke up I…that first night, I saw it, out there…floating in the air. It had its sword down to its side. I started screaming and called for help, they sedated me, and…it faded away. Haven’t…haven’t seen it since…they told me…they told me some of the scratches were so deep they might leave scars…”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I…don’t take it. Don’t…”

“I’m not going there to take it,” Sam said.

***

Jainaba dropped off Eliza and returned to her dorm; she had to fill out a report for Sjöberg, but not tonight. Her roommate was gabbing on and on, but she ignored her.

She hid herself in the nest of her bed, and pulled out her phone. She almost hit Sjöberg’s name, but…

“Sister?”

Isatou answered. “How’s public college? Is P.E. hard? Do you have fun with the other kids during recess?”

“Go to hell.”

“What? What did I do?”

Explain, or just yell? …yell. “What didn’t you do…?”

***

When Eliza returned to the Tunnels, everyone was asleep; even Malphas. She went to the fridge, lured by the humming echoing down the warm hallways, and pulled out a thermos of blood…

And put it back. Her stomach quailed in hunger, but she lay in her bed, and pretended to sleep…

***

Summer stalked up to her room and laid down to angrily sleep, but…

Sat up and sighed. She pulled out her phone, navigated over to the Pack Discord. Nobody was saying anything. She typed up a message. Something pointless, small talk, “hello how are you”...

Closed the app. Screamed into her pillows, and lay there shaking and awake.

***

Locks. Windows. Locks. Windows…

Claire’s exhausted body won out over her mind; she finished her rounds, and went to bed.

Would she ever forget what she saw? It wasn’t real, but she knows that the rest of what she worries about isn’t real, so does that matter?

She wanted to sleep, but…

Locks. Windows. Locks…

***

When Alice returned home, she grinned her way through a night of TV with her parents and Cody, and helped her mom with Kyle.

When she tried to sleep, she stared at the ceiling. She thought she should pray, but…what would she say? What was there to say? She’d just accepted she had died and…

She didn’t sleep that night.

***

Manuel watched TV with his parents, and had dinner late, and all in all did a very good job pretending everything was normal and would be normal, better than he normally did.

When he was finally able to retreat to the privacy of his room, he laid down and cried himself to sleep.

***

When Laura and Gef returned home, they pretended it was all normal. When it came time to sleep, Laura fell to sleep right away; but Gef uncurled himself, and quietly crawled down the table and out the door. Out into the backyard, where he stood in the grass, breathing the air and watching the night sky…

***

When the last car left, Emily waved and made her way home. She told her moms that everything was fine, that it wasn’t a party, mom, and they believed it.

In her room, she charged her phone and opened her photos. She flipped over to the photos of Kayla: the two of them together, at camp, in Milwaukee, at…

She fell asleep with tears on her face, and her phone clutched tightly in her hand.

Within it was a small chamber, lined with crystals; Emily jumped down first, followed by Laura. The chamber was too small for the others to follow, but from above, they could all see who was inside.

Between melting, sparking machines of stone crouched a humanoid, shorter than Laura, with hard, chalky white skin. In its hands, it was jamming together some of the creature’s shards, rotating them rapidly in a vain attempt to piece them back into shape. When it saw them, it gave a grinding shriek, and dropped the shards.

“T-thank you for rescuing me!” The same voice that spoke through the creature. “Those monsters trapped me, too. I’m so lucky to be alive!”

“If you were trapped,” Emily asked, “why are you trying to put it back together?”

“I-I was coerced! I was a hostage! I was possessed. Eliza, you -”

“Hmm, you know her name?” Gef said from Laura’s pocket.

“I’m…” It watched as Summer passed down the spray paint can to Laura. Emily held the creature’s rocky body in place, and Laura scrawled the ward on its forehead in two quick motions. “No - no!”

A blast of wind, and Laura and Emily fell back against the wall. Behind the creature, a blazing crack formed in the wall, and things reached through: a yellow-and-brown amphibian paw with steam rising from its skin, a tendril of water, a small tornado, and another chalky white hand of rock wrapped around it in seconds, even as it resisted pointlessly.

A mix of voices reported from the crack, high and low and singing, and they said together: “You are guilty of breaking your terms of exile, of murder, of theft, of creation of a personal army, of association with the Scarlet Masquerade, the Empty, and the Master of the Howling Key, and of contact with unapproved lifeforms. You will be returned to your realm for appropriate punishment.”

“No - no!” It cried, but it was bent in two and pulled screaming into the crack.

“Thank you for your cooperation in this matter,” the voices said, and the crack closed.

***

They tried the door again. This time, with no apprehension - after all, they were confirming what they already knew.

It opened, and let in a rush of cool night air. Stars above and suburbia below, and the noise of distant cars, of honks and barks and basketball on a far-away TV.

“So what do we know about this house?” Alice asked.

“It reads our minds,” Eliza said, pulling a notebook out of her backpack. “And it’s afraid of those marks.”

The others pulled out notebooks, and they started to write. They hashed out the rules together:

It has power over the House, but not infinite power - making everyone’s illusions drained it, for a time. That’s why they ended up here.

It can’t leave the house; Laura remembered that it spared the firefighter, which if it’s trapped here, means it needs the house - if it burnt down, it would be dead.

Remembering the visions, Summer went looking underneath the stairs, and discovered two spray cans that had bounced down there. Still fresh, somehow, as was the sweat and blood smeared on it; Summer wiped that off on her shirt.

They gathered around the notebook, and they wrote down a plan, thinking of it without thought…

***

Within my walls, the toys dwelt, and they were angry. They were angry.

It seized control of its deer-skull avatar, and it moved it from out of the empty space - where it was trying to rebuild itself, to build new playgrounds to occupy its time - and towards the pinpoints of thought: “I HATE YOU”, “I’LL KILL YOU”, “I WANT OUT OF HERE”, all of the voices of the toys in such incredible anger.

But one of them stood out. A voice of the one it didn’t get before, Laura; “I’ll blow it up! I will! I’ll burn it all down!”

It carried itself forward with great speed, down the chimney and into the living room - empty - and into the kitchen, where Laura held up a match to a pile of detritus in the corner. It raised its voice, spoke from the bones of the house to the bone of its avatar. “You won’t. You aren’t capable. Everyone knows that. Everyone here hates you.” It stepped forward. “I know you’re bluffing.” Behind it, another of the toys thought “yeah, get her”. “You won’t really do it.”

“Yeah.”

Something blew onto its side, and it burnt. The Mark of Confinement…it turned around, bones rattling in a snarl that never came. Summer, the one of the labyrinth, holding a spray paint can. Still she thought: “yeah. I hate Laura. Good. Kill her.”

They were bluffing, it thought. They were…

***

The creature fled through the house, shards of bone flaking off and turning into crystals that melted into nothing before they hit the ground. The House’s walls bulged out, and here and there a head popped out: the waving antenna of an insectoid, the fangs of a chupacabra (Eliza stopped running for her life to look over that one), the cackling visage of the Devil. They, too, broke up into tiny crystals, and clattered to the floor.

“I’m not a monster.”

“You have never wanted to be one?”

“No. That’s not me. That’s not how I want to be seen.”

“Yet, you are.”

“Why do you want to be a monster?”

“Many have called me one. They called me one for so long I started to believe it myself. Why not give in?”

“What are you? You’re not a haunted house, are you?”

“No. But the House is my domain.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“Within the Home, only four. Eleven, when my work is done.”

“And before that?”

“Many. Must you hear of the skulls of my enemies? Of the massacres performed in my name? Must you see the rivers of blood to have your curiosity satiated?”

“Ugh, just kill me.”

“I took you here to offer you freedom, not your execution.”

“For what?”

“You understand that an exchange is required. I will allow you to leave, if you remove the stones around the property.”

“The stones?”

“Yes. With them removed, I may exit the premises.”

“Then you’ll kill me.”

“No. Together we will punish this world for all it has done.”

“I don’t want to punish the world!”

“Yes, you do. Do you not wish to find those men who insulted Clive? Do you not wish to burn down the Texas Institute and free all those in cages? Do you not see the faces of those who have wronged you, drained of their blood, nourishing you in their damnation?”

“How do you know about Clive? About Texas?”

“I see all. I see that within you, there is as great a capacity for death as there was within me.”

***

The door was locked, they were floating in the void, and they had nothing to do but kill time before they died.

So the pack gathered on the porch and played a game.

Laura went first. “I was born in New York City, I never learned to ride a bike, and I once rode an elephant.”

“Elephant?” Jainaba suggested.

“Elephant is too obvious, and you never put the lie last, you put it in the middle…though everyone knows you don’t put the lie last…” Claire said. “Bike?”

“I don’t think she’s from New York,” Alice offered.

“Uh…are we going with bike or New York?” They settled on bike. “Is that the lie?”

“Yeah,” Laura said. “You got me. I know how to ride a bike.”

“You didn’t really ride an elephant, though?” Claire said.

“At the circus.”

“They don’t have elephants at circuses anymore.”

“They did when I was a baby. Like, the final year they ever did it.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “Baby doesn’t count. You don’t even remember it.”

“My parents have photos of it, though?”

“You’re from New York?” Alice asked.

“I left when I was a baby. But baby counts.” Laura tapped the porch. “You. Alice.”

“Uh…my favorite color’s…”

“Something personal,” Laura reminded.

Alice coughed. “I’ve never broken a bone, I’ve helped a cow give birth, I, uh, didn’t watch TV ‘til I was eight.”

“Bone,” Emily said quickly. “Everything else is very plausible.”

“Too plausible?” Manuel wondered.

“We think it’s bone.” Everyone else agreed.

“Nope,” Alice said. “Y’all really think we didn’t watch TV?”

“Uh, kinda?” Laura answered.

“Your parents deciding televisions are the Devil’s box and that demons make the little people move around is distressingly plausible,” Claire added.

“I, uh…Gef!”

The mongoose looked up from Manuel’s shoulder. “Me? I’m playing?”

“Sorry, I forgot-”

“I’m playing!” Gef cried. “Two truths, one lie, eh? Gef once slew a lion! Gef once found himself nearly eaten by one of the Queen’s corgis! Gef was once imprisoned in Colombia!”

“All of them are lies.” Manuel said.

“Yes! They never caught me, and never will! Now, you!”

“Um…I’m not great with games like this…” Manuel took a deep breath. “My family is from El Salvador but I’ve never been there…or anywhere outside the country. I wrote a book when I was in elementary school. I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

Though everyone guessed all three, they settled on the book.

“No. I filled up a notebook while I was bored at a fireworks show. It was about dinosaurs. I do know how to ride a bike, but I haven’t had one since I was a child, so I haven’t done it much and don’t think I would remember how.”

“It’s lie adjacent. Smart strategy.” Claire said.

“Yeah! Do you want to go next?”

“Okay.” Claire prepared herself. “My favorite musical is Hamilton. I’ve been to Australia. I, hmm, I did a theater camp in -”

“It’s Hamilton,” Laura said blearily.

“- in New York. I wasn’t finished.”

“Sorry, didn’t hear the in.”

“How did you know it was Hamilton?”

“Because you’re a theater kid,” Emily said the words ‘theater kid’ with evident malice. “Your favorite has to be way more obscure.”

“And your family’s like, loaded.” Laura added. “Of course you’d go to Australia and New York.”

“For your information, Laura, the trip to Australia wasn’t a vacation,” Claire explained. “My mother was there on business, to assist the new Melbourne branch of Macrobius, and she was allowed to take us along.”

“Wow, I’m amazed. That Rhonda what’s-her-name would let her do anything without firing her, I mean.”

“Rhonda Hemmingway is more accepting than you think. She’s only laying off 60% of first month employees this year.”

“Whatever, but don’t you like. Fly out to New York just to see musicals?”

“We see local tours too. We went to see the tour of Six.”

“What’s Six?”

“It’s the tale of the six wives of Henry VIII but…they’re pop stars.”

Laura groaned and buried her head in her hands. “Goddamnit.”

“It’s not my favorite though,” Claire said quickly. “My favorite is Fun Home.”

“Is it gay?”

“Yeah?”

“Okay.”

Claire pointed to… “Emily?”

Emily took a deep breath. “My mom was on Jeopardy. My first kiss was with Lyle F. I’ve never been outside the Midwest.”

“Lyle F,” Laura gagged. “God. I hope it’s Lyle F.”

“Yeah,” Manuel agreed.

“Tell me that’s the lie,” Claire said empathically.

Emily sighed. “I’ve actually been to most of the Eastern states and California.”

“I’m so sorry,” Laura said.

“Who’s Lyle…?” Alice asked.

Emily hung her head low. “Ugh. So he asked me out and I didn’t know yet that you could say no? To be polite, I said yes. He took me to McDonald’s, and after not talking the entire time he kissed me, and…” She mock-shivered. “I’ll never forget it. His scrunched up fish face. He looked like he was drowning, and then his lips looked like big rashes…anyway, I ran away, and that’s how I learned I’m ace.”

“God.” Laura said.

“I’m sorry,” Claire answered.

“Jainaba.” Emily said.

“Uh, let’s see. I’ve been to the White House. I’m studying herpetology. I once almost broke my leg and my arm on opposite sides at the same time.”

“I know! …but I’m not gonna say.” Laura said. “Gef too.”

“Hmph? What do I know?”

“Uh…nevermind.”

“The White House?” Alice suggested, and everyone agreed.

“Nope. I’d like to say it was a science fair or something, but we just took a tour when I was in town. My sister goes to college in D.C.” Jainaba looked at Laura. “Laura knows, I study marine biology. That’s how I met the doctor.”

“How did you break your arm and leg?” Alice asked.

“Almost broke. First and last time I tried skateboarding. I’m told the way I bailed can’t be explained by physics. Summer?”

Summer, who had been silent the entire game, spoke quickly. “I wish I were dead. I wish you hadn’t saved me. I’m glad to be alive. Whoops, the last one’s the lie!”

Laura squinted at her. “Sorry?”

“You better be. Or…or it doesn’t matter. At all. We’re all gonna die here, why not just let it happen? God.” Summer stood up and rushed down the stairs.

“Sum -” Claire said, starting to follow.

“Sorry. Sorry. Claire, It’s just…what’s the point? All this ‘stay positive’ crap. The chupacabra’s already dead and -”

“Her name’s Eliza, and you don’t know she’s dead,” Manuel reminded.

“Shut up,” Summer snapped.

“Don’t tell Mani to shut up!” Laura snapped back.

“Do I look like I care? Do I look like I care about anything? Toxic positivity, whatever. Hey, at least this is a cool way to die. Should I want to escape back onto a dying planet? God, I’m so sick of being told to not say what everyone thinks, ‘cause it makes them saaaaaaaad.” Summer jumped forcefully off the porch onto the sidewalk. “I saw into my mind and…god. I can’t take it. I can’t take being me.” She stalked off and sat underneath the tree.

Everyone looked to the others to see who would get up and do something about it first, and finally, Emily followed. “Summer?”

“Go away!”

“I got us into this. It was stupid. I’m sorry. If we all die, blame me. Hell, blame me before. Get it in while we still exist.”

“It was stupid.” Emily circled around behind Summer; she turned to face away. “Goddamnit, Emily.”

“I came over to say…you might be right.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Maybe everyone’s a bit too Pollyannaish.”

“What the hell does ‘Pollyannaish’ mean?”

“It means…seeing the best in everything, even when it really sucks.” Emily sat down next to Summer, who didn’t turn away.

“Why get out of here?”

“I don’t know. I’d say ‘maybe tomorrow won’t suck’, but…it will.” She laughed joylessly. “Maybe there’s more messed up about me than wearing a Twilight t-shirt. But I guess…we have some drive to survive anyway. Dying here is probably really bad, too.”

“We should get out ‘cause dying out there is nicer.”

“I don’t know.” Emily sighs. “Maybe it’s all pointless. Maybe if Kay…”

“Kayla? The girl from summer camp?”

“...nevermind,” she said. “Are you gonna try to escape?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll try. Even if it’s only to die a nicer way.” Emily reached out; Summer took her hand, and walked with her back to the group.

***

“Another drink for the guest,” the waiter croaked from the gash in the middle of its face, and opened the platter to to reveal the head of -

Eliza leapt to her feet, knocking the waiter and its platter to the floor; the body splayed outward, spindly legs twisting out, the column of bone snapping loudly underneath thin baggy flesh; the head and neck of Manuel bounced off the platter, mouth knocked open, idly trying to close. Eliza didn’t pay attention - she ran. Behind her, there was a final sip of wine, a final drizzling of the floor, and then the sounds of racing, thudding footfalls and the rending flesh and breaking bones of waiters unfortunate enough to be in its way.

She left the restaurant through a bare, malformed gateway without doors, finding herself in a hallway that suddenly lurched upwards and downwards, that split into rising and falling sections, and she slid, and she ran, and always, it followed.

Doorways appeared. Through one, she saw the waiters huddle together, in all their twisted forms, the fallen one inching its broken body across the floor to the middle, where the waiters were melting into each other, melding into a mass of squirming boneless arms and blankly staring eyes, a mass slowly turning to crystal. Through another, a room was being built up like a diagram of the body, with the supports like a network of veins; when the skin of the facade grew in place, the wall collapsed on itself, and the room was lost in a flurry of chalky, glittering dust.

She ignored the others, all but one. One doorway remained on a flat floor, and she noted marks all around the frame. Unlike the others, the door was closed; it, too, had marks etched in it: two inverted triangles, overlaid.

No point in running. This one was different, somehow. Even if it was just a trap…she pushed open the door, and jumped into the room.

It was…empty, and it wasn’t changing at all. The room was plain, and nothing was forming: no mockeries of human life, no liquid tables or quicksand chairs. There were four walls: one gray, one red, one blue, one white, and nothing else in the center.

The creature caught up to her, but paused at the boundary of the door.

“You can’t come in here, can you?” Eliza smirked.

It rose one bony hand and touched the doorframe, but as it crossed the boundary, the slightest tip of its finger burnt off, turning into smoke trailing off into the room and disappearing. “No…it is a sanctuary invented by my captors.”

“Why would you be in captivity, Skulldust? All the skulls? The rivers of blood?”

“I was placed in captivity by those who once called me ‘brave’.”

“War criminal. Understood.”

“You must leave eventually. In there you have time to decide - do you prefer to die suffering, or to reign with me?”

“What, as your bride?”

“When I am free, when we are free, I will turn the world into my House. The sky will be made of clouds of acid floating in congealed blood, the land will hunger for those who dare touch it, the seas will burn and all will be haunted by their greatest fears made manifest. With my power unleashed, we may turn this world into a factory of torment, for your enemies.”

“For everyone.” Eliza stepped closer to the door. “I don’t think you can do any of that. You can’t even make a room right now. You’re tired.”

“I have eternity to regain my power. Your flesh will not last a week without nourishment.”

Eliza wrapped her claws around the door. “Maybe.”

“‘Maybe’? With me, you will live in -”

“Live in some Uncanny Valley nightmare? Live in a world that’s all fake, except the screams?” Eliza dug her claws in. “Nope, Skulldust, I’m gonna get out.”

“And live and die cowering in subterranean tunnels?”

“Yeah, I live underground…” She dug her claws in deeper, and got ready. “But at least my world’s bigger than one street in the suburbs.” She wrenched the door off its hinges, and held it out in front of her.

The creature lunged for her with skeletal claws, but as it brushed the door, its hand scalded and it fell back. Eliza smiled and started to run, letting her claws carry the door behind her, stabbing them deep inside, don’t push through, don’t break it... The floor shifted and the path changed, and up ahead, it gave way, and…

***

A door flew up from out of the void, and landed on the lawn, splintering into many pieces.

“The heck?” Alice said.

A green spine rose over the edge of the lawn, and then Eliza climbed up, crunching over the wooden debris.

“Eliza!” Jainaba yelled. 

“Hi,” she smiled, before collapsing; Jainaba caught her.

“Where were you?” Emily asked, concern in her voice.

“The creature wanted to talk to me personally. Where were you?”

“Hell.” Alice said.

“Some stupid nightmare world bullshit,” Summer added.

“‘course. Wolf…” She rolled over on her back. “I can’t call you all Wolfgirl, huh?” She laughed. “Wolfgirls…”

Alice picked up one of the wood shards, a larger chunk of door, curiously unfragmented. “Huh. This is the same mark I saw on the stones out front.”

“Stones?” Eliza said. “That mark keeps it away. It wanted me to remove the stones…”

Alice pulled up the photo of the stones. “These stones?”

“Probably.”

On the porch, something clicked.

***

Claire was in her house, but it wasn’t her house.

The countertop was split into elevated and lowered sections, split up like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Her hand brushed one of the uneven splits, and she pulled it back, pulling it into her sleeve. It felt like a kitchen counter, but why take the risk?

Summer was there, and so were her sisters. Something wearing their faces, anyway, was standing around the kitchen - they looked right, but they were passive, without any of their tics or unnecessary movement at all. The thing that looked like Summer started to open its mouth.

“I know you’re not real, so whatever you’re going to say, don’t bother.”

Summer nodded, smiled, and a cockroach squeezed its way between her lips and crawled out onto her face.

“Oh. Oh god.” Her sisters, too, opened their mouths to reveal a smile of vermin, with swarms of cockroaches, centipedes, millipedes, ragged dirty-furred rats, and spiders making up a joyful chorus now crawling all over their bodies and down their legs and streaming towards Claire.

Thousands of them. She ran out the sliding glass door, closing it behind her (hearing a clear crunch from a few advance scouts caught in the way), and hustled for the swimming pool. The scent of rot hit her nose: the scent of the dark, festering blood filling her pool. She reached the pool she hoped would be safe, and hunched over at its side, gagging.

The swarm crept underneath the doorway, and skittered past Claire and poured down into the pool. One after another, the stream dropped into the blood, and with pincers, mandibles, and their mass alone, wore a hole in the congealed surface. The rancid stench caused Claire to sink to her knees, throw up the last of what was inside her stomach, but something was bubbling inside the pool. The congealed surface broke like cracked ice. Something rose from it, towering and chitinous, with six thick antennae and piercing mandibles, and a white shell crafted from the bodies of different insects: beetle and mantid, ant and flea, dripping with fetid blood.

***

Summer woke up in a goddamn roadside attraction.

It was the mystery spot her family pulled into on a trip to the Dells when she was younger. Summer didn’t think it was around anymore, but here she was. A bunch of fake creatures in jars, and fake gravity stunts, and bullshit like that. Like she’d fall for those anymore.

She groaned. There were windows, and out of them she could see her family’s car driving away without her. Great. She knew it wasn’t real, but if the House thought her greatest fear was being abandoned, fine.

She wandered down the mystery spot and realized wearily that this place was mirrored too. Not one room after another, the rooms were different arrangements of the same elements and there weren’t any doors, but a goddamn labyrinth. A maze. But the window was always there. Her parents driving away was always there.

“Hey, asshole, I don’t care about my made-up parents running away from me.” She did care about how no one else was here: how room after room of malformed fetuses in jars and stuffed jackalopes were all empty. “I wish we’d stopped at the House on the Rock back then. It’d probably kill you to make all that.”

But she really was alone. She started going straight, one room after another, endlessly north.

Then the room changed.

She wasn’t outside, but the mystery spot opened up into a…not outside, but a room with glass walls on either side, allowing her to see her parent’s car driving down the path - and the rest a void of haze. It turned sharply, and now there were no walls at all, only paths in nothing. She looked up, seeing…the House, again and again. Her stomach lurched, and she rolled over onto the floor of the labyrinth, lying uselessly on her side.

In the distance, she saw a black cloud floating closer, and she didn’t fight it.

***

“...and now, presenting the Eighth Wonder of the World, straight from the land of mists - Gef, the Talking Mongoose!”

Where the devil am I, Gef thought? He blinked in the light. Light, damn light! He was in a cage. Red and white stripes, a man in burgundy, oh dear.

The circus.

Gef gripped on tight and rattled the bars. “Let me out! Let me out!” He wouldn’t dare perform again - not for nothing! But the crowd…enjoyed him? Applauded with their hideous mongoose hands? Why, they adored him!

“Yes, yes, I’m staying all week! Very well, yes…!” But before his very eyes, the crowd - who loved him, yes they did - were changing. First a few wrinkles on the older ones, strands of gray hair. The oldest ones decayed first: into skeletons, clapping ferociously until their bones crumbled into dust. Then the other adults, and then the children, growing up in seconds, ever faster. They, too, died.

Why, Gef’s fur was changing too. His body growing threadbare, mere bones over flesh, his fur tattered, balding. Was this…death?

He gasped for breath. Yes, yes, he was dying. He was dying of old age - the crowd long ago turned to rotting corpses and shattered skeletons, still clapping, still laughing - but while his body begged to shut down, begged to go to the land of mists, it couldn’t. No, it couldn’t, but it left him flailing on the floor of his cage. Able to do nothing but watch as the corpses, clapping, laughing, joined together, first a few on the edges, soon all of them assimilated into one shambling mass of legs and arms, mummified flesh and bones, all together, all bounding out of the stands and towards his cage…

***

Jainaba’s eyes blinked awake in harsh, yellow light. Yellow and white: white walls, white ceiling…

Against the walls there were shadows. Human shapes, their edges jittery, ever-shifting.

She tried to sit up. Something stopped her. A straitjacket. This was a cell. Someone spoke up over the PA system. “Today’s specimen is someone used by others, who ruined her life. And the worst part is, she didn’t even get anything from it.”

“Extract the information straight from her brain,” said someone else, said…

Her sister. Isatou, wearing a white lab coat, on the other side of the door.

“Sister.”

“Doctor,” Isatou reminded. “I diagnose this patient as dead. She’s just dead.” She smiled wide, and walked over to the place of shadows. “Mom, dad, in my official capacity as a doctor, I say my sister is dead!”

The shadows embraced her, and patted her on her back. Jainaba rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Sister issues. Not breaking new ground here.”

The shadows receded, and left her alone, in her cell, straitjacketed. Through slits in the door, eyes opened: yellow and lupine, red and black, spectral. Faces came to the bars, the jaws of a werewolf snapping at metal, a chupacabra’s glinting fangs, ghostly tendrils and claws shaking the door…

***

Alice was back in her room, her laptop open. In an incognito tab, she had searched for “is being a werewolf a sin?”. No results. Because no one knows werewolves are real, Al. She sighed and closed her laptop with…

Paws. Furry paws, with her claws gouging out trails in the laptop’s shell.

“Alice, we have to talk.” Mom. Dad. In the door. Alice slunk down and hid behind her chair, but they couldn’t miss the big werewolf right in front of them.

“You know it’s wrong.”

“Turn away from being a werewolf, or else.”

“You can make the choice.”

Alice couldn’t handle it. She fell off her bed, there was a flurry of paper and comics, and…

"Al, we'll be big bad wolves after this! Then our parents can't tell us not to play D&D and listen to rock music anymore!"

It was her brother, but...not her brother. And they were walking together in a graveyard, and she was still a werewolf, and...

"Grurrrrrr?"

Suddenly, a dog with two big ears and a upswept tail barked at them!

"EEK! This is too scary!" Her brother Cody ran away, leaving her alone.

"Bark bark bark?"

Two demons floated in the air behind her, and they were laughing.

"Haha...she doesn't know what we've got in store!"

"I love this part!"

"Arurrr...rur! Rurr!" That meant 'I can see you', but they just vanished without...

She was at a Satanic rite. Holding a curved, ceremonial dagger. It fell out of her paws, and a dog-headed man before a stone altar laughed.

"Rur...grarr?"

"You thought you were going to be top dog now...but you don't know..." He took off his mask to reveal...the Devil! A...really stereotypical red devil. "HAW HAW HAW! You're coming to the dog pound with me - FOREVER!"

Wait, what is he - before she knew it, Alice was on her paws, and she was being pulled towards a great lake of fire, and -

I'm dead, Alice thought. I'm dead and all those stupid comics were right. She didn't know what part was worse.

She kicked and scratched at the demons, as the fires of Hell drew closer, as she sweat underneath her fur, and up above, her brother Cody was talking with her parents and a priest.

"Cody, you almost went to Hell today!" The Priest said. "Lycanthropy - the Wiccan term for werewolfism - was invented by Jesuit hitmen in league with the Devil to destroy Presbyterianism - and all who become a werewolf go straight to Hell!"

"But Alice said we'd be powerful!" Cody whined.

"Go ask Alice if she's feeling powerful right now - but you can't. Because she's in Hell."

And the fire was getting hotter, and Alice stopped scratching, and...

***

Claire found herself back in her home, where each surface was made of blood and swarming, scuttling insects.

She winced and averted her gaze to the sky, where the stars were wiggling yellow insects, and the dark matter of space fetid dripping blood. All around her was filth and rot.

Her lycanthropic ears detected two noises, on opposite sides of this vision.

On one, the insectoid creature, clawed feet stamping into wet blood, crunching smaller bugs under its feet.

On the other, an opening door. A break in the foul air. She darted back inside the house, and saw…

A doorway.

“Claire? Summer? Alice…?” Laura!

Claire raced in the direction of the voice, the darkness clearing into a rectangle of light, one held open by Manuel. Laura saw her running, and jumped back to help Manuel keep the door open. Claire’s feet pounded the shells of insects and kicked apart bubbles of blood, and behind her, the insectoid creature kept pace, bounding forward.

She made it to the door, and the three of them slammed it behind them. A few insects scuttled along the floor and crumbled into dust, but nothing more followed.

“Thank…” She brushed blood off on the walls - they were in a hallway, a hallway of the house with buckling, watery walls. “Thank you.”

“Sorry, we need to keep moving.”

Claire took several raspy breaths, but even if she had the air in her lungs to reply she wouldn’t. She knew Laura was right.

They ran down the hall, careful to stay together. A wall appeared up ahead, and then a hallway to the right. They followed it, until they found another doorway. They opened it; Laura held it open, and Manuel and Claire stepped inside.

They were in a labyrinth without walls: an expanse of wood paths stood before them in a hazy world of lavender and azure fog. They could see, from here, Summer winding her way along the paths; she reached the end of one, and appeared back at another.

“Sum?” Claire called weakly.

Something else was following Summer: another cloud, not hazy but splintery and dark.

Before their eyes, it caught her. She kept her head down, her eyes shut, her arms crossed tightly around herself. She bit her lip, and made her way to the edge.

“Sum!” Claire cried, to no response; she raced forward and grabbed her arm, the cloud stabbing into her arm with a thousand numb points of pain. She bellowed, and pulled at Summer; she lost her grip, but Summer turned around. Looked at her face, looked over her to the door.

But still, she continued to walk to the edge of the labyrinth.

Claire lunged, grabbed Summer with both hands, cloud stabbing fiercely. Pulled her partially out of the cloud, where Manuel braced her and helped her, and once she left the cloud, they continued to run to the door…

***

The shambling mass reached out with many hands in different states of decay, and swept up Gef with two of them, one of them bone, one retaining patches of hardly rotted flesh. He didn’t dignify them with a response, or his gaze. He looked aside to the other hands - oh dear, the hands! - digging in the Earth, tossing aside a pile of dirt.

“What - what are you doing? Trying to bury me, eh? Well, good luck killing me, you mortal losers…” Oh. Oh, my. “What - no! Don’t bury me! I’ll…I’ll live! You don’t want me down there, you want to bury a corpse! A corpse! You should be down there, not-!”

This is how it ends, then? Buried alive! What hideous devilment, to die again and return with dirt in your lungs, to suffocate once more, twice more, forever more! He wiggled in their grip, but was unable to extricate himself.

A squeak! An opening door! Second wind! Gef scratched mightily at the human paws bearing him to his fate - gashed, clawed, ripped and tore - and - yes! Freedom! He squeezed up onto the arm and bit into it. Rotten, rancid flesh! Snap! The arm broke in half and Gef fell to the ground with it, landing on all fours; the arm clattered to the ground as - rocks? Glinting, crystalline rocks?

Gef scrambled beyond the reach of the corpse’s many hands, onward, onward!

***

Jainaba shook herself in an attempt to dislodge her straitjacket. The creatures were scratching at the door, and worse: her sister was on the PA system.

“Today’s patient will be exsanguinated, disemboweled, skinned, burnt, melted, and crushed, to begin the testing. Subject will be kept alive through this process, to test our hypothesis that the House will let you die when it desires it.” Jainaba couldn’t see her sister’s face, but knew she was smiling. “By the time she will be allowed to die, I will have graduated medical school, with-”

“I GET IT, MY SISTER’S MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN ME.” Jainaba screamed. “God, I thought my issues were deeper than sister envy, but…”

“Door will now be opened.” A buzz. “Good luck with testing, researchers.”

They streamed inside: a werewolf with a curving jaw and jagged teeth, a chupacabra with razor-sharp spines, a hodag with bloody horns, a mapinguari lurching forward on yellowed claws, and the ghost. Of course, the ghost…

A beam of light fell over them, and for a second, their flesh shone. But the creatures snarled and scattered, and a flurry of people rushed in and…

***

Heat rose beneath Alice, and she knew she deserved it. She deserved the flames beneath. She died, and she deserved…

A hand brushed hers, and then fumbled back, touching once, twice, and then gripped on. Alice opened her eyes. It was Claire, on the edge of Hell, trying to pull her out.

“Al. Al, come on. Al…”

Alice closed her eyes. Guess you’re not dead. Guess this isn’t real. Shit. She let Claire grab her, and snatched her other hand; she was delivered from the heat, and she stumbled, with a hacking cough, towards…

Cool air. A hallway. Laura and Manuel, Claire and Summer, Jainaba. Gef, too, on Manuel’s shoulders.

“T-thanks…” Alice said, but they were already running, because the hallways around them were shaking and the way forward shifting, and Alice had no choice but to follow. There was only one doorway up ahead, and it was open.

Once through, the doorway closed behind them, leaving them in…

The neighborhood outside. But…off. The sky was blue paint, and the asphalt black paint. The front of the homes across the street were fully detailed, but their sides were just unpainted props. Half a car - a red 1990s number - was detailed, and the back mere blocks.

There were no people around, but something was moving.

None of them could sense it properly, since their senses were confused by the whole jumble behind them, with Alice’s nostrils haunted by an acrid burning. Whatever was moving was a big nothing to them. And…

Emily walked out from behind a house. “Oh. You made it.”

“Em?” Alice asked. “What’s in here with you?”

“Nothing?”

“This place looks…not as detailed,” Claire said quietly.

“Yeah. Like the House ran out of budget.” Summer kicked at the car.

“Are you alright…? I’ve been here alone since we were all thrown away, and -”

“Are you really Emily?” Jainaba asked urgently.

“Yes?”

“In my vision, it made a replica of Eliza.” Jainaba sighed. “But it wasn’t very accurate.”

“We musn’t get caught up in that,” Gef scolded.

“Wait, where -” But Emily couldn’t finish, because the fake street beneath them started to rattle. They darted onto the sidewalk, jumping off just before the floor fell away. The sidewalk started to rattle, so they leapt onto the yard of the House, and it too fell away, and then…

All was still. Above them was a painted sky, and below them an endless drop into dark, empty space. Something flew up from below, and fell on them from above: dust, string, rotted wood…

The stuff they left behind to mark their trail.

As they caught their breath on the yard - on harsh, fake grass - Emily resumed her thought.

“Where’s Eliza?”

***

Eliza’s membranes retreated, and she found herself in a restaurant. Green marble floors and tables with fine red cloths, and white marble columns and waiters. Waiters with odd faces: some blank and some with excess eyes and noses, some with faces swept forward in a tubular shape and some with faces swept back into their head like a crater. She shivered.

To her left was a water feature, with a fine marble statue of a woman over a bubbling pool fed by the stream of water from a vase in the statue’s hands. To her right was a row of plants, a few fronds of ferns and several that were merely the shape of a fern painted on wood planks, and beyond them a couple plants made of pipe cleaners rooted in dirt.

Ahead of her, was the deer-skulled creature, taking a glass of wine from a waiter. “What will you have to drink?” It asked, its voice the grinding of stone on stone in the shapes of words.

“N-nothing…”

“Good. I ordered you something special.”

One of the waiters, one with a head slanted backwards and to the left and who drooled red liquid from his eyes and down his shoulders, brought forth a covered platter. He lifted the lid to reveal the head and neck of Laura, her face not dead but blinking and furrowing her features blankly.

“Go on and feed.”

“No!” She pushed the platter away. “Oh, god, what did you do?”

“Nothing. It’s not real. Your friend is very much alive, and this is my handiwork. Now, feed.”

“No.” She knocked the platter off the table, and she didn’t hear any landing.

The dark shape resolved into a blinking mongoose. “Hullo!”

Summer growled back. “Was that you?”

“Was that me when? Here? Very perceptive!”

“Were you the one making the noises up here?” Claire asked. Gef nodded. Right in HER FACE, ugh. Can’t imagine the breath.

“You got us trapped here, Gef.”

“Well, have you looked for a way out?” Gef said.

“...yes!”

“What if we…” Claire jumped, but she came down like normal. “It appears gravity’s inverted.”

“If we can’t jump down, then what do we do? What do we do? Keep moving and hope we find a way out?”

“Yes, yes, very well, onward,” Gef said from Claire’s shoulders. “Don’t want to carry me, eh?”

“No, but if Summer did, she may eat you.”

Gef scanned Summer’s face for confirmation; oh, you’ll get it. Summer nodded aggressively, baring her grimaced teeth. Gef averted his glance, and let Claire carry him onward to…to…

More house. UGH.

Scraping over wood. Dragging feet. Summer sniffed bone and dust and rock, and she didn’t need to look back, but she did. But she did, stupidly, and she saw a horned shadow falling along the ceiling, falling and rising as it hunted…

***

“Em, it’s not a big deal.”

Emily sat on the floor of the living room, beside their pile of bags, with only Alice for company; everyone else was outside, but Emily…Emily wasn’t ready. She didn’t know what to say.

Emily brushed tears off her face. “You don’t understand.”

“I do. It doesn’t matter that nothing happened. It’s good, you know, that nothing happened.”

“You don’t understand,” Emily repeated. She really didn’t. Emily had cared a little about seeing what was inside the house, but it was mainly an excuse to get everyone together and hold the seance, so she wouldn’t be alone when she tried to contact…

Could’ve just done it in my room, she thought; they would’ve helped. But then she’d have to admit…

Sigh.

Emily took Alice’s hand gently. “Let’s go outside.” Alice helped her to her feet, and together they inched their way to the door, opened it, and -

Jainaba, jumping forward, hand out. “No! Keep the door open! Don’t let it-!”

Click.

Click.

Her mind woke up. Processed the images taken in by her reddened eyes. They…weren’t outside. They were in the house. The exact same house, but flipped the other way round.

Laura, Manuel, Jainaba, and Eliza were here, gathered around the door that just closed.

“What’s goin’ on?” Alice swung her head around, mouth half-open.

Laura pointed behind them. “Check the door.”

Emily did. “It’s locked…?”

“We don’t know what’s happening,” Manuel said. “The door locked after us. This house appears to be the same house, but mirrored.”

“Did either of you bring your bags?” Laura asked. Both Alice and Emily checked themselves, and said no. “Then they’re back there. In the real house.”

“They’re not mirrored too?” Emily asked; Laura confirmed.

“This place does appear to be physical,” Manuel explained. “I don’t notice any obvious distortions or errors in replication. It is an exact copy.”

“Were Claire and Summer with you?” Eliza asked. “If they’re still in the real house, maybe they can open the door and free us.”

“I don’t know…” Alice flinched. “They…went upstairs.”

***

Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.

They sprinted along the ceiling until they came across the stairs again; they receded into the ceiling, and they descended onto the second floor ceiling. Was it still behind them? Yes, Claire could smell it; she didn’t need eyes to see it, but still, she declined to look…

There was a doorway up ahead. Summer led the way, Claire holding on tight, Gef’s hands - yes, Laura was right, they were horrible, off-putting in a primal way - digging in tight to her shoulder. Summer pushed open the door, and they walked out onto the second floor ceiling. But this one was different. The door frames were slanted at sharp angles, jutting out of their right position, while the floor was tilted, the experience akin to walking through a Dutch angle shot in a movie.

Everything suggested the safest way was to press on slowly and carefully, but behind them, they could hear the opening of the door, and the smell wafted through quite strongly, and Claire knew it was time to run; she wished she was in werewolf form, able to run all night without pause, but here, her human lungs cried out for relief.

Up the stairs and along the ceiling of the first floor, an expanse of running, fear, of iron in the throat, until in the middle of the ceiling above the living room they found a dark hole, cleanly cut from the beams in a rectangle. The inside of it was all shadow, all darkness, its nature imperceptible, and Claire and Summer stood together at the edge… 

“This is…” Summer said, and Claire knew she didn’t know what she was saying.

“We should keep running,” Claire offered, and she knew she didn’t know, either.

“What if that’s the way down?”

“I…I’m too afraid.” An honest response.

“I’m not too afraid!” Gef cried, leaping off of Claire’s shoulders and vanishing into the hole.

“He’s gone…”

“He went somewhere,” Summer said. “He’s somewhere that’s…the worst that happens is…is that it’s here again.”

“The worst that happens is…”

“But it’s not here. It’s not running. We…we go together? We go together.”

“T…together,” Claire said; she held Summer’s hand tightly, closed her eyes, and together, they fell into the darkness.

***

Emily tapped to call Jessie, and in the seconds between looking down at her phone and putting it to her ear Claire and Summer were lying on the floor. The phone rang and rang, and the others helped Claire and Summer to their feet, and then Gef after they found him (he had bounced off the floor and landed in the entryway, apparently unnoticed). The phone connected, and blasted the noise of scraping stone on stone; she rejected the call, and turned off her phone to conserve battery.

“I couldn’t get Jessie, I only heard this weird noise.”

“That’s what happened in the ghost world, too.” Jainaba was sitting on the floor with her legs in front of her, arms wrapped around her knees; Emily opted not to make a joke about Jainaba ending up in the Ghost Dimension twice, for tact’s sake.

Laura and Manuel were huddled around Claire and Summer, and Emily joined them. “Are you two alright?”

“Fine,” Summer grunted.

“We ended up in a non-Euclidean space,” Claire explained, rubbing her arm. “We were walking on the ceiling, and there were stairways that went different directions.”

“And there was a GIANT MONSTER.”

“That too.”

“What was this monster like?” Alice asked.

“It has horns -”

“Like Eliza’s?” Absolute silence.

The chupacabra shook for a moment, and spoke up with quiet anger. “What are you saying?”

“No, NOT like Eliza’s.” Summer snapped back.

“Two horns, on the top of its head.” Claire demonstrated with her hands.

Laura sprung up, and Manuel held her back before she even opened her mouth. “Hey, how about you don’t accuse my friend of being a monster?”

“Sorry,” Alice mumbled, taking a few steps back. Another silence.

“Oh, and the knocking we heard? It was Gef.” Summer said. “Go yell at him.”

“Ugh,” Laura said. “Gef, stay with me. Okay? No vanishing.”

“Hmph,” he protested, but he swiftly clambered onto Laura’s shoulders.

“We should keep moving,” Manuel said. “See if we can open the back door. Um, do any of you have spare objects? Fluff or things in your wallet or anything we can leave behind us?”

Everyone searched their pockets, offering Manuel a smattering of pocket fluff, string, one lost button, and some bills, coins, and useless cards. They also gathered wood chips, dust, and other detritus from around the floor. After assembling this cornucopia, they made their way to the back room; the door that once led out onto a patio opened, and led into the front entryway of the House. No barbecues, then? Manuel set a chunk of wood behind them to mark the door, and they walked through single-file.

Alice and Eliza walked through last.

“Eliza, I’m…I’m sorry,” Alice said, louder than before. “I’m sorry.”

Eliza walked through the door without turning back, and Alice scrambled to follow.

***

The second copy was ordinary, another mirror of the first. They tested the basement door here. Still locked.

The third copy was identified by Summer and Claire as one they passed through: it was slanted, and some of the doorframes were crooked and stuck out, and they had to watch their step lest one trip them up. Its basement door was locked, too, but oddly, its frame wasn’t crooked - the front door, too.

The fourth copy was where the degradation really started. The walls all looked, and smelled, heavily water damaged, and in some places buckled inwards, and in some bubbled out. The ceiling was stained, and it was in this copy that a debate began.

“I didn’t think we’d be hanging out in the Backrooms tonight,” Laura said.

“Philistine,” Emily responded.

“For what?”

“Because, you uncultured swine, the chance was there to make a House of Leaves joke.”

“I’ve never read House of Leaves.”

“Exactly. Uncultured.”

“This isn’t much like House of Leaves, though,” Summer said. “‘cause the rooms are repeating and it’s not a maze. It really is more Backrooms-y. But the stupid wiki with all the extra levels.”

“You’ve read it?”

“No, but I saw TikToks about it.”

Emily sighed. “Same. But I’ll actually read it if we get out of this place.”

Manuel left some string behind, and they walked through another doorway into the fifth copy. The monster hadn’t appeared, and they didn’t have much to fear. They’d be out soon. They just had to keep walking.

***

The fourteenth copy was another distorted mirror, but it was the first to add something.

This one appeared to be the House as it was when people lived in it: there was a table in the dining room and couch in the living room, a beige box of a computer in the corner at a desk, a weighty CRT in a wooden media center along the wall. Plants hung from the ceiling, and in a few planters dotted around the first floor (no one dared go upstairs).

But it was all a copy. The computer had an AOL page printed flatly on the monitor; the discordant notes blaring from the TV jabbed into everyone’s ears like daggers, the TV looping a few seconds of MTV, scanlines thick as prison bars. The table was lumpy and wet, and the couch rippled and sank in on itself like quicksand - even though everyone was tired, no one was brave enough to sit on it. The plants in the planters were in perpetual rot, and the pot hanging off the ceiling held a fern made of sharp metal blades.

But the basement door was the same, as always. The front door, too.

They were in the living room, looking over the computer screen (“BULLS DEFEAT JAZZ IN GAME 6, JORDAN WINS FIFTH TITLE”), when they heard it. When they heard stone dragging over wood, and they closed ranks, standing back-to-back in the living room. The stairs, it’s coming from above, the stairs…

“Come on. We know you’re up there.” Summer cried. “Come on and-”

The fireplace burst apart in a storm of stone and plaster. It stepped out: bipedal, skeletal, its body stone and bones, its head a deer’s skull with two tall antlers. It stared at them, it stared at them with holes devoid of eyes, it stared at them and through them as it reared up on its two legs, antlers scraping the ceiling, plaster dropping in their wake…

“Oh. Oh god…” Laura backed into the others, who didn’t notice her mistake. Nowhere to run, nowhere to…

The creature slammed its large, skeletal hands into the floor. A deep voice spoke - not from within it, but using it, like a speaker, the voice issuing not from the mouth but reverberating through its whole body - “I have killed many for intruding in my walls. They suffered greatly. You did not only intrude. You attempted to destroy me.”

No one wanted to be the first to speak up; their heads craned to watch the creature’s movements - it stepped forward, then dragged its other foot. It could walk normally, but - it wanted them to suffer from the noise. It paused at the TV screen and tapped it. The MTV loop dissolved organically into a view of the House’s upstairs. Two teens walked down the hallway, one in a dark shirt with KOЯN on it, and one holding out a flip phone.

“Man, I’m not getting a signal at all.”

“Dude, what the shit?” The dark-shirt boy said; he lifted his backpack off, and placed it on the floor. “You said it was just a house.”

“It is.” The other boy wandered into another room. “What the crap? This room’s all wet. The ceiling’s white, and -”

The ceiling shot down, and the room was replaced with something white, something made of tiny objects of different shades - white, yellow, black and gray…

Teeth. Oh god, teeth.

The white mass wasn’t a wall, but something twisting around in many interlaced spirals, and from them, came the sounds of butchered meat and the boy’s screams. The other boy screamed, tried to turn and run, but something unseen tripped him and pulled him into the room, each section of his body breaking out into tiny red welts in the instant before it disappeared within the white. His backpack tumbled, and several cans of spray paint rolled down the stairs…

The creature tapped the TV again, and it changed to a view of the living room. A haggard man in a tattered green jacket crouched on the floor. He pulled out a lighter, and after a few flickering attempts, he kindled a fire in the fireplace; as soon as it was kindled, the fire shot out of the fireplace and up his arm, and consumed him in a matter of seconds; the fire trickled down to embers, and firefighters arrived to put out the last burning ashes, but the fire still consumed the man, who squirmed and flailed to try and put it out. The firefighters glanced his way, but did nothing to help; and they left the house without incident.

Another scene, an angle out the window onto the front porch. A man knocked on the door, sweaty and with blood smeared across his forehead. “Please, I-I need help, I’ve been in an accident, is anyone there?” A hole opened up beneath him. He fell, screaming, and it sealed above him.

“I could kill you now,” the creature said. “I could kill you all at once. The men you saw took years to die. No, you must suffer worse than an intruder. The pity is, one of you must die first and miss the rest of the pain. But I know who will be last to die…” The creature tilted its head and stared daggers at each of them in turn, before locking its gaze on Gef; though the skull lacked eyes, Laura felt a deep squirming in her stomach when it passed over her - the tingling of goosebumps on her neck recognizing many eyes, where there were none. “I can’t kill you, can I? Very well. I’ll kill you again and again. Your eternal suffering will offer me some momentary amusement…”

Laura and Manuel were the first to come, being driven over by Laura’s dad; they waved to him as they stepped out onto the sidewalk, and as they walked over, Manuel showed off the inner pocket of his backpack, which held his usual book and a couple notebooks, one (blue) labeled FANTASMAS and one (green) labeled VARIAS CRIATURAS in marker on the cover. Manuel was wearing his black skull hoodie and burgundy pants, and Laura was wearing a blue-gray hoodie, a gray herringbone skirt, jeans and a choker necklace.

“I’m assuming you found something,” Emily said.

“Yes!” Manuel answered. “I think it will be useful, anyway…”

“It will be useful,” Laura said, and Gef the mongoose poked his head out of her hoodie pocket. “Not him, though.”

“Hey, Gef,” Emily said.

“Hullo. Do you have food? I’m right famished, I am - right starving, skin and bones, right -”

“You’re hungry. You’re hungry, I get it, you’re hungry.” Emily reached into her backpack and pulled out a carton of Goldfish. “Here. Eat, consume, cram, ingest -”

“A piscine treat, eh? Rotting in your backpack -”

Laura groaned. “Gef, you know what Goldfish are.”

Laura, Manuel, and Emily waited - and still did not step onto the porch. Alice arrived next, rolling up on her bike.

“Hello, Alice,” Manuel waved.

“Hey.” Alice put her bike away and looked up at the house. “It is creepy.”

“I told you,” Emily agreed, and she watched Alice furiously pace around the edge of the house. She kicked at the stones around it, before she turned her head down and studied them.

Alice pointed downwards. “There’s marks on the stones.”

“Yeah. I noticed them too, they’re creepy.”

Alice took out her phone and took a photo of the marks, and then…resumed her angry stomping.

Claire and Summer arrived last, walking around the corner. “We took the bus,” Summer explained, and they all went up to the stairs. Emily led the way, taking a deep breath, closing her eyes, and lifting her foot, and lowering it on…

The first step. The next one, one by one until she was on the porch. Part one complete. The others followed behind her, but they waited for Emily to open the door. She put her hand on the knob, and…

Pushed. Unlocked. Good. Won’t have to do any crimes today. Should’ve scouted that in advance, huh?

The inside of the house was unremarkable. To the right of the entryway was a dining room, devoid of furniture, a dusty ceiling fan with a light in its center. Beyond that, Emily could make out part of the kitchen. To the left was the former living room, also empty of furniture, windows with blinds drawn down, scuff marks on wood. Straight ahead was a staircase.

Emily told her brain to shift her eyes into night vision mode, and she hardly felt them melting and shifting, the momentary blindness before readjustment passing in just a second. With her lupine eyes, she…couldn’t see much else, except that the kitchen had some of its appliances (must be built in), and the staircase curved off to the left and upwards.

She walked into the living room, and placed her bag on the floor. The walls were beige, and here and there was a nail, or a mark from something that once hung on these walls. There was a fireplace, covered, and she could smell the scents of the past, of cozy nights around the fire, of the stink of the humans who once, long ago, walked these boards; yes, she could, too, smell dust and dankness, rot and darkness, as well as she could the fading marker on the wall in the kitchen denoting the height of the children who once dwelt here, the stains of long-ago spills in the warm refrigerator, glass jars in the basement that still contained a trace of their former contents - jam, or iced tea, or Kool-Aid…

She reached into her bag. Pulled out a camera. “I borrowed this from my moms. Did any of you bring cameras?” Shrugs and shaken heads. “Okay, just use your phones. One per pair. We’ll -”

Knock knock.

Creaking floorboards. Sniff sniff. Two people outside on the patio, outside on the door. One human, one…something else, something adjacent to human, but not in the way a werewolf was.

Laura rushed over to the door. It opened, just around the corner, and two people trailed in after her. One was a girl, college age, with dark brown skin and short hair, wearing glasses and a pink hoodie. The other was a girl with hair fashioned into several spikes, who was wearing a necklace with a round pendant at the bottom, which she was reaching up to and…

Pulling off.

Huh.

The second the necklace lost contact with her neck, she turned from a human girl into something else. She had large, round red-black eyes, a green face pockmarked with black spots and pockets of coarse hairs - she had a flat nose and no ears and two sharp fangs protruding from her mouth. She was both scaly and hairy, and walked like a kangaroo, and held her arms in front of her like a dinosaur - do dinosaurs hold their arms that way, actually? - and they ended in three long, curving, sharp claws. She blinked - some kind of inner eyelid swept over her eyes - and tilted her head.

“I’m Jainaba,” the human girl said. “I’m a friend of Laura and Manuel.”

“And this is Eliza,” Laura said, putting her arm around the creature’s shoulders.

“She’s the chupacabra.” Manuel smiled.

Eliza flashed a fangy grin. “...hi?”

***

The group deposited their bags on the floor in a pile, one by one, with Manuel going last - he crouched down by his backpack and pulled out his research notes. “I could only find meager records of this house online,” Manuel explained, flipping through the FANTASMAS notebook. “It was built around 1985. The owners sold in 1997, and the new owners suddenly left and placed the home up for sale after only six months. In the following years, every prospective owner backed out of the deal, and while they did eventually sell the land, no one has ever come forward with plans to redevelop the property, and indeed I can’t find records of the new owner past 2011.”

“Did they die?” Summer asked.

“Maybeeeeee?”

“Or it could be literally the housing market crash,” Laura said.

“The owner lost all his money and unalived himself and he’s haunting this place…” Summer answered, in a mock creepy tone.

“If he did that in 2011, who was haunting the place in 1997?” Claire asked.

“Is this a Lake Mungo, ghost-before-the-ghost thing?” Laura asked.

“What the hell is Lake Mungo?” Summer interjected.

“‘Unalived’?” Manuel said. “Summer, this isn’t TikTok. You can say kill.”

Laura leaned out from behind Laura. “Summer, if we’re going to be investigating literal dead people, you have to say dead, murder, kill. Say it after me. Kill, kill, kill…” Summer said it along with her, in a weary, resigned tone, while Laura remained enthusiastic. “Kill, kill, kill…”

“Could we not chant ‘kill’ in front of our guests?” Emily scolded.

“Um. I’m sorry, Jainaba,” Manuel said, and Laura mumbled out a sorry too.

Jainaba looked around. “Uh, this isn’t some kind of cult is it? We’re not all going to put on Nikes and live on a comet, are we?”

“We’re not a cult yet,” Laura said. “Keeping our options open, though.”

“So first thing first,” Emily said, “is a ghost hunt. We’ll split up in pairs and look around part of the house for activity. Changes in temperature, orbs, writing, fingerprints…anything out of the ordinary. Laura, you look through the basement with Alice. Summer, you and Eliza go in the back. Manuel, you and…” She pointed to… “Jainaba?”

“Jainaba.”

“Jainaba, look around the living room. Claire, you and I will look upstairs.”

“Hang on, why are you picking the teams?” Laura asked.

“Because I want you to actually ghost hunt.” Emily rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. Gef, go with…whoever you want.”

Gef peeked out of Laura’s hoodie pocket, leapt onto the floor, and crawled up onto Manuel’s shoulder.

“Okay. Make sure you’re recording on your phones.”

***

“Um…” Manuel followed behind Jainaba, who had her phone - better than his, unfortunately, even after its trip to the ghost dimension - up to record everything. “I don’t want to imply Emily made a mistake, but I think Emily made a mistake…”

“Because she assigned two humans together? Yeah.” She sighed. “I don’t know what they’re seeing with their werewolf eyes, but I’m not seeing anything.”

“Aye, even my senses can’t detect any phantasms! Any phantasmagorias! Any-!”

“Gef,” Manuel said, “that isn’t even a different word for ghost. That’s the same one but longer.”

“You know, when Sjöberg brought me aboard, she told me you were gone forever.” Jainaba swept her phone’s light over the fireplace.

“I am! Stay cowered in your tunnels and you’ll never see ol’ Gef.”

“It’s weird, thinking about it, that we’re here but we’re only human.” Manuel said. “Everyone here is a werewolf or chupacabra or a mongoose and we’re the only…I don’t want to say normal, because…”

“We’re just normal men,” Jainaba said, and her and Manuel responded in unison “we’re just innocent men” and laughed.

“Ha, ha…” Gef said, instead of laughing. “Madness!”

***

Summer panned her phone over the back room; it was empty like the others, but looked like it had been a den once. There were marks on the floor where a table had been dragged, and a back door that opened onto a porch. She glanced out the window; the yard was surprisingly not overgrown or weedy, and it had those stones all around it too.

“You’re the chupacabra,” Summer said.

“I’m Eliza.”

“The chupacabra.”

“Yeah…” Summer turned back and looked at her; at her red-black eyes. Eliza was running the blunt sides of her claws over the spines that ran along her head and spine. “You’re a werewolf.”

“Shit. Yeah, I’m a werewolf. Name’s -”

“Summer.”

“Yeah. Yeah, Summer. D’you see anything?”

“Nothing you don’t. No writing, no orbs, no anything.”

“So, like, do you drink blood?”

Eliza sighed. “I prefer to think of myself as a woman with a lot of qualities that are more important to me than bloodrinking, but yeah.”

“Sorry. Geeze, sorry.” Summer flipped her hair. “Sorry.”

***

Laura’s investigation into the basement ran into a few problems. For one, that the basement door wouldn’t open.

Not really a few problems, now that she thought about it. Just one really big one.

So she and Alice wandered aimlessly around the stairs, looking for any sign of the ghost. Writing, orbs, change in temperature. Writing, orbs, change in temperature. Writing, orbs…

“Kinda a weird group for an exorcism,” Alice said.

“For a what?”

“For the…to banish the spirit.”

“Oh.” Guess Emily hadn’t told her that part…?

“We are banishing the spirit.”

“Yeah.”

“But how? Who’s able to?”

“Uh…”

“I’m the only one prepared for…spiritual warfare. I assume.”

Spiritual warfare? It’s…a ghost hunt? It’s ghost science? “Uh…so…like…what if we made the ghost angry?”

“What?”

“Make it angry.”

“Why would we do that!?”

“It’s what the Unsolved guys do.”

Alice took a breath, then let it out rapidly. “How do we make a ghost angry?”

Laura stepped into the darkness. “Hey, ghosts. It’s me. Are you mad I’m a woman? And that I still have hair and skin in your house?” No reaction. “I’ve got organs too. My heart’s beating sooooo much blood right now. I’ve got two kidneys making…urine?”

“Do you really think ghosts miss going to the bathroom?”

Laura shrugged. “Come on and possess or whatever. Come on!”

Nothin’.

***

“Is Laura yelling about urine?” Claire asked.

Emily slunk down to the floor. “I think she is.”

“No offense, but I’m starting to think this might only be a spooky house.” Claire’s nostrils flared. “One with some mildew and wood rot. Some chalky rock downstairs.”

“I’m starting to think that too.”

Claire sat on the floor across from Emily. “I don’t mind, to be clear. At least we spent some time together - and if it puts your mind at ease…”

“You’ll all think I’m some loser freaked out by an ordinary abandoned house.”

“I won’t.”

Emily sighed. “We’ll do the seance, then you can all leave.”

She silently stood up and walked downstairs, where everyone had gathered in a loose circle. Emily leaned down by her bag.

“What is it we were looking for again?” Alice asked.

Emily checked her list. “Fingerprints, freezing temperatures, ghost orbs, ghost writing, EMF Level 5…”

“Uh…” Laura started. “Uh…” She stopped herself again. “Emily…”

“What?” Emily said, exasperated.

“That’s…the evidence list from Phasmophobia.”

“Phasmophobia?”

“It’s a game.”

“I know, but…” Emily slapped her backpack’s two halves back together. “Damn it, I searched for evidence of a haunting. Google gave me a video game wiki?”

“Sorry.”

“Damn AI suggestions.” She kicked the backpack. “Did anyone find anything, at least?”

Everyone said no, except… “Me and Alice found out that the basement door won’t open. So we couldn’t check down there.”

“Might as well hold the seance,” Emily pulled out her Ouija board. “We -”

Alice jumped up. “What is that?”

***

Alice knew many things to be evil.

Satanism, clearly. Witchcraft. Harry Potter, though she’d been getting some mixed messages from adults on that lately. Tarot readings. All those things with crystals. Everything along those lines, really.

Last Halloween, her family took her down to Centralia for a trunk-or-treat in their old church’s parking lot. After they went back home, she handed out tracts instead of candy. She kind of hated it, but it’s what her parents wanted, so while everyone else trick-or-treated, she handed out comics with titles like THIS WAS YOUR LIFE and BACK FROM THE DEAD? and THE CHOICE, and one called HAPPY HALLOWEEN. When no kids were around, she picked that one up and paged through it. Boys go to a haunted house made up to look like Hell; one of them, Timmy, runs away scared and gets hit by a car. He goes to Hell, because he quit Sunday School to become worldly; as the mom of one of the boys says, “Don’t make the mistake of believing that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. That’s a lie straight from the devil.”

Alice dropped the comic back in the bucket.

“It’s the freakin’ house,” said a boy dressed as...a guy in a labcoat with spiky blue hair.

“Hello there,” Alice said with mock cheer. Just leave me alone…

“Why don’t you give out candy to kids instead of propaganda?”

“My parents...my family want to encourage other messages…”

“Nobody wants to hear this bullshit. Telling little kids they’re going to hell.”

“It’s not...bull pucky.”

The blue haired boy laughed and walked off into the night. Walked off to another house. She wish she could go with them. Maybe not with them them, but…

Anyway.

Here and now she knew one thing.

Ouija boards were absolutely, one hundred percent evil and demonic.

She was sure of that.

For sure.

Absolutely, one hundred percent.

“A Ouija board? You didn’t tell me we’d be participating in demonic rites!”

Summer laughed. “It’s a board?”

Laura laughed too. “Come on.”

“If it was anyone else saying this, if it was any other belief, you’d take it seriously! But all I get are jokes and lies!” She stamped her way towards the door, but Emily intercepted her (behind her she could hear Emily kicking the board across the floor as she jumped up).

“Al, I’m sorry.”

“You lied to me.”

“What if you just…stood there? While we did it. You don’t have to do anything, just…watch in case anything happens?”

Alice sighed. “Fine.”

***

Everyone sat on the floor around the Ouija board in a circle, except for Alice, who was pacing around them in a way that made Manuel nervous, though he didn’t know why. He reached his hand onto the planchette, where it met Laura’s hand and Emily’s and Claire’s and Summer’s and Jainaba’s and Eliza’s and Gef’s, until he was pushed off the table and ran away.

“Hello, are there spirits here?” Summer asked, and soon after she did, there was a series of knocks upstairs. “Hello? Spirits?”

“We’re down here,” Laura said. “Come get our skin.”

“Or don’t!” Claire added.

“What is your name?” Emily said, and beneath their hands the planchette started to move, settling on a “M.” When she saw that, Emily pulled her hand off the table, but only Manuel seemed to notice.

They guided the planchette from letter to letter, revealing the spirit’s name. U…R…P…H…Y…

“Your name is Murphy?” Claire said. “Did you used to live in this house?”

YES.

“How did you die?” Laura asked.

ILL

“...with what, though?”

“We should be asking, like, yes or no questions,” Summer said.

“Uh…did you die in the house?”

NO

“Did you die in a hospital?”

YES

“Is this house haunted?”

YES

“What year did you sell the house?” Manuel asked.

1988

“Does your last name start with a V?”

YES

“The owner of the house in 1988 had a last name starting with O, and no one had the name Murphy…” Manuel said, withdrawing his hand.

“Huh?” Claire said.

“We did it wrong,” Summer answered. “We have to do it again.”

“Ahem,” Manuel said with a streak of pride. “What we’ve seen here is that Ouija boards don’t contact the dead or demons. The movement is a product of the ideomotor effect.” He had kind of been hoping Ouija boards could contact the dead, or demons, but the chance to educate the others was…

“And you didn’t tell us it was bull?” Summer said.

“I didn’t know it was going to be bull for certain,” Manuel answered, and their conversation could have gone on longer (unfortunately), but both of them noticed Emily pulling the board away and sliding it into her backpack, and they noticed that she was crying.

“Em, it’s not a big deal,” Summer said.

“Yes, Emily, it’s not,” Manuel said, but he knew it didn’t amount to much.

“Nice to meet you, Eliza, Jainaba. Sorry I wasted your time.” She slung her backpack over her shoulder and made for the door but, this time, Alice intercepted her.

“It’s not your fault, ‘kay?” Alice said. “Sorry if I was harsh on you, but…”

“It’s not you, it’s not any of you,” Emily cried. “It’s me. I can’t talk about it…”

Manuel winced. As he did, more knocks hit the floor upstairs. Summer glanced at Claire. “We’ll…go look at that. You stay with Em, okay?” Manuel nodded, and watched the two of them leave; when they had, Manuel leaned his head on Laura’s shoulder, and was thankful he couldn’t hear everything she could.

***

“I don’t see anything,” Claire said, intending to leave the empty room, but instead Summer walked in.

“Probably gonna be a while down there,” Summer said, sitting on the floor. Claire joined her. “We should keep watch. See if the noises come back.”

“Yeah…see if the ghost…is haunting…” Claire leaned in, but Summer leaned in faster, and kissed Claire, and…

Summer stopped. “Wait.” 

“What is it?”

Summer groaned and rubbed her face. “The movie.”

“The movie…?”

“I made fun of people going off to make out when there’s a monster on the loose, and hey, what do we do?”

“There isn’t any monster, though.”

“Still a creepy house.”

***

Emily gestured for the rest of them to give her space, and Manuel followed Laura to the door (he got the impression of Eliza and Jainaba being somewhere in the back). As he did, he looked up the stairs, wondering if Claire and Summer would be down soon. But down here, it was time for them to leave this house behind and go sit on the street, in the evening air, waiting for their rides…

Laura was the one who opened the door, and the one who walked through…into the house. Into the same entryway, the same stairs up ahead, the rooms mirrored…

***

Claire sheepishly stood up, while Summer leapt up to follow her, shoes slamming into the wood with a thud. Claire wanted to just leave and go downstairs, but when she looked out the door, she noticed it. She noticed…

“Summer,” she said quietly.

A shadow. A small shadow, cast diagonally across the wall. A small, human-shaped shadow that quickly retreated. Too quickly for Summer to see it, unfortunately.

“What is it, Claire?” but they both saw the next one. It was taller, taller than them; human-shaped, but leaning forward, with

horns spikes spines antlers

objects protruding from its skull.

They couldn’t see it, but it saw them. The shadow swiveled - looking this way, it’s looking this way - and began to move in great, bounding steps.

***

Manuel was easy to get onboard, which meant Laura was easy to get onboard; Emily found him in programming class, and asked him “you know about ghosts, right?” Emily knew that he had hunted a ghost with Laura, since they wouldn’t shut up about it, but Emily didn’t believe Laura - though, and she couldn’t begin to explain how this worked, she did believe Manuel?

Manuel eagerly agreed, to help keep things safe, of course, and Manuel promised to tell Laura, so that was two.

Summer was also easy, which meant Claire was easy. Emily cornered Summer at lunch, and though she had a backup plan in mind (“you’re the reason I’m a werewolf, you better help, etc etc”) Summer leapt at the chance to do “witch shit”. Claire did not, but she leapt at the chance to go with Summer, and so that was four.

Alice…

Hmm. Alice.

She needed to make her move before or after band, but Alice was first of all distracted by Maddie. Maddie was as tall as Alice, with bowl cut light brown hair and freckles; she wore an olive hoodie and jeans. Alice was, as always, in her red jacket. Alice had finally begun talking to Maddie, after much encouragement from Emily, though Emily knew why Alice was flustered by Maddie and Alice…Alice didn’t know, or chose not to know. She waited for her chance…

“You’re Alice…?” Maddie said.

“Yep, I’m Alice. Maddie?”

“Maddie.”

“Alice.”

“Yeah.”

“Yep.”

“You’re new here?”

“Yeah, we just moved up from Gates County.”

“Gates County? I’m from Centralia.”

“Gwinnett.”

“Wow.”

“Wow…” Maddie fumbled for something in her bag, and the two of them left their ‘talking’ phase. That was Emily’s window.

She came over, still thinking over her strategy. Wait, Alice would be too flustered around Maddie; Emily waved her over instead, and Alice squinted and came over - halfway there, she swiveled around and waved to Maddie, who was still looking through her bag, so Alice walked backwards a few steps before turning to face Emily. “Em?”

“There’s a pack event tonight. We’re going to a haunted house and…trying to…exorcize the spirits…with…prayer?”

“The pack.”

“Yes, not like there’s any other way to exorcize the spirits. Definitely not anything…occult-y going on here.”

“Where’s the house?”

“A couple blocks from my house. We’re holding the exorcism at 6, maybe 6:30 if anyone’s running late.”

“Alright…”

“You can confirm for the exorcism on Discord, it’s in the events.”

“Alright…”

***

Dr. Valley - her first name was Jacqueline, and she went by Jack - was an older woman with sandy hair, a worn face, and a long, white jacket. According to Sjöberg, she was a doctor on the surface - namely, part of the campus’ medical staff. She had an “office” down here, but it was just a bed and a table of equipment set apart from a stone chamber by carpeted room dividers, which she presided over the couple days a week she was usually in. Today, that was an exam.

“This teeth situation, it’s normal?” She grunted.

“All my life,” Eliza replied.

Valley let down the magnifying glass. “You don’t exactly have a good medical history.”

“I was born, I went into stasis for a bit, I woke up.”

“Short and sweet. Next.”

Eliza stepped outside the “office”, where only Melissa waited in line.

“Hi,” Eliza said.

“Hi,” Melissa stepped inside, but backtracked right out. “What’d she say to you? Getting enough blood?”

“The ghost didn’t hurt me. Thanks for asking.”

“Right, the ghost you and Laura saw. How’s Laura doing?”

“What do you care about Laura?”

“I don’t,” Melissa said, stepping into the doctor’s office.

Returning to her room, Eliza found Malphas perched on her desk; Malphas told her Sjöberg wanted to speak to her, so Eliza went right back out and walked over to Sjöberg’s office.

“Miss Ortega has contacted us to ask if you would like to accompany her to a case tonight,” Sjöberg said. “Some manner of seance.”

“I’ll go help Wolfgirl. Me and Malphas will -”

“I would prefer if Malphas remained here, due to his current awkward condition. If you are to go, you must retrieve the pendant from Lensa, and you must find someone to accompany you. A member of staff.” Sjöberg said the last part more insistently.

Eliza agreed, and she found Lensa. Her pendant was off, and the goatwoman with daisies strung around her horns was leaning down by a cage in the zoo, trying to untangle a hoop snake.

“Hey, Goatdoc,” Eliza waved. “Can I have your pendant for the night…?”

Lensa nodded gently, and fed the disconnected hoop snake an Almond Joy bar - with the wrapper still on - before reaching into her vest’s stitched-on pockets and pulling out the pendant.

“Thanks,” Eliza said. “Are you busy tonight? I need someone to go with me, someone from staff…”

“There is only one pendant,” the goatperson said. “I believe everyone else is busy. Besides…”

Jainaba walked in from the other side of the cage. “What did I just get drafted into?”

***

Emily arranged her gear: the Ouija board, for one. The rest…was her phone. She didn’t have a “spirit box”, so she downloaded an app for it…she couldn’t borrow her family’s digital camera, so she was going to use her phone…

There wasn’t an app for how to explain what she wanted to happen, though. How she didn’t really care about the creepy house. How she hoped she could contact…

Sigh.

Emily zipped up her hoodie - it was thick, since it was a chilly mid-September night - and stepped outside, gear in her backpack. She walked over to the house: looked over its two stories, its dark windows, the peeling paint on its porch and the stones neatly placed all around its edges.

Emily shivered when it came into view. It was on the corner, and she’d always been creeped out by it, ever since she was young: it was empty, but never had a for-sale sign, and it hadn’t been vandalized or entered at all. It sat there, windows dark and lawn overgrown, but far as Emily could tell, no one really noticed it. You’d think the NO TRESPASSING people would be furious at this blight to property values, but Emily had never heard any of her neighbors mention it, and neither had she…

“Let’s get going,” she told Kayla simply, “I think there’s Kit-Kats down that way…”

That house.

Emily had been walking her bike up the road. Even in daylight, something looked…off about it. She let her ears zero in on it: she heard drips, creaks, the noise of a decaying home, but also, now and then, what may have been a scraping - knocking, grinding? Enough to make her wonder if something was inside.

But she closed her eyes, and walked her bike home.

***

“This is the Captain of the Enterprise. Our respect for other lifeforms requires that we give you this warning. One critical item of information that has never been incorporated into the memory banks of any Earth ship. Since the early years of space exploration…” William Shatner said on the TV. Laura was lying on the couch, monopolizing it, really, though that hadn’t stopped Laika from trying to fit her big Newfoundland self on it too - Laika had, after several attempts and “Laika, no! It’s mine!”s, opted for lying on the floor, waiting for Laura to leave so she could reclaim her throne. Laura shot a glance at her, and Laika looked back.

“Weren’t you bred to, like, save drowning people? And all you do is lie around in front of the TV.” Wait, can dogs understand her now? She can kinda sorta understand them… “I’m sitting in front of the TV too. Though. I’m a hypocrite. Do you know what a hypocrite is?”

“Laur, stop trying to give the dog guilt.” Her dad was sitting in the corner, in a black, bowl-shaped chair that everyone either fell out of or dragged with them when getting up - except Laura, provided immunity by her 5’4’’ness. “She has enough problems.”

“Like?”

Her dad shrugged. “Dogs are under a lot of pressure.”

“I can smell everything she can, and it’s not that bad right now, actually? Like, there’s some burning, and it’s fur, and it’s - Gef.” She jumped up and wheeled over to the kitchen, where her mom was sighing and running her hands down her face, and Gef, Eighth Wonder of the World, extra-special talking mongoose, was perched on the counter. He was smiling. “Why are you smiling?”

“Eh, when Gef’s happy it’s a problem, isn’t it? I see how it is! Why, you’d think the only acceptable tune is a dirge. Well, what about…” Gef scratched his fur, which was singed. “Blast! Forgot my train of thought, I did! Derailed! Crashed! No survivors!”

“Our guest walked onto a lit stove to steal some egg rolls,” mom said.

“And they only had vegetables inside! False advertising! I could sue for lack of yolk!”

“Gef, it’s just a name.”

“Oh? You tried that defense with your crab rangoons! Preposterous!” Gef jumped off the table, and scrambled between Laura’s legs and down the hallway to her room.

“Sorry…” Laura said. “Sorry? Sorry.”

“I can see why the doctor doesn’t want him back.” Mom turned to the stove, cleaning up some of Gef’s mess.

“I could ask again.”

“No, Gef’s a member of the family…like your uncle Jeremy.”

“You’ve never mentioned Jeremy.” Laura hadn’t met any of her mother’s family, actually; they cut her mom off completely before she was even born.

“He drinks. Once after getting loaded at a bar in Salem -”

“The witch trials Salem?”

“Yep. Once after getting loaded at a bar in Salem, he got in a fight with a statue of a fish that he said was ‘looking at him funny’, and next we saw him, he was waking up in the witch dungeon museum.”

“Wow.”

“Well, at least our mongoose friend doesn’t drink.”

“But he eats bugs. And spills egg rolls, and he nearly destroyed the fan in the den.”

“Maybe with enough time, we’ll find it charming.” Mom started up the faucet, and washed her hands. “You know, when I was a child I dreamed of being a fairy tale princess, with a singing animal companion…”

“And you never took me to Disney World?”

“We work in public media, Laura.” She flung droplets off her hands, hitting the sink with a thud. “In one sense, it’s almost magical to have a talking animal around…though I imagined a rabbit or songbird. And I imagined them swearing a lot less…”

Laura’s phone buzzed. “Oh, huh, that’s the pack thing. We have a pack thing.”

“Not at Wulver, is it?”

“No. Online. A hangout livestream thing, gonna go to my room and do that…”

“You’ll be out for dinner?”

“Yeah, mom.”

“Make sure Gef stays in. He’s already had enough.”

“Yeah, mom.” Laura waved and walked over to her room; Gef was lying on the window sill, curled up and pretending to sleep. Laura flipped open her laptop and opened Discord and Kosmi. She’d joined the pack’s server, which was called Unnamed Dog Server, ‘cause according to Emily the pack hadn’t settled on a name in the year and change they’d been together.

-

Laura: What are we watching

Emily: The Beast of Bray Road, 2005

Laura: I didn’t know there was a movie

Manuel: You didn’t know there was a beast

Laura: Right

Laura: Is it good

Emily: No!

Claire: Emily never streams anything good

Seng: Hey, just got back. Still got time?

Steph: Ahuh

Emily: What’s fun about streaming good movies for movie night

Emily: Do you know how many good werewolf movies there are

Emily: Should we watch Ginger Snaps every time

Claire: I was just wondering if we couldn’t watch more quality films

Emily: What, should we be streaming only from the Criterion Channel?

Claire: …no.

-     

Manuel shot Laura a DM.

-

Manuel: Is everything going to be okay with the movie tonight?

Laura: Yeah Kosmi works

Manuel: No, because it’s about the Beast of Bray Road.

Laura: I know

Manuel: That’s the beast that ambushed you in the woods and bit you. That doesn’t trouble you at all? If it makes you uncomfortable I’m sure everyone would understand!!!

Laura: Nope

Manuel: It doesn’t hurt you at all?

Laura: No, my shoulder’s healed

Manuel: Emotionally!

Laura: Nope.

Manuel: That’s good because then I can show you my Beast of Bray Road meme folder

-

Back in the pack’s server, the stream was beginning.

-

Summer: Why

Summer: Why are they Southern

Emily: You think this film’s portrayal of southern Wisconsin is inaccurate?

Summer: ALL THE CARS HAVE CALIFORNIA PLATES

Summer: They didn’t even HIDE THEM

Emily: oh btw i’ll be jumping past one slur

Steph: This movie

Steph: Has one slur?

Emily: Exactly one

Steph: Which one is it

Emily: Why would I tell you

Summer: WHY DOES THE WEREWOLF HAVE DREADLOCKS

Summer: HAHAHAHAHAHA

Seng: hahahahahahahaha

Summer: And like

Summer: There’s a werewolf eating people

Summer: AND they can’t stop going off alone to make out

Emily: You can’t let a simple mauling or two or six keep you from making out in a car in beautiful Calisconsin

Seng: I don’t get to maul people in cars :( 

Steph: There’s always next full moon 😌

-

Small, furry people hands shot out from the side and started typing.

-

Laura: eNJOYING BLOODSPORT, EH? RESPECTABLE PASTIME, MY FELLOW HOUNDS

Emily: hi gef

Seng: Who is Gef

Emily: A immortal talking mongoose who lives with Laura

Seng: Of course

Laura: THIS IS LAURAI SMELL AND DREAM ABOUT EATING POOR GEF1

Emily: Laura if you’re being held hostage blink thrice

-

Laura grabbed Gef by the neck and held him up in the shame pose, wagging her free finger at him. “No. Laura’s computer. Bad mongoose.”

“Hmph,” Gef said simply.

***

Malphas bravely leapt into the air, fluttering his wings and majestically tumbled to the rec room’s concrete floor like a naked fledgling. Eliza picked him up gently, holding him in the palms of her hands. He attempted to swiftly jump to his feet - in that jittery, sudden way birds do - but, unfortunately, he bailed and landed hard right back in her hands.

“My goatslayer, it is alright - quite alright! Merde! I am very accustomed to this new body of mine - it’s not different, not different at all…”

“Hellbird, you’re not used to it. It happens.”

“Mon dieu! I possessed that raven for over fifty years! I haven’t been an ordinary gutter crow for…for longer than that piteous ferret’s been regretfully alive.”

“Still haven’t forgiven him, huh?”

“Have you?”

Eliza flicked her membranes and let Malphas down on the couch. “I don’t know. I don’t know how long you can keep a grudge.”

“I’ve kept grudges for longer than some civilizations existed.” Malphas righted himself, bouncing on the cushion.

Footsteps - kinda hard to avoid hearing when you live in a stone tunnel. Eliza looked back and saw Jainaba walking in the “door” of the rec room.

“You’re up late,” Eliza said. The metal flap lowered behind Jainaba.

“I’m picking up something from the Professor’s office.” Jainaba leaned on the couch behind Eliza and Malphas. “Also, my roommate kicked me out for the night.”

“Again? Do you want the couch…?” Eliza didn’t wait for Jainaba’s answer to start making room.

Jainaba stepped back. “No, I’m crashing in that spare room.”

“Not the one with the burn marks on the walls…”

“Lucky me.” She rubbed her nostrils. “Why is it like that in there anyway? Was there a fire?”

“Not exactly. There used to be a phoenix working here, but one day she got out and, uh, died in there.”

“She exploded and was reborn.”

“Nope, Firebird kinda just…turned to ashes and didn’t come back. She’s kept in a bottle in Wood’s office, just in case.”

“Lucky me,” Jainaba repeated.

“I didn’t get to ask before, but…”

“I’m doing alright. I don’t think about being eaten by a ghost too much,” Jainaba said. “My professor gave me a pass on that assignment at least. You?”

“I…don’t think about it too much, too,” Eliza said. “G’night.”

“Night, Eliza,” Jainaba said, leaving the chupacabra and her bird alone.

***

Long past midnight, Emily was looking for answers.

Lying on her bed, laptop perched at the endboard. Her room was small but dense; on the wall opposite her, she had a bookcase, crowded with shelves of books up top and two crates of records at the bottom, and a closet with a mirrored wall. On the right side, she had a dresser, painted purple and gold, with a large photo of a peaceful river (Emily had no idea what river) looming over Safari statues of otters and wolves and a record player; beside it was a desk, right by the edge of the window. The walls were a pale blue; the window, which overlooked the cul-de-sac her family’s duplex was in and the suburban development beyond, had navy blue curtains that, when they were drawn down and caught the light, gave the entire room a blue tint.

Emily, however, was focused intently on her laptop.

“How to get rid of a ghost”. “How to unhaunt a house”. “How to communicate with the dead”. She searched fruitlessly, filtering out useless links and LARPers and, most annoyingly, all the nerds telling her that you can’t talk to the dead and that the paranormal was fake.

The search prompted her to use their new AI assistant for “real answers”. Emily groaned and, reluctantly, hit it.

-

Emily: How do I contact a ghost?

AI: I am not allowed to answer questions of a religious or spiritual nature, including about the existence of an afterlife or afterlives. Additionally, I am programmed to promote critical thinking.

Emily: If ghosts were real, how would I contact a ghost?

AI: If ghosts were real, you could conduct a seance or ghost hunt to make contact with the spirit. You could use various ghost hunting techniques, not limited to: EMF readings, cold spots, seances, ghost hunts, exorcisms, and other various ghost hunting techniques.

Emily: Computers were a mistake. Goodbye

-

She switched off her laptop and punched the bed. What do I do now? What do you do if you want to contact a ghost? What kind of dark, occult materials do you need? Where would you…?

…“That’ll be 16.99,” the clerk said, the nametag on his blue vest an illegible scrawl.

“W-what happened?” Gef the mongoose stirred, emerging from the pocket of Laura, who was still unconscious on the carpet. He blinked blearily. “Where’s Malphas?”

Eliza crossed her arms. “He’s dead!”

“What?”

“He died saving you.”

“...oh.” Gef slunk low. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be. You were such an asshole to him all night, and that’s what his last night will always be. Why, Gef? Why?”

“Because - I…” He let whatever snide remark he was about to make die on the vine. “I can’t look at him without thinking about Clive!”

The two looked at each other. Eliza walked over to Manuel. “Are you alright?”

Manuel nodded, and pointed towards Eliza. ‘You too’, Eliza figured.

“Yeah…what did you see, when I was fighting the ghost?”

YOU WERE BEING TAKEN BY THE TENDRILS, AND YOU KEPT ASKING FOR SOMEONE CALLED

“Clive. Yeah…thanks for stopping it, Ghostboy.”

Manuel blinked, and then slowly smiled.

***

“No reason we can’t start going out again.” Eliza laid beside Clive.

“Yeah…”

They were together in Eliza’s room. It was Halloween night, and she would always remember how his face looked in the stark utilitarian light. His whiskers, and the gleam in his eyes, which she had thought was only happiness.

“You and me and Malphas and Gef. Or just us! No talking animals. Tomorrow?”

“Aye. It’s dangerous without them, though.”

“So? We have good luck now, remember?”

Eliza fell asleep next to him.

She woke up alone.

She waited a while, but when he didn’t return, she checked Clive’s room; the rec room, the lounge, even the zoo.

Nothing.

When she stormed into Sjöberg’s office after answers, she was crying. Sjöberg seemed ready for her.

“Where’s Clive?” Eliza asked.

“I am sorry.” Sjöberg answered. “He...he left in the night.”

“And...and you let him!?”

“We could not stop him. We tried.”

“Do...do you know where he is?”

Sjöberg did not answer.

When Eliza returned to her room, she saw a note on her desk.

Eliza,

I’m sorry. I had a chance to make a life on the outside. I had a chance to change things.

 I can’t tell you where I am, except that I am heading west. If I make it, if I make it better for both of us, I will send word. I want to make life better for all of us.

I am so sorry for leaving you. But I will return.

Te amo.

Clive

***

When Laura awoke, they were already there. Guess the alarm was lifted. Bezoar and the cop were taken away quickly by the Institute’s medic, Dr. Valley; Dr. Yang stayed with her and Jainaba.

Laura was too exhausted to give a coherent answer to anything. Jainaba, too. Eventually, they left; they told her to come back tomorrow. When she was ready to leave, only one remained.

Before they were ushered away for more questions, the people they rescued filed over one by one to thank them.

“Thank you, Laura,” Jainaba said, “I’ll see you soon, yes?” Laura nodded.

“Thank you for saving me,” said the man, Professor Kent Nemirsky.

“Thanks for answering the distress call of the heart,” Bezoar said. “I’ll write a song about all this…”

The cop was last. Faced with a chance to apologize, she just nodded and walked off.

“I am so sorry this happened,” Sjöberg said. “I will never put you in a situation this dangerous again, and I apologize greatly for the false alarm.”

Laura had wondered how much Sjöberg knew, but she did seem genuinely upset. She’d give her another chance, at least. She couldn’t judge Manuel’s reaction.

Sjöberg turned to Eliza. “I want to give you my apologies for Malphas. We all do.”

“Yeah… can I go?” Eliza said.

“Of course.” Sjöberg said. “We should have waited until we knew more. If our folklorist hadn’t been away, perhaps she would have recognized the -”

“If we waited, it would’ve gotten away with it.” Laura said. “Manuel’s the one who figured it out, anyway.”

“Yes...but still, this was no task for you. If you want to go, you…”

“Wait. I have one more question, if that’s okay?” Laura asked.

“Of course.” Sjöberg answered.

“We saved the people it took tonight, but there were all those other people who had already faded away. They were...they were still in there. Are they dead?”

“There’s...a good chance they are.”

“But you don’t know.”

“No.” Sjöberg said simply.

“...thanks.” Laura looked up in time to see Jessie walking around the corner, twigs in her hair. “You’ve gone through it, huh?”

“A ghost attacked me and threw me in a lake,” Jessie explained, brushing dirt off her face. “I had to not only swim back, but find a hidden place to transform back.”

“Well, the good news is the ghost’s dead.”

“Ghosts can die?”

“Yes,” Manuel said without further explanation.

“‘Long as everything turned out alright with y’all…” Jessie turned to Sjöberg. “Don’t ask any of my kids to do something like this, ever again.”

“Very well, Ashford.” Jessie walked on, brushing past Sjöberg; Sjöberg just stared forward.

“I did see something,” Eliza admitted as they walked down the path to the parking garage. “It was Clive, my ex-boyfriend. He was a rat man, and…”

“I saw something too,” Laura said.

IT SHOWED ME WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE IF I WAS BORING, Manuel wrote down. I SAID NO THANKS AND

“And what?”

STABBED IT.

“Wow. And I needed you two to pull me out.”

“It’s okay,” Eliza said. “It tempted me for a few seconds, too.”

“How long do you think that archer was hunting him? How many millenia?” Laura asked. “And now they’re both…are they dead? Re-dead? Who were they originally?”

THERE WERE LEGENDS FROM OTHER PLACES. IT WASN’T FROM HERE.

“Huh…”

Heather was walking to her car when they found her.

“Hi, mom.”

“Laura, it’s past nine! What were you -” She saw Eliza. “You’re…”

Eliza walked closer. She remembered how she hid herself before. Not anymore. She took off her pendant. A wall-mounted light revealed her face, all there for Heather to see: her black eyes, her spines, her scaled, reptilian face.

“Eliza.”

“Hello.” Heather said. “You’re the chupacabra, aren’t you?”

Laura, Manuel, and Eliza exchanged confused stares.

“Did you tell her?” Eliza asked.

“No.” Laura answered. “Did I tell you?”

“I’ve been doing research since I learned about everything strange. But don’t tell anyone. I have an image to keep.” Heather smiled. “Eliza, earlier I didn’t see your face…”

“I wear a pendant. I’m going to put it back on, but…I wanted you to see.”

“If you want to come over sometime...Chris would be excited to meet the chupacabra. What did you get up to downtown tonight?”

“Oh, just hanging out,” Laura said.

“Well, call your dad for a ride. I’m finishing up here.” She sighed. “I lost my award to some columnist in Appleton writing about their sick baby. You just can’t beat that. When you get home, you'll go right to bed, yes?”

“Ugh, alright, mom.” Laura pulled out her phone. “Later, Eliza.”

“Yeah…later.”

***

Eliza didn’t go inside immediately. She found a nice patch of grass, and laid on it, watching the stars. Relaxed. Listened to the wind, the distant sounds of campus, and a nearby flock of crows.

Crows.

It hit her. Malphas was gone. No more visits at her window. No more hacking up coins. One of her best friends was gone forever.

A crow flew in low, pecking at an abandoned bit of hot dog. She watched it. Thought of Malphas stealing pizza from Ian’s, of him keeping watch over her on her nighttime trips, of that time he crafted a statue out of twigs and gave it to Theophania.

Koff! Koff! Caw!

The crow flapped wildly, as if trying to shake something off. Eliza watched, fascinated, as it beat its wings, stamped its talons, tried to fly.

A low whispering and a flare of light. The crow’s eyes burned like fire, and settled into a cool shade of red.

“What!?” Eliza jumped. Was it the ghost? It couldn’t be…

“My goatslayer!” The same accent.

“Malphas?”

“Yes!”

The crow bounced over to a nearby puddle and studied his reflection.

“Ah, a crow. An American crow. I must die somewhere with class, next time…”

“Are you-you can’t-tell me something only Malphas would know!”

“Nickel, paperclip, 5 para.”

“Para?”

“Egyptian coin.”

“Malphas!”

Eliza stretched out her arm. The former raven perched on it.

“I...I thought you were dead!”

“My apologies for not explaining my true nature.”

“Your nature? Are you...you took over…”

“I took over this crow’s corporeal form, yes. But do not worry - when I stole its body, the crow’s personality did die.”

“Uh…”

“But why discuss such dark matters now? A thousand apologies, Goatslayer. I am just used to it - getting my neck wrung, that is. Endless curses, Diderot!”

“How are you alive?”

“Well, I’m technically a virus…”

“Laura!” Eliza yelled.

Laura stopped. “It showed me my mom,” Laura cried. “I know where it’s going. It’s going after her.”

“Laura, I…” Eliza looked down at Malphas’ body.

WE’LL COME BACK FOR HIM, Manuel scribbled down. I’M SORRY.

“I…” Eliza ran her hands over her face, and left the dead raven sprawled on concrete.

***

Eliza held onto Clive’s hand as they maneuvered around the children, families, students of Halloween. The one day where strangers looked at them with admiration, not confusion or fear; four people had already complimented their costumes, and one even recognized Eliza as the chupacabra.

A girl came up to them. She asked Eliza what dinosaur she was, before her parents ushered her away, nodding briefly at the couple.

“That brings the dinosaur count to two.” Eliza said.

“Aye…” Clive had seemed occupied all night.

“Isn’t it nice to be out?” Eliza asked.

“Aye. The one day a year I can be me.” Clive answered.

“It’s better than nothing.”

“It is nothing.” Clive snapped. “I’m not me to them. I’m a mask.”

“I know, but...are you okay?”

“No. No, I’m not okay.”

“What’s wrong?” Eliza asked.

“You know that bloke on Picnic Point?”

“I try to forget.”

Clive paused, leaning against the stone wall of the church. “You know how we thought he looked familiar? I found out why. Saw him on the news. Some touchin’ story about how he’s some big humanitarian. Helpin’ out the sick and needy with all his money. The man who screamed at us for existing. Who made us so afraid we stayed inside for months.”

“He’s one asshole.” Eliza said.

“Is he? Back in England, those kids who beat me up...I’d seen ‘em before. That very day. I was down on the pier, out at the little theme park right beside. And they were out with their families. Out smilin’, and having a grand old time.”

“...two assholes.”

“They’ll accept monsters before they accept us. I…” Clive stopped. Rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry.”

“...yeah.”

“Happy Halloween.” Clive said.

“Happy Halloween!”

They carried on. Eliza had seven more compliments; the dinosaur tally finished at four. As they returned home, Clive led her to the top of Bascom Hill; they sat on a stone bench by a statue of Abraham Lincoln, and looked out over the city.

“Y’know,” Clive said. “I heard that it’s good luck to sit on Abe’s lap.”

“After you graduate.”

“Aye. Gotta wait for my degree.”

“What’s your major?” Eliza asked jokingly.

Clive mocked an American accent. “Tossing around the old pigskin. Having a few brewskis.”

“Oh, I’m majoring in Canadian Italian-language literature studies, myself…” Was that a real thing? Was that a joke? She didn’t know…

Eliza watched as Clive clambered up to the top of the statue and sat awkwardly on Lincoln’s lap, legs dangling off the side. Eliza quickly took out her phone.

“No!” Clive said.

Eliza snapped the photo. “Sorry, Ratboy.”

“Now you have to get up here.”

“Is it cold?”

“It’s bloody cold, yes.”

Eliza took her turn atop the statue, and then they went inside. Eliza and Clive went out onto the balcony; the sun set in a blaze of orange and yellow.

“Uh, I wanted to...I wanted to say that it’d be a lot harder without you. I...I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He put an arm around her shoulders. She snapped a selfie. They were happy.

***

Manuel and Eliza followed Laura: but the question was finding their way once they were inside the large convention center. The meeting was in one of the lower rooms, Laura knew…

“How do we get in?” Eliza asked.

She tried the front door. It opened. “Alright. Inside.”

Laura led the way deep inside the corridors. The door behind them clanked open, and over her shoulder she saw the Archer, starting his hunt; ahead of them, there was chanting in an unknown language, an ancient language.

They found the ghost further down the hallway, floating in an alcove; they quickly ducked in another. Underneath, a crowd of people waited. One of them, Laura knew, was her mother.

A limb stretched through the glass and tapped a woman, a man, one person after another; a waiter, a speaker on the stage, and -

It found Heather, sitting blithely at a table. She talked with a colleague, and laughed, unaware of the ghostly tendril wrapped around her neck, drawing tighter…

“No!” Laura screamed, and she dove out of the alcove and -

Hit the floor.

Tripped by Eliza.

***

“Why?” Laura said.

“Laura, I...I don’t want it to hurt anyone.”

She didn’t want it to hurt anyone with a chance at a real life. Anyone who had something to live for.

What happens if I help, Eliza wondered? The people she saved would hate her. She remembered that man in the park, who had been so kind. She wished that when she thought of how outsiders reacted to her, his image would pop up in her mind. But it didn’t.

It was the men who threatened them. The men who could do what he wanted.

For all that she feared the people down there, she wouldn’t let them hurt her. This was the easiest way to save them. It had to be her. Laura was too young.

Eliza didn’t want to die...if she was about to die. But she would for them.

“You can’t!” Laura said.

It stretched out its tendrils, and it carried Eliza to her fate.

Manuel looked back from the edge of the hallway, looking her right in the eyes, wide and pleading…

***

No! No, no, no!

Laura remembered the world inside the ghost. She couldn’t let Eliza be trapped there. She couldn’t let anyone be trapped there. There had to be another way.

She lunged, this time managing to grab onto the ghost’s victim. She pulled hard. Kept pulling. Against the ghost’s tight grip, her body screamed out in pain. She tried to keep pulling, even as it pulled her along with Eliza.

She gave a final yank. Eliza broke free, and fell onto the ground. Laura let go.

...and was carried up herself.

“Eliza!”

“Laura!”

Laura felt herself drawn into the portal. Into a world without warmth or light. Washed out blues and whites dominated. An endless flat plain, with flakes falling from a gray sky; they could be snow, or ash. All around her, people lost in their own worlds: prisoners in a cell, hunters in the woods, and many now too faded to recognize as human.

***

Her eyes locked on what was only the outline of a person. Dark lines suggested a human form, but all that remained were two dark eyes.

They snapped open. Stared right at her.

That person is still alive. They’re all still alive. I’m trapped here. I’m really trapped here, Laura thought. No, no-

“H-hello? Can you help us?” Jainaba; Laura saw her, and the burgundy hoodie, one of the few things to still possess color. Laura ran over and hugged her.

“Oh - it’s you, oh -”

“Laura?” It was Bezoar. He, too, had not faded. They moved towards her: Bezoar, Jainaba, and another man…

“You know her?”

“She tried to help me earlier.”

“Are...are you here to save us?” Jainaba asked Laura.

“I...I…” She couldn’t make herself tell them the truth. “I…”

She felt something else trying to speak. All around her, the other prisoners of the void swiveled in one direction, and began to speak in unison.

“Caro, al-fin, sukuul fe…”

“No! I-I-c-carooo, al-fen…” Bezoar and Jainaba trembled. Tried to resist. But they, too, became part of the chorus.

Laura felt the song crawling through her mind. Up her throat, like an insect with too many legs. She almost retched. She stepped back from the others, trying to push the feeling back down, trying to make it go away.

“C-Caro!” Laura sang. “Al-Fen, sukuul fe!”

“Caro, al-fen, sukuul fe!” The ghost triumphantly raised its limbs. “Ro fen fe!”

Eliza heard the chorus. Hundreds of voices, singing with him. She heard Bezoar. She heard Jainaba.

She heard Laura.

Eliza inched back onto her feet, her legs unsteady. She took a step towards the ghost. At her feet was the last of the wisps: the dying man, still crawling. Eliza ignored her aching legs and jumped on a desk. She bared her fangs. And she leapt.

She buried her claws in the ghost’s side. Her claws heated, and her scales burned, but she held on. She pulled herself up to its neck and bit deep. Wrenched back the ghost’s head. It moaned in pain. Its hands reached for its chest.

She swung her other hand over, racing for the void. She swiped desperately at the hands, hoping her claws connected, trying to keep them from trapping Laura forever. Her hand closed over one hand, pulled…

“Cabra?” Clive asked, lying on the floor, his body thin, ragged, his clothes tattered rags.

“C…Clive?” Eliza said, pulling back her claws.

“I was on my way back and it…it took me,” he cried. “Forgive me.”

“O…of course I forgive you,” she said. “I need to rescue everyone else…”

“No, please,” he sobbed. “They’re-!” A tendril grabbed him, started to pull him back inside.

“Clive!” Eliza cried, reaching out for his hand, grasping at it, latching on, being pulled…

***

Manuel watched as the tendril wrapped around Eliza, pulled her inside. No, no, no… He hyperventilated, stood fixed in place; he turned around, and saw -

An archer, an ax wound in his side, notching an arrow.

Manuel looked towards the ghost, and to him, and to Eliza, grasping at air, screaming a name he didn’t know.

The archer pulled back. Prepared to shoot the arrow.

Manuel looked back at the ghost. It wasn’t trying to avoid the arrow - it wasn’t fighting back! If it was hit now…that’s what it wanted! Manuel stepped towards the archer. Stepped in front of the bow. The archer tried to step aside, but Manuel matched him, kept blocking him, kept blocking him until the moment was right…

***

Clive screamed and turned to dust, and beneath Eliza, the ghost started to shift, started to warp and bubble. She dug her claw in deeper, reached inside…

***

“Sukuul f-f-fe…”

The chorus’ song was broken. Laura doubled over in pain; a stabbing in her chest and neck. All the other unwilling singers collapsed in shared agony. They screamed. She screamed with them.

A hand touched her shoulder. Claws nicked her neck. She looked at the scaly hand, attached to a spectral shape, a form fading into the void. Eliza’s voice came from the void: “Laura!”

Laura reached for the hand. Brushed past it. But then she reconsidered. She reached out for Bezoar, and nodded. Bezoar took her hand, and then took the Jainaba’s, who took that of the other man: her Professor, apparently. She held on so tightly her hand hurt. And then she grabbed Eliza’s hand.

“Uh, cop lady, are you in here?” Laura yelled. The cop showed herself from within the crowd, but stayed there. “Give us your hand!”

The cop shook her head, clutched her hands to it.

“This is your last chance!” Jainaba yelled.

The cop trembled, stepped back -

Eliza started to pull -

- the cop reached out her hand and -

***

Eliza pulled. A cascade of bodies threw Eliza against the floor. She crawled onto her knees.

The ghost screamed, and charged for them, spinning its tendrils wildly, trying to grab onto anything. Eliza looked at the people pulled from its void. Laura, Bezoar, Jainaba, another man, and…the cop. All unconscious. She could make out the shape of Gef in Laura’s pocket.

The ghost moaned and barreled towards its prey. Eliza leapt in front of them, tired hands slashing what they could.

Manuel swiftly ducked. The archer aimed, and fired the arrow. He looked down at Manuel, gave a slow nod, and broke up into smoke.

The arrow hit the ghost’s chest in a flash of blue, spectral fire. The ghost let out a moan, deep and mournful, and then the ghost began to die.

The portal in the ghost’s chest flashed black. It began to expand, growing outward and consuming what it touched. The hands went first: dissolving into dust, and floating into the void. They did not come back. The void grew as it consumed limbs, flesh and even the ribs that contained it.

“Caro...caro al-fin...al…” The face sang, with fewer voices every second. Soon, only one remained. A deep, growling voice that now quaked with emotion. “...al…”

And then the face became dust, and all was destroyed by the void. A dark shape burst from it, its featureless body broken up when a gap formed near the top. A mouth.

It screamed. A shrill, alien scream, with a metallic ringing to it.

Eliza dragged the unconscious people back to a safe distance, anticipating the void growing out towards them. But it slowed. Retracted. Faded into a small cloud of embers, which flickered out quietly.

And then the ghost was gone.

“I don’t think ya heard me.” Jessie kept her hands, already transforming into thick, clawed paws, behind her back. “Did you lose your ears when you died?”

That must’ve done it. The ghost raced over the water, tendrils flying, but Jessie was ready, her body already shifting into wolf mode. When the ghost reached her, they had a paw ready to smack them aside with, and that dead guy went flying. Jessie laughed, though the ghost would think it’s a growl, and smacked it once, twice, latched her paws onto its side…

Suddenly, it disappeared. She phased through, and…

It reformed, and grabbed her from behind with its tendrils. It instantly flipped its whole body from back to front and looked her in the face, before flinging her into the lake and moving on, Jessie shaking, trying to regain her strength as she sunk deeper into the water…

***

Laura kicked the curb. “Ugh. It took them and we don’t even know what it is, we don’t know anything about how it works!”

“I am quite apologetic for misleading you with wrong information - I simply did not know how this variety of phantasm works,” Malphas said.

“You couldn’t have known,” Eliza reassured.

“Oh?” Gef crawled out of Laura’s pocket. “That’ll be cold comfort when we’re rotting for all eternity in a ghost’s ribcage, eh, will it? Admit it, you blustering, egotistical failure of a bird - you didn’t know what you were doing, and it’ll lead us all to our doom, will it not?”

“Gef, shut up. He didn’t know.” Laura said.

“He doesn’t know anything, does he? Poor, contended little waste of feathers. Aye, I’ll never be caught dead listening to him again.”

Malphas opened his beak, but didn’t say anything.

Manuel scribbled something down. WHY DID IT STOP AT THE BANK?

“I don’t know,” Laura said.

WHAT WAS THE BANK BEFORE?

“I kinda hoped you’d know.”

WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO FIND OUT AT THE LIBRARY. BUT WE HAVE TO HURRY!!!

“Because of the ghost eating people, yeah.”

NO, IT CLOSES IN HALF AN HOUR.

***

The library was a long glass building, and in the window was an art piece: a two-story question mark made out of lights. Seemed about right, Manuel thought.

Manuel made his way up the steps and into the local history room, unlocked by a librarian. He first looked up maps of the area, and remembering that Laura mentioned people in old time clothes in her vision, he looked at the city’s early days, and quickly discovered that according to a map where the ghost disappeared used to be a jail. He looked at books of early historical records, checked the index for the jail, and discovered a “dubious” journal from a former prisoner. “Dubious” sounds about right, so he paged to the excerpts, and around November 1873, he found something notable.

“The phantasm was like a banshee, wailing a song from outside. It took one of the guards first, and we were internally quite delighted at the prospect of it allowing us our freedom, but we soon discovered the guards standing with it, unharmed. They marched us out in groups of three, I was with Stevenson and the Swede. The revenant would inspect us like cattle, and choose one to take inside itself. It hovered over each of us, and in that minute in which its dead gaze was upon me, I daren’t raise my eyes off the ground and see the cause of my own doom. In the end, it chose the Swede, and we watched him swear in his foreign tongue as he descended into the ungodly creature. Three more were taken, but after it refused to select me, I could not see them being taken.”

“An hour later, another spirit made its presence known, that of an Indian archer, who drew back an arrow that the revenant made no efforts to escape. The archer fired his arrow, and the moment it connected with the revenant, both disappeared into smoke. The guards told us to not speak of these events again, and we did not, until I was released and far away from that accursed place.”

Manuel took screenshots of the entry, and moved to a computer, where he looked up keywords - “glowing” “ghost” “archer” “legend”; he found a legend from earlier French colonizers, but also from Native Americans, and some that may have been related from Siberia, from Italy (Rome, really) and Switzerland, and when he looked at the date of the French reports, he realized it was the same number of years from 1873 as 1873 was to now, and he found a reference to a book called HEARTLAND GHOSTS AND PHANTOMS, which he ran to the paranormal section for, but Laura was already there, and Gef was…reading?

“‘Curious as these requests may appear, they are commonplace compared with one I received in the winter of 1932 from a lady in the Isle of Man. My correspondent informed me that a farmer friend of hers, a Mr. James T. Irving, had discovered in his house an animal which, after a little coaxing, had developed the power of speech, and was practically human, except in form. Would I care to interview the little beast?’ Hell of a job you did, eh, Harry boy!” Gef hissed.

WHAT IS HE DOING

“He’s looking over all the books for mentions of him, and he found one by someone named Harry Price who’s like. His personal nemesis,” Laura explained.

IS THERE A BOOK CALLED HEARTLAND GHOSTS AND PHANTOMS HERE?

“Uh, Gef went over everything. Doesn’t look like it.”

NO.

“Did you find anything?”

YES, Manuel wrote. He showed Laura the screencaps of the diary.

“Did you figure out the rules of it?”

I THINK.

1. IT TAKES FIVE PEOPLE

2. IT IS SELECTIVE ABOUT WHO IT TAKES

3. IT ONLY APPEARS TO THOSE IT’S HUNTING

4. AFTER IT’S TAKEN FIVE THE ARCHER SHOOTS IT AND IT VANISHES - MAYBE AT A CERTAIN TIME?

5. IT APPEARS ON A CYCLE, AND IF WE DON’T STOP IT IT’LL RETURN IN 2173

WHERE’S ELIZA BTW

“She’s waiting outside with Malphas,” Laura said. “How should we stop it, though? What happens if it doesn’t get five people? What happens if the archer doesn’t shoot it?”

I DON’T KNOW :( BUT BOTH SOUND LIKE GOOD THINGS TO PREVENT!

“Maybe we can feed it another cop,” Laura joked without joking. They went for the door, but Manuel paused.

I’M GOING TO LOOK FOR THAT BOOK AGAIN QUICK.

“Okay, but be quick, yeah?” Manuel nodded, and he ran back up the stairs and into the stacks.

He realized something was wrong when he turned the corner and entered another row of books, and he realized something was very wrong when he looked up and saw stacks of books on the ceiling. Something was singing somewhere, but Manuel couldn’t make out the words, but he could make out the books on the ceiling realizing they shouldn’t be up there and falling out of the shelves, coming apart into many pages flying all around him in a flurry of paper…

When the storm of white and yellow subsided, Manuel was standing in his school, and he was looking at himself, not wearing a black skull hoodie but a jersey with the logo of some sports team on it, and he was surrounded by friends who weren’t Laura or Emily or their friends (his friends?) but…normal people. Boring people. The other Manuel looked them straight in the eye and said, yes, I went to that party, of course, I saw the game last night, yes of course I watched that movie, yes yes yes I did all those things, and he was smiling as he said them, and laughing, and the real Manuel wanted to vomit.

A rough-throated man. “Isn’t this -” A woman. “- what you -” A high-pitched voice. “- want?”

Manuel shook his head and started to write his answer, but the notepad flew out of his hand.

“If you want us to let you go,” the chorus said in unison, “use your words.”

Manuel nodded, gripped his pencil really tight, and jabbed it into the ghost’s neck, and he was lying on the floor in the library, a book and his notepad on the floor next to him; he quickly reshelved the book and scooped up his notepad before a librarian turned the corner and asked him if he was alright and said the library would be closing in a few minutes. Manuel wrote down THANK YOU and put his notepad back in his hoodie pocket, scrambling down the stairs and thinking how lucky he was that the ghost didn’t trick him into attacking someone real - the ghost hadn’t expected his attack - why?

Was it desperate? Was it nearing the end and too distracted? Whatever it was, Manuel was thankful when he went back to Laura and Eliza outside, Gef in Laura’s pocket, Malphas in the sky.

THEY DIDN’T HAVE IT :(, he wrote simply, and they walked on. 

***

Laura left the corner store, drink in hand. “Are you thirsty?”

“Yeah,” Eliza said.

“Is there anything you -”

“...no.”

“Oh. Yeah. Are you thirsty?” Manuel nodded.

“What is that?” Eliza asked.

“Lime Cucumber Gatorade.”

“Lime Cucumber?”

“Only store that has it cold, I think.” Laura looked at Manuel. “Are you okay?” Manuel just nodded again.

“It could have the last person,” Eliza said. “It could already be…done.”

Gef rubbed his eyes on Laura’s shoulder. “How can you tell -”

“Tell what?” Laura turned her head. “Gef? Gef?” He was gone, and -

Was squirming in the air, being pulled away by a ghostly tendril.

***

They raced after him, found the ghost floating on the side of a small apartment building on a dark street corner, tendrils hanging low like a jellyfish’s, wrapped around-

“Gef!”

The mongoose struggled to escape. “Get your tendrils off me, you...you...creepy git!”

The ghost’s chorus spoke. A boy: “One more!” An old woman: “I hide.” A girl: “A hunter!”Bezoar: “But the stars grow high!” A boy: “All are prey!” An old woman: “I’ll go somewhere busy!” Jainaba: “I won’t need all of them!” Old woman: “Enough time!” The boy: “Enough time to kill the rest!”

It tightened its grasp on Gef. He gasped, trying desperately to push air into his lungs. Malphas circled. Laura wished she could help.

A boy’s voice spoke. “Only need one!” The girl: “One of you!” The boy: “Join my chorus!” The cop: “Join our song!” “So interesting!” “Not like the rest!” “Join our song and they live!”

Laura and Eliza glanced at each other. Laura wasn’t selfless enough to sacrifice herself, and she could tell Eliza wasn’t either. She looked up at Gef, kicking and struggling to breathe, and her stomach lurched.

“Let him go!”

The ghost tilted its head...and tightened its grip more. Gef’s kicking slowed. Stopped. Laura jumped up, trying to reach. Too far. No. She kept trying. Gef wasn’t moving. He-he-he wasn’t moving, he-

Malphas dive bombed the ghost, pecking and clawing at the tendril around Gef. He cut in, then grabbed on with his beak and pulled, tearing the tendril clean off. It burst into dust that flowed back to the ghost. Gef tumbled through the air into Laura’s arms; she rushed under him. Unconscious, but breathing.

The hand began to shape itself out of dust once more. Another found Malphas’ wings, and held him helplessly in the air. The hand that tried to strangle Gef wrapped itself around Malphas’ neck.

Malphas cawed out to Eliza.

And then there was a crack that hung heavy in the air.

The bird dropped to the ground. Eliza rushed over. Malphas’ wings were stretched out awkwardly. His eyes dull. His body still.

Malphas was dead.

“No!”

Eliza sobbed over her companion. Laura ran over, shoving Gef in her pocket. The ghost was flying down, hands outstretched and chest open, heralded by screams and moans. Laura threw herself in front of Eliza.

Among the chorus was Bezoar. Jainaba. She knew she should be terrified, but the voices were calling her name. Calling out for her. She reached out a hand. Let the ghost’s light wash over her. Laura, Laura, Laura…

The ghost showed her another vision, too: Heather, from behind. Heather, a tendril around her neck…

She was yanked back by Eliza. The spell broke. An arrow flew by her, but it went wide right, and when Laura looked back the archer was gone.

The ghost’s many voices cried out in unison. “No! Time! Time!”