Death Row House

Set in the summer of '85, Blood Barne follows Josie and her six closest friends, as

they gather for one last weekend that her family secluded barn before college.

“But when a long buried family secret is disturbed, a malevolent spirit awakens, possessing”

them one by one, in a brutal quest for revenge. Critic Jesse Hobbes and of Citidum calls it, a splattery love letter to '80s DIY horror. Once it gets going, it works. Blending the cabin in the woods paranoia of the evil dead with the possession fueled chaos of the exercise.

Blood Barne delivers practical gore, escalating dread, and a race to survive until sunrise. Don't miss Blood Barne. Watch the trailer and learn more now. This is Creepy, a podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastas and urban legends in the world, whether these stories truly happened, or

most simply fabrications is for you to decide, these stories made in teen graphic depictions of violence and explicit language, listener discretion is advised. Hey everyone. Not long ago I said I was going to be doing more shout-outs of their horror podcasts and all admit I've fallen behind on this.

So if you're looking for more horror narration in your life, then I recommend going and checking out the horror podcast called Nightmare.

“I think we all enjoy a good scare, so go check out their new four-part series, my grandfather”

on death row confessed his motives to me. Nightmare covers everything from creepy pastas to original non-sleep stories. Be sure to listen and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, that's Nightmare. And I'll keep this simple. I don't know what happened to that feed in our option.

Detox at the studio said as something to do with what's been happening to our signal and something about the files I'm digitizing got corrupted and another tech stuff that I really didn't understand. Short version, we're working on it. And while we work on it, let's get to this week's story.

First up, after moving into a freshly renovated row house to a skewer husband's death,

“a grieving mother begins to notice strange smells, cold drafts, and the ghostly boy-up”

stairs befriending her son. As the house fills with apparitions and an open house of strangers who can't see her, she uncovers a horrifying truth. For my dergules role in a narrative I make a McGuffy, creepy presence, death row house. It's been a terrible year, I try not to dwell in the past, but Jim's memory is everywhere.

In the pictures I took off the wall, the garbage he hasn't brought to the curb, the bed I haven't been able to sleep in alone, the quiet rooms of a small house that used to roar with his infectious laughter. The memories are why we left. The money is why we're here.

I didn't know my husband had a million dollar policy.

The number was shocking when I found out and took a while to register, since I was dealing with the first shock, Jim's massive heart attack at age 41, since then my son and I moved from the suburbs to the city to an almost million dollar row house from that million dollar policy, chasing Jimmy through the halls of the stairs, exploring its many rooms was the first time I'd heard Jimmy laugh in months.

It's too big for us, we don't need three floors plus an unfinished basement or three bedrooms in an office or rooftop terrace, not when it's just the two of us and I let go of most of our furniture, because everything reminded me too much of Jim, but I bought it anyway because the wide open spaces were brand new and held no memories of ours or anyone else's. Molly renovated, the anxious rheiliter had said, not a centimeter that hadn't been painted

soft white, not a square foot that wasn't covered in new hardwood or pristine tile. Even the kitchen boasted new cabinetry and gleaming stainless steel appliances, every fixture shiny from the box and dust free, right down to the outlet covers, a fresh start. We are new to the city, new to being able to walk to the corner market and needing movers to carry all the boxes in the furniture I ordered from catalogs to their appropriate

rooms. Jimmy is four and picked out a bed shaped like a race car for his room.

his dad didn't come home from the hospital.

“We spent our first night in the rowhouse building a tent fort around the plain mattress”

on the master bedroom floor, eating delivery pizza and watching cartoons on our iPad. The only mention is Dad once and when he said we forgot to order Jim's favorite pizza toppings. He gets confused sometimes and I reminded him that we don't have to order pepperoni with black olives anymore, grief shadowed his young features and he curled into my side.

I waited until Jimmy fell asleep before I held my new pillow, the one that didn't smell like Jim, to my chest and cried. We've been here a week now, Jimmy's race car bed is up and my bed frame arrived and was assembled three days ago, but we still sleep in the tent fort on the master bedroom floor.

We've walked to the neighborhood, discovering a produce market, coffee shops, and our new favorite bakery.

“We've spent too much money on pizza slices and charrows and fallen asleep too early after”

our sugar crashes. We've run through the sprawling rooms of our rowhouse, danced to silly music in the living room, played pirates through the second floor bedrooms, explored every milk and cranny of the third floor office and spare room built into the eaves, meandered up the spiral staircase to the roof's small patio, and had warning talks about the catwalks connecting

our roof with the other rowhouses.

Jimmy promised never to go up there alone, despite the renovations we discover signs that

betray our home's age nearly a hundred years of the realtor's to be believed, like a dips in the floor, cracks in the plaster, I hadn't noticed on our first walk through the faint smell of natural gas in the kitchen, even though the stove is new and electric. Normal things, I guess, things I would have left for Jim to fix if they needed it, but there are other things too, strange things.

“Like a clumsy knocking sound on the dining room wall precisely at 4.15 pm every day.”

We assumed it was the neighbors and kindly asked them about it when we happened upon them on the sidewalk. The old couple was adamant there was never any knocking or pounding coming from their home, but had I bothered to ask the realtor about the previous owners. I hadn't, and left our brief, rather turs encounter wondering what the people who used

to live here had to do with anything that is happening now. There's also something wrong with the back door. It bangs and strains against its hinges, as if the wind whipping through the alley hits it just right for a few minutes every evening around 7. The wind messes with the electricity, too, because when the door starts thumping the back

entryway light flashes on, I don't know much about electricity, that was Jim's department. So I've removed the bowl until I can find someone to fix it. Perhaps the strangest thing is the smell of fire.

I panicked the first time I noticed it and scoured every room for the source of the flames,

but found nothing until I opened the basement door. I couldn't see any actual smoke as I peered down the dark stairwell, but the smell was as strong as if the entire basement was burning. I hadn't been down there since we toured the house with the realtor. If it's a dark and menacing sort of place, I would have sent Jim to investigate if he was

here. Since he wasn't, I left Jimi in his bedroom playing with Legos and descended the steps. The string at the bottom illuminated a bear bulb to dim to brighten all the shadowed corners. I glanced around the mostly open empty space with a stone floor and walls. This is the only place in the house I don't want to be.

I realized my eyes stung from the smoke I tasted but still didn't see and from tears

that were never more than a heartbeat away because Jim should have been the one searching for

fire. Jim should be here keeping us safe. I don't know how to do that, but I'm terrified that I'm getting it wrong, but in this basement I'm terrified of something else, something that raised the goose flush on my arms as I reached the doorway of the basement's only sectioned off space, a small room with dark,

red walls and a sense of dread so potent. I lost my breath and stumbled back against the staircase. I was sucking in fresh air, ringing out my shaking hands on the kitchen island when Jimi found me. I promised him I was okay.

I'm not sure he believed me, it's hard to sound convincing when I don't believe it myself, I haven't been in the basement since, now when I smell the smoke, I open the windows for as long as I can before it gets too cold. I don't ask the neighbors about the smell, it's been three weeks since we moved in, even

echoing as we move through the rooms, more strange things have started happening, like

“the small wet foot prints that appeared in the upstairs hall, then Jimi met the boy from upstairs.”

On morning, he was putting the finishing touches on a Lego castle we had built together the night before, while I made breakfast when I came back to collect him. The castle was gone and then its place was a three foot tall row house, almost an exact replica of ours right down to the window of placements and the flower planters outside the front door, the castle, much smaller and much, much less detailed and taken two hours

to build, this row house had been erected in the 20 minutes, it took me to fry eggs and butter toast, when I asked Jimi about it, he set the boy from upstairs, helped him.

The boy from upstairs isn't Jimi's first imaginary friend, being an only child, he gets

lonely sometimes, now that I'm his only companion, I've been trying so hard to make his life fun and exciting, that it breaks my heart and he's needed to conjure a new playmate. If I were a better mom, he wouldn't meet one, the swallow this sting of fresh tears at the back of my throat and ask him to tell me about the boy, he says only that the boy is quiet and looks cold because he's missing a shoe, I don't watch Jimi making up this

friend, I don't want him to need a boy with one shoe to build legos with him, that's what I'm here for, I know I should let it go and accept that my son needs more than I can give him, but if I'm not enough then what the fuck are we going to do, I feel the

“fragile hold I've had on my pain, finally snap, and I do the worst thing I could have”

done, the worst thing any mother has ever done, and I fling a hand into his beautiful creation, sending legos to all corners of the room. Jimi is a surprised as I am, and he screams, I scream, and I tell him he doesn't need the boy from upstairs, and I bang him to tell me what else he wants from me, then my sweet boy has cheeks straight with tears and red with his own anger, screams at me, you can't take the boy, you can't take the

boy away like you took me away from daddy, my hands shake, and I feel like I'm tumbling down into a deep, dark pit, I can't breathe, I can't even think, Jimi is seeping and I am breaking, I don't know what I expected moving here, and Jimi would forget his father that he'd stop meeting the man, the glue had held this family together, if I forced

“us into a shiny new life and pretend to be happy in it, I leave him in his room and curl”

under a blanket beneath the eaves in the third floor bedroom where I've been hiding more

and more lately to quietly cry, I'm losing it, I'm losing him, I'm going crazy, starting to, no, I'm all Jimi has, and I can't let myself fully break, with trembling fingers, I pick up my computer and schedule a telehealth appointment with a doctor who prescribes me anti-exiety medication and a sleeping pill, as I adjust to the medication, I spend more time alone in bed, sleeping off the side effects, and Jimi spends more time in his room

with the boy from upstairs that has become his best friend, it's cold in here, it's the middle of winter, and it gets colder inside every day, no matter how many buttons I press on the high-tech thermostat on the wall by the dining room, I can't seem to make this place any warmer, it's gotten so bad I've had to stop opening the windows to air out the smoke smell from the basement, it's been six weeks since we moved in, I've been

on my new medication for a few weeks and I'm not crying as much and I'm ready to make the call to get our furnace fixed, I try three different repair shops before I find one

that can come tomorrow, if I'm honest I was afraid to make the calls, Jimi always arranged

home repairs, a stress of it leaves me feeling dizzy, Jimi doesn't feel well either, he complains of a headache and he doesn't want to play with the boy from upstairs, so we got about early, the neighbors on our other side, ones we haven't met yet, have been having a heated argument about a woman named Cheryl for the past few days, it comes and goes and I've thought about asking them to stop but they sound so angry I don't have the courage

to knock on their door, I wish Jim was here so we could take care of it, I take two of my sleeping pills to make sure they don't wake me up tonight, we both have headaches in the

I mean to follow up with the repairman that's supposed to come today but I can't find my phone, I put a sign on the door to knock loudly and Jimi and I huddle under the covers inside our tent and sleep for most of the day, star count side when Jimi starts vomiting,

we don't make it to the toilet the first time and it splatters on the wood floor just outside

the opening of the tent, when I get him to the bathroom I hold him while he wretches, he

“hasn't been sick like this in a while, I wonder if I should call someone and I remember”

I don't know where my phone is, he doesn't feel warm so I don't think it's the flu, maybe just something he ate, meals have been patchy since I started my pills, Jimi figured out how to order food for delivery, so he's been getting pizza burgers and whatever else he's wanted without any argument for me, but I don't actually know what the last thing he ate was and I can't tell from the brown slurry coming out of his mouth, I was a better

mom, if I paid more attention I could have prevented this, I blink and tears rolled down my cheeks and onto Yoda's green wrinkly head on the back of Jimi's pajamas, I'm failing him, the pills were supposed to help but I'm still failing, I promise myself that from this moment on I'll do better, I won't sleep so much and I won't cry in the corners and I'll cook every meal

“and I'll play Legos on the floor and I'll hug him all the time and kiss his little cheeks”

and finally be the mom he deserves. By the time he's done throwing up we're both shaky and I

hobble on weakened legs with my exhausted little boy and my arms back to the tent, I forgot about the puke on the floor, I lay him down and grab some paper towels from the bathroom and wipe it up as best I can, I'm about to go downstairs for more cleaning supplies when the floor goes out from under me, I haven't realized how dizzy I am, I don't think I've taken any sleeping pills yet today but something is very wrong since I can't even make it down the steps to the kitchen,

more side effects from the anti-exciting mats, I leave the rest of the cleaning for tomorrow and collapse on the blankets beside Jimi, closing my eyes against the spinning room and the pain and my temples, I rest a hand on his side and I feel the shallow breaths huffing from his lungs, I move my hand to the center of his chest and pull him closer, feeling the hard thumping of his heart against my palm, is that right? It seems too hard, too fast, I try sitting back up for a better

look at him in the glow from the nightlight on the wall but darkness is closing in from all sides, there's a ringing in my ears and my lips are numb and cold and I can hardly think tomorrow,

“if he's still sick tomorrow, I'll take him to a hospital, that's what a good mom would do,”

it's my last conscious thought before the blackness consumes me, there's a knocking in my head in a dream at the front door, my headache is gone and when I crawl out of the tent, I don't feel dizzy, the knocking continues, I rush out the bedroom door, stumble down the staircase and throw myself down the hall to the front door, by the time I make it the pounding has stopped, I try opening the door but it doesn't budge, my groggy fingers

grasp for the locks, fumbling and clumsy as if they've never worked a deadbolt when I think

I've gotten through them all, the door still won't open, I must have missed one but I'm not sure which, I pull aside the curtain and peer out the window, the furnace repairman is standing on the sidewalk in front of his service fan parked at the curb, my holler and knock on the glass, he's on his cell phone, arms waving like he's telling whoever is on the other end that he tried and no one answered, I'm here by shouting, slapping the glass, he's shaking his head when he

waves his hand at final time and gets in his van, no, come back, I scream, my palms sound hollow on the window pane, if I shatter it then I'll have two repairs to manage and nothing will stop the cold from getting in, the van drives away, it's only then that I realize I don't feel cold, not the way I did when I first called the repairman, maybe the furnace is working again, I re-lock the door, still unsure of what lock I missed and set out to find my cell phone,

it's usually plugged into the kitchen wall beside the toaster but it isn't there, Jimmy must have used it to place a takeout order, whatever he ate that made him sick last night and set it where, the room sways and I clutch the counter to keep from falling over,

as I climb at the top of the steps, something in Jimmy's room catches my eye, in the middle of his

floor spelled out in blue legos, is the word welcome, Jimmy can only spell three letter words like

“cat and bat and hat and he's never used blocks to write them, does that mean someone else here?”

No, that's crazy, I tilt in the doorway as another wave of dizziness threatens to knock me off my feet, there's no one here besides me and Jimmy, it would only ever be me and Jimmy for the rest of our lives, I find him in our tent bed, still asleep and I nestle and beside him, feeling the room steady, his breathing isn't coming out in shallow huffs and his heart rate is slow,

like mine, maybe I imagined it all last night, like some sort of sick hallucination from the sleeping

pills, I'll make another telehealth appointment later to see about changing the dosage, I nuzzle my nose into Jimmy's brown hair and close my eyes, it's dark outside already, so I go back to sleep, in the morning I feel like I've slept a month, it isn't cold and I'm not dizzy and Jimmy hasn't thrown up again, I know I'm not supposed to stop taking my pills all at once but I don't feel like I need them anymore, I want to be a good mom and a good mom can't

live in that kind of fog, my smile at my son who robs his eyes grogally from a stool at the kitchen island

while I hunt for something to make for breakfast, I barely noticed the empty refrigerator shelves

when there's a knock at the door, I leave Jimmy in the kitchen and run to the front entrance where I see the repair man through the side window, I grasp at the top deadbolt and attempt to twist but I must be so weak from being ill, how long have I been ill because it won't budge and Jimmy yells to meet from the kitchen, I shout over my shoulder that I'll be right there, I'll link to be interrupted by a voice I don't recognize from the back of the house,

I look away from the door as Jimmy dashes up the stairs and a woman in a teal suit and heavy golden jewelry marches in high heels of the hall talking on a cell phone, "Hey, who are you?" I call out to her, "What are you doing here?" The woman doesn't so much as look at me as she ends the phone call and lets the repair man inside, I go out at these strangers, the teal suit saying she expects heavy foot traffic and lowering her voice to ask the repair man if he was the one who

found them, foot traffic. Found who? Who are these people? A scramble after the repair man and the teal suit who shouldn't be in my house as they head to the basement, hollering at their heels for an explanation, I don't get before a beefy hand grips my arm and whirls me around. What? Who are you? What are you doing in my house? I demand ripping my arm away from a

“stout woman with a crew cut and a serious face, terror floods my body and I think she must be here”

to rob me. There's nothing here to steal or can't you see that? I shriek and it's only then that I realize there's nothing actually here. From where we stand in the hallway, I can see into the living room where there should be a sofa on the right and a TV mounted on the opposite wall. Both are gone. The room is empty. What the hell? I breathe, spinning into the room that spins around me so fast, I clutch the sides of my head to slow it down. When was the last time I took my

anti anxiety medication, the sleeping pills? I can't remember. The last few days have been such a blur and I've slept so long. I'm not actually sure what day it is but I do know that this isn't right. I try to remember the side effects of my medication, drowsiness, confusion, nausea, dizziness, operating machinery without memory of doing so, scary, ridiculous things that I decided were worth the risk when I agreed to take them. But outright hallucinations, I need to call my doctor

“then I remember that I haven't seen my phone since. I scream when the woman with the crew cut”

touches me again and asks if I'm okay. Her sharp features have softened with what looks like understanding but I don't even understand. Should I know who she is? Should I know why she's here? I ask her again who she is and she tells me she's here for the open house. Open house? I don't have time to figure out which one of us is the crazy one because I hear more voices down the hall to women are admiring the staircase running their fingers over the spindles and

intruders and like the teal suit and the repair man, the ignore me continuing past the staircase,

“tittering about restored crown moldings before disappearing into the formal dining room.”

I moved to chase them but crew cut takes my arm and holes me into the kitchen, past a woman in a pants suit coming out of it, taking a video on her phone and muttering things like lovely and simply gorgeous. Who is that? I start to ask. Crew cuts heavy hands, push me onto a stool at the island and I grasp the marble, steadying my voice as much as my freight nerves will allow. I don't know who any of you are but you shouldn't be here. I'm going

to call the police. Crew cut, Jeff Salaf, and says that's pretty hard to do without a phone. I point to where I usually charge it on the counter beside the toaster but my phone is still missing and the toaster isn't where it should be next to the stove. Come to think of it. The counters are completely bare when they were supposed to be soap by the sink, a roll of paper towels in the holder and a curig on the coffee bar. My stand and crew cut pushes me back down, assuring me the

cops aren't coming. I ask if she's holding me hostage and she laughs, saying that she's like me. When I ask what she means, she says, "I used to live here." More people, what look like two couples under 40 passed by in the hall. I spring from the stool and run toward them. The outright strangers in my home and I'm stopped by a petite woman who appears in the kitchen doorway. Smiling sweetly, she introduces herself as lila and says that she used to live here too

and she had to come by to see how much has changed. Crew cut squeezes my shoulder and tells me to sit

“down until the traffic dies down. Traffic, foot traffic. That's what Teele suit had said when she”

led in the repairman. With the mighty heave, I shove aside the petite woman, lila, and rushed toward the basement where the repairman should be fixing the furnace. He's the only part of this. Whatever this is, that doesn't feel completely insane or like some kind of terrible nightmare. I'm sure he's the only one who can help me. Lila catches up with me at the top of the basement stairs and twists my arm telling me in a very un-cheery voice that I don't want to go down there.

I pull away from her and plunge into the darkness that swallows me whole. The second I descend

the steps and begin calling out for the repairman. My voice falls flat as if smothered by the darkness around me. When I reach the bottom, I actually will smoke creeps up so suddenly and so fiercely. It clogs my throat as I feel around for the light bulb string. I cough, calling out to the repairman again. There's no way he can navigate this darkness. No way he can breathe when my own lungs ache for fresh air. My fingers finally brush against the string for the light. I get a grip on it and pull.

There's a woman standing beside me. Her features taught in a horrifying mask of fear and desperation. I see the whites of her bulging eyes, lips curled back from her yellow teeth and a snorle, cheeks smeared with soot. But it's the sounds she's making that steal whatever breath I have left. From between her clenched teeth, guttural mounds escape as if she's sobbing or scraming around a clamped jaw. I stumble away from her toward the room I previously refused to enter. Heat

pores from the claustrophobic space, the red walls seeming to pulse and bolt as if reaching for me.

Terror coats my body like an oily viscous second skin that doesn't just weigh me down.

It pulse me into the small room. The moment I cross the threshold, I'm fully engulfed and smoke, and through the haze I see flames along the walls, spreading toward the center of the room, toward me just inside the door. Heat seers my arms, my face, my legs beneath my pajama pants, and I see two small figures within the flames. Two iridescent balls with flailing limbs that reach for me. I hand on my shoulder, pulls me out. The air is instantly cooler and I can breathe

“without choking on smoke. Lila has me by the arm, yanking me up the stairs. At the top, I think I”

see the desperate, soot-covered woman step into the small circle of light at the foot of the stairs, before Lila slams the door and shakes my shoulders. That's Miranda's place. She says, "We don't disturb Miranda. Do you understand?" Lila tells me that Miranda used to live in my house

There are so many people here now. My bump into them. They don't notice me. They're admiring the

“molding, the floors, the staircase, they're eating cookies and reading from pieces of paper.”

I burst into the kitchen, scream at a couple opening my fridge, my empty fridge, and I put my hands on the counter beside crew cut and yell in her face. What the fuck is happening here? She looks bored and holds the paper. She's been reading up to me. It's a picture of my rowhouse from the street with a list of specs beneath it. The same sheet that the others are reading as they compare notes and inspect my home. And at the top,

in bold capital letters, it says, "For sale, but I just bought this house, I'm mother. We still live here." Jimmy. Where is Jimmy? My heart leaps from my chest as I run away from the women. The only ones who seemed to notice me and passed two biddies admiring the staircase as I throw myself up at, "How could I forgotten my boy?" My precious Jimmy. He's probably terrified

“in this house with all these strangers. I am a shit mom. What if something's happened to him?”

What if one of these people hurt him? I can't let myself imagine it. When I find him, and I will, I will hold him and kiss him and love him until he knows it's going to be okay. My young couple is scurting the edges of my bedroom, stopping to check out the view from the window. I scream at them and don't wait for their response before I pull aside the sheet to look inside the tent in the middle of the floor. It's empty. I call out Jimmy's name and rip through

the blankets because sometimes he likes to hide underneath them, but he isn't there. Or else would he be? Maybe someone has hurt him? Oh, God. What if someone took him? I pushed through the terror to the hall where I'm almost run down by a small naked girl, scampering from the bathroom, leaving wet footprints on the floor. My hauler after her chasing her into Jimmy's room, his racecar bed isn't pressed against the wall where we set it up. The boxes of toys in the corner are gone, and the latest

Lego creation, the one that spelled out welcome has also disappeared. There's no sign of Jimmy or the stopping wet child I followed here. Why? With all these other people, would there be a naked kid running around? What if she's not here? And those pills really aren't making me hallucinate? It makes more sense than anything else. Certainly more than naked kids in the hall, or two fully clothed men sitting in my bathtub, laughing and pretending to sip from imaginary glasses of wine.

If I'm hallucinating, why are there still footprints on the floor? I reach down and touch one, and my fingers come away wet. I'm not imagining them or the child that made them and that's a problem. And I still haven't found Jimmy. I throw open doors until I've searched the entirety of the second floor and make my way up the next flight of stairs. There isn't any furniture

on the third floor. Never had been. I'm spinning in the center of the empty office space when

in new kind of terror strikes. The roof, the pathways between buildings, the three-story fall to the ground. Jimmy. I scream and rush up the spiral staircase and out the rooftop door. I brace myself for a gust of winter wind that never comes. It should be freezing. The last time I came up here, the cold was blistering. Now, my mind trails past the weather as I turn in a circle, sweeping the roof for any sign of my son. There's an elderly couple at the front edge looking

down. My God, have they found him? When I make my way to them, I'm too afraid to look down. This smile at each other, not me, and turn to head back inside. I look over the edge and see only the

sidewalk and the street lined with budding trees and the first blades of green grass. Green grass.

As if it's spring? No. It's impossible. It's a dream. Of course, it must be. A dream would explain the people and the weather and everything else. I think night terrors was one of the side effects of my sleeping

“pills and that's what this is. And when I've exhausted myself here, I'll wake up in the tent beside”

Jimmy and I'll flush every last pill down the toilet. My frantic gaze snags on a woman I hadn't noticed before, huddling under a blanket on a folding chair. I back away from the edge of the roof and she slowly faces me. She's not old but not exactly young with a tired look about her and a

because deep in my bones and a place I won't acknowledge. I already know what she's going to say before she does. I used to live here just like you. I shove aside my fear and ask if she's seen my son. She tells me this is all little much for the kids that this place isn't good for children.

“I remember the small flaming arms reaching out to me in a basement that couldn't really be on fire”

or this whole place would be up in smoke by now. You know what happened downstairs? The haunted woman says but how have you heard about the roof? The little boy who ran too fast and fell over the side before his mother could catch him. "Not, Jimmy, I choke out. She tells me his name was Dale. Her son was six when he got away from her. Six and so fast. Her eyes glossed with tears as her gaze lowered to the edge of the roof beside her. There's a small child's shoe on the ground

beneath her chair as if it slipped off Dale's foot when he went over. We have one job as mothers.

She says, "When we fail, we never get over it." She pulls the blanket tight around her and for a moment

her sleeves slides up her arm and I see a long, deep scar on her left wrist. The blood in my own veins slows down maybe freezes all together in the impossible spring air. I don't know if finding

“Jimmy will be enough. What if I haven't kept him safe or have missed some crucial detail that”

damned us to some terrible fate? I'm turning down the spiral stairs when I noticed two teenagers huddling underneath it, reading something off a piece of paper I assume is the listing of my home that all the other people have. There are arguing about who should go down to the basement when their mother, looking frazzled at annoyed, takes the paper from their hands and scolds them for what she calls despicable rubbish before shoving them out the door. Shaking her head, she balls up the paper

and tosses it behind her. As soon as they leave, I descend to the spiral stairs. Collect the paper and open it. It's a list with the check marks down the left side, at the top, in big, bold letter. It says death rowhouse. On the list, in seemingly no particular order,

“are rooms with a brief description of what has happened there. Dining room, January 1st, 1930,”

stock broker James Hollis hanged himself from the rafters. Second story bathroom, September 21st,

1950, Marian Wilson, four years old, drowned in the bath tub while her parents had a party downstairs. Back entrance, May 5th, 1983, Dawn Fields was strangled by an unknown attacker outside the back door in a suspected heat crime. Living room, July 19th, 2004, Gail and Robert Henderson in apparent murder suicide. I stopped reading and head for the stairs in the hall where the two old bitties I saw earlier are having a hushed conversation. One tips her head until her neck

fatical lex and a pile under her throat, claiming this house is so reasonably priced because of all the death while the other tips and asks her co-conspirator if she really believes all that garbage. My push through a family headed for Jimmy's room and make it to the top of the last flight of stairs. Above the casual din of many conversations I hear shouting, voices I recognize, but I'm not sure how. My socks slip on the wood floor at the bottom of the steps and I trip into the living room,

or I find a couple screaming. The most terrible ups and it's at each other. Not of the other people touring the room, pay the raging couple any attention. Not even when the woman pulls a gun out of her purse and flat out accuses the man of sleeping with someone named Cheryl. Cheryl, I know that name, I've heard it before, but where? The woman has a gun and that should scare everyone. It should scare me. We should all be running for an exit in this house that should have

burned down from the fire and the basement, but everyone is strolling around like this isn't madness, like I really am dreaming and none of it feels real right now so I turn away from the living room. Even as I wince at the gunshot that sends no one in a panic and hurry back to the kitchen where I find a lila at the counter with crew cut. They look up at me as another gunshot sounds from the living room. I slap the paper down between them, smoothing it so they can see what I've been

reading. Death row house. Clever. Crew cut sniggers. It's the first time I noticed the purple

strong or or it's the carbon monoxide. Lila is looking at me sheepishly. Same thing happened to me.

“Of course mine was intentional. I stopped murmuring and look across the island at crew cut.”

At dawn fields and the strangulation marks above the collar of her flannel shirt. At Lila whose blue lips are smiling softly at me, her eyes glistening above dark haunted circles and gone to cheeks as she pushes the paper across the marble countertop for me to read again. Kitchen. February 23rd, 2019. Lila Henderson was found with her head in the stove after her fiance ended their engagement. My head spins and I keep reading through years of death.

Miranda and her children in the basement, Dale on the roof and his mother Jane in the third floor

bedroom and then the most recent master bedroom February 28th, 2025. Morgan and Jimmy Fraser were found

“dead of carbon monoxide poisoning when a furnace repair man called in a welfare check.”

Morgan and Jimmy Fraser found dead. The coldness in the words "seaps through my body" through blood and bones and a heart that isn't beating. For the first time since waking up, I'm not dizzy or confused or fainting hallucinations. I can see Lila and Dawn for the ghosts they are. The dullness that surrounds them compared to the violence of the people who move around us like we aren't even here because we aren't. Dawn checks the watch on her arm. It's 655 and she has a date

with the back door. She says and she leaves. Lila's blue lips crack with a sad smile. I back out of the kitchen that has filled with the smell of natural gas and turned down the hall. Past a woman shaking her head telling her husband that something is wrong in the living room that it just feels off. And it should. Robert Henderson is bleeding out on the floor from a gunshot wound to the chest and Gale is piled on top of him after swallowing her own bullet. As I round the stairs,

I catch a glimpse of James Hollis, who has been dangling like a worm at the end of a hook since four or 15 from a rope tied to the beams to the left of where the dining room table should have been.

On the second floor landing, a couple are speaking to Tiel suit. The realtor is assuring them and

everyone with an earshot that the furnace has been fixed and what happened a few months ago will surely not happen again. A few months ago when Morgan and Jimmy Frasier were found dead. Their support in the doorway of Jimmy's room is wearing a winter coat and missing a shoe. When the wet naked child Marianne bolts down the hallway again, he catches her and shakes his head. She glances up where early at meet, slumps her shoulders and heads back to the bathroom.

The boy retreats into Jimmy's room and I follow him. He stands a few feet from the closet staring at the closed doors with his dark vacant eyes. I pull the doors open and find Jimmy and his Star Wars pajamas on the floor. He looks up at me with dark circles under his eyes. His skin too pale. His lips too blue. My heart shatters because I've failed him in the most

“absolute way at the only thing I was ever supposed to do. Keep my son safe.”

He stands as I fall to my knees and he wraps his thin arms around my neck while I cry. I tried to be a good mom. I tried to protect him from the pain of his father's loss, from my pain about it. I tried to give him a good life and here we are, surrounded by ghosts. I look up and see Dale with his missing shoe. You're the bedroom door, dawn and lile await, holding hopeful breaths. I don't see couples taking notes and photographs of my home.

The old bitty's gossiping. The teenage boys obsessing over heinous deaths. Our deaths. The living have gone and I've got Jimmy and it suddenly hits me. I'm free. We're free. I don't need pills anymore. I don't need to grieve. I'm relieved. Relieved from trying so hard to hold it together and be all the things to my son. Relieved from trying so hard to live. I kiss his hair and promise him that it's going to be okay. And this time, I mean it,

children and the women and men who met tragic ends just like we did here in the place where we used to live.

“And next, a hunter's routine morning in the woods turns into a nightmare. When the deer”

he shoots begins mimicking his voice and a tall faceless creature of wheels it's been following his trail markers. From height of penteworths 223 and narrowed by need to fort. Creepy presents. I shot a deer this morning. The forest didn't forgive me. The first shot sounded wrong. Not because the rifle misfired. The round went clean.

The recoil sat the way it always did in my shoulder and the deer dropped like someone cut a string.

It was a good shot. Ethical, quick, the kind you tell yourself you'll always take so you can sleep later. What sounded wrong was everything after. No second echo. No birds popping up mad from the brush. No squirrel barking at me like I personally ruined its day. Even the wind seemed to swallow itself. I stayed kneeling behind my little hump of deadfall, watching the deer through my scope like I didn't

trust my own eyes. 10 seconds, 20. I counted to 60 because I didn't know what else to do.

“I remember thinking stupidly that the woods were holding their breath.”

Then my ears caught it. Not a sound. The absence of sound, like someone shot a door on the whole forest. I used the safety on and stood. The ground was slick with last night's frost. My boot soles did that crunchy leaf thing that makes you feel loud even when you're trying to be a ghost. I scanned left to right. The deer lay on its side in a patch of pale ferns. The white underside showing where it had rolled. It wasn't a monster buck. It wasn't even close.

I wasn't trophy hunting. I just wanted meat in the freezer and an excuse to sit somewhere my phone couldn't reach me. My phone was still in my chest pocket anyway. Old habit.

“It buzzed once on the walk in and I almost turned around. I told myself, no work, no texts, just a”

morning. I'd even left my travel mug on the kitchen counter like a symbol of commitment.

When I regretted it, the second my fingers went numb. I walked in before dawn,

following orange flagging tape by tied to branches like breadcrumbs. I tied every so often, not on a perfect schedule. I'm not that organized. I want to say every 50 yards, but that's probably less. Sometimes it's, that looks like a good branch. Do it here because I've gotten turned around before and I hated knitting that too. Now the light was the dull gray you get under thick clouds. No sun. Everything looked like a charcoal drawing. Someone kept smudging.

I should have been happy. I should have been grateful. Instead, I felt watched in a way that made my shoulders tightened in my jaw go hard without me noticing. I approached the dear slowly, rifle, angled down, eyes flicking from tree to tree. Every hunter has that moment walking up on an animal where you get a small dose of guilt. You murmur something you touch the flank. You thank it. The even if you don't say the words out loud. I didn't get to do that.

When I was ten steps out, the deer's ear twitched. Not a death twitch, a deliberate listening twitch. I froze. The deer's side rose. Fell. Rose again. My stomach went cold. And it had nothing to do with the weather. I brought the rifle up, thumb finding the safety by muscle memory. And I did the thing you're not supposed to do with a downed animal. I aimed at its head. The deer's eyes were open. Too open. Not glazed. Wet and sharp. And they weren't looking

attending. It was nerves and nothing else. I didn't want to give it the satisfaction of snapping

“around. The brush 30 yards back was thick. Young pines, saplings tangled through old logs.”

A place deer vanishing to like smoke. Something was standing at. At first it looked like a

person in dull clothes. Another hunter. Some guy in brown car hard to wander too close. My brain tried to hand me that explanation because it was the only one I liked. Then it leaned forward. And the clothes moved with it like skin. It wasn't tall in a dramatic way. It was tall in the practical sense. Like something built wrong and forced to stand anyway. Too long in the torso. Arms hanging up. Little too low. Knees bending like the joints

were in the wrong place. But it had learned to fake it. The head was down.

“Half hidden by branches. And I caught a shine and it's throat. Wet. Like spit.”

I couldn't see it's face clearly. But I saw enough. No eyes where eyes should have been. Just a smooth, dark play of skin. But there were pits in it. Shallow thumbprint depressions arranged where eyes might be as if something had pressed from the inside and left dense. And it was holding something. A strip of orange flagging tape. Mine. It lifted the tape between two fingers and let it flutter. It didn't wave it like a person.

Just watched it move. Studied at Tom Lost. Like it was learning what air did. My mouth dried out so fast. My tongue felt like paper. Hey. I called because I'm an idiot

“and because my voice was the only thing in the world that's still belong to me. You lost?”

The sound of my own words felt like breaking a rule. The thing tilted its head. Not curiosity. More like it was lining itself up with my voice. Then from its throat, it made a noise and hit my ribs like a punch. It wasn't a growl. It wasn't a scream. It was my own, hey, thrown back at me. But wrong. Like it had been recorded underwater and played through a blown speaker. The pitch was off.

The timing was off. The end of the word dragged too long. Like someone pulling a finger across glass. I took one step back without meaning to. But a deer on the ground made a sound to a soft breathy. Like it was trying to speak. I snapped my eyes down. The deer's mouth was open. Its jaw moved. Not chewing, not twitching. Mimicking. It made the same awful. Hey. Barely audible. Like a whisper pushed through lungs that shouldn't have been doing anything anymore.

My hands went numb around the rifle. I backed up again in my boot caught a root. I stumbled caught myself and that little clumsy movement must have been enough. The thing in the brush shifted its weight. And the silence in the forest, deepened. Heavy. Total. I didn't think. I raised the rifle and fired. The shot cracked through the quiet like tearing cloth. Branches burst, pine needles puffed into the air. The thing didn't flinch like a person. It moved like a reflex. It folded backward

into the brush and for a half second. I saw the underside of its arms. Not fur, not sleeves.

Skin stretched thin and pale with faint lines like healed scars. Then it was gone. I stood there. Breathing hard. Rifle still up. Ears ringing. Throat burning. My whole body felt like it was trying to leave through my mouth. The deer on the ground was still looking at me. Its jaw moved again. Slow and lazy. Hey. It whispered in my voice. I didn't do the careful, respectful thing. I didn't reach for my knife. I shot it again.

bullet hit, the deer went still in a way it hadn't been before. And the forest gave me

“small scraps of normal back. A distant crow, faint stir of wind. The feeling didn't leave though.”

It stayed like pressure behind my eyes. I looked toward the brush where the thing had been. Nothing. Just saplings in shadow. My tight fluttered in its hand, my mind, and I suddenly understood something that made my stomach flip. It hadn't been lost. It had been following me in. I forced myself to move. I grabbed my pack, cinched it tighter, and started backing away from the deer. I couldn't bring myself to drag it. Not then, not with that thing close.

I told myself I'd come back with someone else with daylight, with noise, with a second pair of eyes

that weren't mine. I headed for the tape line that led out. The first ribbon was still tied to a

“low branch right against the gray woods. The second ribbon was gone. I stopped so hard, my knees locked.”

The tape didn't just fall off. I knocked my tape like I knocked my boots hard, mean. I could still feel the habit of my fingers. I moved to the third marker, gone to. The cold numbness in my hands came back thicker, like my blood had turned to creek water. I turned in a slow circle trying to spot my original landmarks. The crooked birch, the stump with the split top, the rock that looked like a kneeling dog. I noticed them on the way in, little brain notes you make without thinking.

Everything looked the same when you were scared. Every tree became a stranger. A sound came from deeper in the woods, a branch snapping, careful, measured. Then my own breath

“mimicked a few beats behind me. I spun toward it rifle swinging up. Nothing. Then a whisper from my”

right, close enough that it raised the hair on my neck. Hey, it wasn't loud. It wasn't even aggressive. It was conversational, like someone trying to get your attention and a grocery store aisle because you dropped your keys. I pivoted right. Still nothing. The voice came again farther away now in higher, like it was learning range, learning what distance did the sound. Hey, my eyes burn from not blinking. My jaw clenched so hard at ached. I started walking faster, boots crunching, trying

not to run because running makes noises and noise means direction. Another branch snapped closer. Then the woods went quiet again, sudden and brutal, like someone flipped a switch. No wind, no birds, no far off road home, nothing. Even my footsteps sounded muffled, like the ground was swallowing them. That's when I heard it behind me. Not a voice. Breathing. Wet. Patient. I whipped around and fired without aiming. A panic shot into the trees

and something answered me from the brush, not with a scream, but with a hard drive, thud, like a fist hitting a trunk. The thud hit again. Again, again, it wasn't random. It was moving, tree to tree, matching my line, staying behind me, hurting me. I ran. I hated knitting that because every hunting show, and every tough guy's story says you don't run, you keep calm, you assess, you act. But I ran, because I could feel the things attention like a

hand between my shoulder blades. The ground pitched downhill and my foot slid on wet leaves. I caught myself with my left hand on a tree and kept going, lungs burning, pack bouncing,

branches slap my face. My rifle snagged on a vine and jerked in for a second. I thought

ridiculously, I paid too much for this sling for it to break right now. A sound to my left, fast, too fast for a deer. I turned my head and it was there for a heartbeat, just enough for my brain to take a picture. Not in the open. Half hidden behind a trunk, leaning out like a

A split in its face that opened and closed, showing something pale inside like the soft

“underside of a tongue. The grin made my stomach drop because it meant it knew what it was doing.”

I fired at it. The bullet hit bark. The thing pulled back out of sight like it had never been there.

I turned forward and ran harder. The trail I'd walked in on should have intersected a shallow creek, a little ribbon of water with muddy banks. I was counting on it because I could use it as a guide. Follow it until I found the wider cut that led towards the service road. I burst through ferns and saw the creek. relief hit so hard it almost made me laugh. Then I saw orange taped tied to a branch over the water, dangling like bait.

I didn't tie tape there. The knot was wrong, loose, sloppy. A small splash came from the

“creek and something pale slid under the surface like a hand with drawing. I froze at the bank,”

rifle up every nerve screaming not to step closer. Behind me a voice whispered, almost fond. Hey, I spun in the thing was closer now, fully out of the brush, standing between two trees

like it had always belonged there. It held more tape in one hand, a whole fistful. My path

taken apart. It took one slow step toward me. I raised the rifle and shouted, "Stop!" The forest swallowed the word. My voice sounded thin like it didn't have authority out here. The thing's grin opened and it said clearly in my voice, but cleaner now, practiced. Stop! It took another step. My finger tightened on the trigger. The rifle clicked.

“No bang. My breath hitched so hard at hurt. I had chambered around. I know I did. I felt it. I”

heard it. Unless I'm losing my mind, which was a thought I hated having right then.

But the bolt was open. Someone had opened it. Me? No. My hands were on the stock. Always had been.

The thing tilted its head and the pits in its face caught the gray light like bruises that it moved. It didn't charge like an animal. It didn't sprint like a person. It folded forward and came at me in quick sliding steps. Like its feet didn't need traction. Like it was being pulled. I dropped the rifle and reached for my side arm, but I wasn't fast enough. Something slammed into me from the side. Hard. Not the creature's body. A branch. A whole dead limb

swung like a club whipped by something I didn't see and it caught my ribs and knocked the air out of me. I went down on one knee, hand scrambling for balance, pain blooming hot in immediate. When I tried to inhale, my left side sees and gave me a shallow, ugly waze instead of a full breath. The thing was on me. Not pinning me, not wrestling. Just close. Two close. Its hand came up and touched my cheek with the widest pressure. Like it was checking my skin

in the way you checked the rightness of a fruit. Cold fingers. Dry. Almost powdery. My smell did then. Not rot. Not blood. That sharp clean smell you get when you split fresh wood mixed with something metallic. The creature leaned in and the split that its face opened wider. A wet sound rolled out and a voice came with it. Mine layered over something else like two recordings playing at once. Don't run. My heart kicked so hard. I saw spots. I shoved at

it more out of panic than strengthen. My palm hit its chest. It felt wrong under my hand. Not fur not muscle. Like tight stretch leather over something hollow. The things hands snap down and grab my wrist. Its grip was immediate pain. Not crushing bone but digging in, pinching. Like it knew exactly where nerve sat close to skin. A yanks back and it came with me smooth and effortless. That it did something small and cruel. It leaned toward my ear and whispered very softly in my

own voice. Hey. I jerked away. And as I did something slice to cross my forearm. I didn't see a

itself. Blood popped warm against the cold air. Fear turned into a kind of furious panic.

“I slammed my elbow into its face into that smooth plate and felt the impact travel at my arm”

like hitting a wall. The creature's head barely moved, but it might go. I rolled backward into the creek bank, mud soaking my pants, and I clawed for my dropped rifle, fingers slipping on wet leaves. My injured forearm burned when I flexed it in my hand, wanted to cramp shut like it was already trying to protect itself. The things that back watching me, patient like it knew time

belonged to it. My hand found the rifle. I yanked it up, jam the bolt forward and for a split second.

It didn't want to close. Something was in the chamber. Orange tape. A tiny strip shoved in there like a joke. My breath came out as a sound. I didn't recognize. I ripped the tape free, tossed

“it, slammed the bolt down and fired from the ground. This time the shot hit. The creature jerked”

not from pain, but from surprise. It stumbled a half step, and the split then it's face open and closed rapidly like a mouth trying to form words. It didn't bleed. Instead, a dark smear appeared where the bullet hit, like bruised sap, seeping through bark. The smell hit me again, stronger.

Fresh cut wood and pennies. The creature made a noise that wasn't my voice. The first sound

it made that felt like it belonged to it. A low vibrating hum that made my teeth ache. Then the forest went quiet and one violent gulp. Everything stopped. And the thing smiled to the wider. Because now it knew I could hurt it. And it was excited. It turned its heads slightly

“listening. Like it was hearing something I couldn't. Then it stepped back into the tree,”

smooth, and smoked, and vanished. The silence held. I lay there in the mud, breathing, and short careful poles because anything deeper sent in life of pain through my ribs. I kept the rifle up aimed at the spot where it disappeared, waiting for it to come back and finish the job. It didn't. Not right away. After a long minute, sound returned to tiny doses. A distant bird, a faint rustle of leaves. My own ragged breathing loud in my skull.

I forced myself to stand. My leg shut. My left side felt like it had been hit with a bat. My forearm was slick and warm. The cut longer than I had thought. Not deep enough to kill me, but deep enough to make my grip unreliable. I didn't go for the deer. I didn't even look back toward the clearing. I followed the creek because at least water doesn't lie about where it's going. Every so often behind me, I'd hear it. A branch snap, a soft wet inhale, and once,

so faint, I almost convinced myself it was in my head. Hey, not close, not far. Just enough to let me know the game was still odd. I made it out of the woods with blood, drying on my sleeve, and mud up to my knees. I didn't stop moving until I saw the dull shine of my truck through the trees. Even then, I didn't feel safe because when I reach for the door handle, I saw something tied to it, fluttering in the cold air. A bright strip of orange tape,

not at wrong, loose, and waiting. I grabbed the handle anyway, and my hand slipped, slick with blood, scraping my knuckles' raw against the cold metal. The pain made me gasped, and the sound felt loud enough to point an arrow right at me. From somewhere in the tree line behind my truck, my own voice whispered. Friendly as a neighbor trying to get my attention in a parking lot. Hey!

And finally, an ailing bookseller sheltered in the ruins of a fallen world discovers a living

a cult volume that promises forbidden knowledge beyond anything he's collected. From writer Cody Green,

Scarcely visible through the grime covered window. The wind was soldiered to cracks in the window,

“and the widening gaps in the brickwork at the back of the bookstore. Near his cot and meeker”

possessions. Harlan coughed. Harass be hitching sound that would have taken him to his knees sitting up and sitting. When he took his hand away from his mouth, there was crimson blood illuminated by the dim candlelight on his writing desk. With shaking legs, Harlan stood. He moved carefully among his books. His breath fogging in front of him is each with a bag of blanket around him piter. The room smelled like damp earth and he ever present fire smoke. He preferred

the small smoke over the pungent scent of roasting meat that are punctuated the months after he had abandoned his small basement apartment in favor of the bookstore. Despite the darkness of the bookstore, Harlan moved amongst the overflowing bookshelves and winding towers of stacked books with

“practice dees. His fingers danced along the spines of the books and a smile touched his face.”

He hadn't read all of them. That was the work of several lifetimes. The knowledge that he would die with hundreds of them left unwrapped pained him more than the various ailments that were consuming him. He moved to the back of the store, which held his collection of a cult books, rescued in the aftermath of society's collapse. He traced his fingers along the shelf feeling the familiar books with their yellow pages and strange bindings. Some were cloth-bone.

Others lather. The only commonality between them was that they were old. He moved past one that detailed the best ways to consume human flesh, including recipes for roasts, stews, and long bacon. Another claimed to detail a 13th century clerics account of his repeated

“journeys to what awaits humanity on the other side of this world. A bloody, madening tail of”

incredible landscapes and nightmares made flesh. He passed these books and picked up one that

had been calling to him for some time now. It was a thick volume bound in what appeared to be human flesh. A sharp scream outside the shop made him jump. He looked down at the dirt street window on soft figure sprinting down the street through the ash. Moving towards the window, though not so close that he risked being seen. Harlan peered out down to the ruined streets choked with their cars and rubble. He saw a woman running as she screamed again. Help me!

Harlan looked down the block and saw the source of her terror. Four raiders dressed in faded well trench coats and carrying a variety of salvaged guns and machetes were pursuing the woman. Laughing and whooping maniacally as they closed in on their prey. He turned away from the window, clutching his book with two arthritic hands. By the time he returned to his writing desk, the woman screams had ceased. Harlan said the book on the table as if it were a holy relic.

He brought his candle closer as he ran his hand over the rough leather surface of the cover. It was a dark brown color stained and cracking with age. There was no title or author listed, but on the center of the book was a jagged spiral symbol of the color of congeo blood. In youth Harlan's weathered flesh, the book fell warm to the punch, and from within he could feel a dull thudding, like a heart beat. More screams wafed in from the street, but he took no notice

of this as he lifted the cracked cover. The yellow pages were filled with manic scrolling of

strange rooms that he had never seen before. He flipped through the pages and saw drawings made

in ink, or charcoal, detailing machinations, the use of which he couldn't even begin to gas. The strange rooms began swimming on the page. The warmth of the book increased until it felt feverish. Harlan peered forward, but in closer to the book. He found, trying to make sense of the strange rooms. Flipping through the pages, he worked his way through the book. Pages fluttering back and forth were feeling illustrations detailing the anatomy of a creature

he didn't recognize. Beneath the yellow paper, Harlan could feel something moving within the book. The paper rise and buckle beneath his fingers, Harlan let out a yelp of surprise, hands moving to flip through the book to find its source. There was a sharp rip of the aged paper

as something burst through the ancient book. At first Harlan was stuck at to be a human arm,

but no. The thing that burst through the occult book was a giant worm.

colored flesh. He watched his worm curled upward, towering over him in the shape of a question mark.

“Harlan stared in horrifying fascination. Gunshot sounded somewhere outside,”

but that didn't matter. Not anymore. The worms melt open, revealing a circular ring

that retracted like a forest can, revealing a three-sided beak that opens slowly. A soft

“tripping noise emanated from somewhere inside the occursit thing. The beak open further,”

revealing row upon row of tiny, jaded teeth. It looked into his eye with none of its own.

Harlan leaned back in his chair, almost managing to stand before the worm struck.

“It plunged into Harlan's left eye socket, the sharp beak tearing through the soft jelly of his eye”

as he screamed. The worm was fast as it consumed through Harlan's eye and into his brain. Harlan's last thought is the worm began consuming him. Was up his books. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit CreepyPod.com. You can also follow us at CreepyPod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done, so through creative comments share a light licensing,

or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be re-broadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the CreepyPodcast production team and the stories also.