《The Many Horrors of Windle Rock》


 EPISODE ONE - The Winged Horrors

    Over Windle Rock, the waters roiled with lush froth, sea foam of green and white and murky brown lapping up against the stone face of Captain Claiken¡¯s lighthouse island.


    It was this that stirred him from his deep rest, for today the swishing and swashing of the sea was enough to ram waves against the wall of his abode, humming and drumming and thrumming, patters of rain on sheets of ruffled tin, the kind made for sheds and roofs. It sprayed through the open second-story window, a mist of brine and salt. Claiken removed himself from his sheets and slipped two ancient, worn feet into two ancient, worn slippers. Though as soon as the man stood and awoke, he felt something was not right.


    With a sudden urgency the man donned his long flowing worry-coat and abstained from the morning¡¯s meal, opting not even to so much as pour himself a brew of coffee. He was hearing a kind of noise, see. A noise that disturbed him, coming from somewhere outside. Something he¡¯d never heard, not once. It was very much a ¡°something,¡± very much a dark ¡°something¡± that nary had accurate words in which to describe, although given the chance he would have tried first with the term ¡°encircling,¡± being that it came from every which way, and over the sea beyond. Rubbing away the crust gathered in the corners of his eyes, the Captain peered out of the window, across the bay.


    It appeared that the encircling noise had a source not too far or too strange. For a great flock of shapes with dark, sharp features were approaching overhead, in flight. Captain Claiken was groggy, and peered at these shapes in a state of poor wakefulness reserved for those who sleep far too much to wake up refreshed.


    Birds, he mused, despite their odd cawing.


    Then¡­ he looked again.


    So it was despite this grogginess that Captain Claiken was able to witness the great oddity of these beasts. They were not geese; they sounded and looked nothing of the like. They were not gulls, for their hue was black and their size was large, larger than dogs, larger than men. They reached the island in a clipping of time where it seemed as if the sun had froze, clouds pooled around it, a masquerade halo of mock light, drawn forth from the sheer animosity these larger than dog, larger than men, black winged horrors carried with them.


    And yet, entirely like geese, like gulls, they made perch on the black stony shores of Windle Rock.


    Unsightly as it was to see beasts of unknown, it was hellish and horrific in much greater terms. The winged horrors¡ªwhich bore human faces, long black fangs, upturned piggish noses, and two spiraling horns¡ªhad brought with them prey upon which they¡¯d been feeding, clenched in their talons. One gripped a shrieking maiden, her eyes clawed out and belly torn apart. One held a man lacking legs, instead bearing bloody stumps like that of half-axed birch logs, bone and blood and sinew out like threads of red knit yarn.


    They numbered in the thousands, beast and catch, over and over. So dense in number they blocked all light.


    Then they dropped their bodies beside the lighthouse, piling up child and infant and mother and father. People hunted from somewhere beyond the lengths of the bay, their deaths anything but swift and painless¡ªfor they writhed, and mewled.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Captain Claiken stood silently, living a new madness.


    Thousands of the horrors had now crowded round the pile of anguish, putting face to limb and gnawing, tearing, biting into the collected flesh with armies of sharp teeth. The Captain was beyond any measure of fear. He could only watch as the volume of beast and body greatened, horrors swopping abound, above, dropping more flesh into the pile. More refuse to sob and fester.


    The stench was unbearable. Meat and waste, fish-iron blood and mucus, musk, marrow¡ª


    The sound of tearing leather didn¡¯t so much as compare to the sound of torn innards, pulled from bodies, great chains of crimson. The winged horrors unraveled bowels, unbolted eyeballs, unfastened brains, eating with an atrocious ferocity that had no end.


    One spied him, looking up into the window.


    It did not hiss, or shriek, or caw. The whites of its eyes were so human¡­ but not quite. Fixated on the Captain, flapping its wings twice as it stood in place, it continued to chew.


    And though the beasts that did park over Windle Rock came in great number, none more appeared over the horizon. But Captain Claiken had no worth to be thankful; his mind had unraveled. In his sixty-six years the man had never seen as much torment as he saw on this morn. And so sudden¡­ he hadn¡¯t a single inkling of reason left. His psyche had been pried from him in mere seconds by the horde of howling daemons and their glutinous feast.


    Their stock, their game, had all but become a globule of brackish tar. Bones and grease.


    And in time, more winged horrors did come, bringing more prey. And lo, Captain Claiken pled with the sun and stars above to forget this¡ªit seemed he did have an inkling of logic left, in his stunned and tortured head. For he realized one thing; that these unworldly beasts need not eat so much nor kill so many. Yet, they would continue. Their apathy was unlike that of the wealthy when looking at the poor. It was more like that of a god, and an ant. Not a child ready to crush it, or man ready to stomp it. This was something far more sinister, and goliath in size and hunger. When he let go of that last realization, he lost himself. His only compulsion was to end the screaming in his head, end the sight before him, and no longer have to hear the crashing waves over Windle Rock¡­ waves that gave orchestra to this supper of madness.


    Captain Claiken pitched himself out of the lighthouse window, falling to a death he had wished to see forty years later only hours ago, yesterday night.


    But no such death came.


    For instead, he fell down unharmed into the cushion of carrion, and realized that none of these victims had passed. All of them continued to breathe and move in tandem like the very waves of the surrounding sea; all at once¡­ as lungs expanded and hearts pumped, or fingers and toes, arms and legs, twitched and stretched. Desperate to be rid of their anguish. Then he felt the fetid breath of the putrid horrors as they coughed cold spittle into his eyes, putting talon and tooth to his face. They tore deep into his flesh.


    Captain Claiken, no longer a man, lapsed into the pulsating mass, becoming kin to the meat he drowned within, and thus melted away as part of a new creation. For the winged horrors¡ªhowling daemon of black-feathered wing¡ªwere not simply eating. They were building. A process of chomping and chewing at still-living thing, and regurgitating a bile of human glue to feed and fix the twisted shape of their newborn babe.


    Claiken saw no more. But in him, dozens of tongues were licking, dozens of stomachs were rumbling, miles of innards were gurgling. When it seemed like no end would come and he and the victims would continue to breathe but not think, feel but not know, the howling winged horrors took to the skies and left their monster on the stony shoreline edge of Windle Rock, flying back to where they had come.


    And when night fell, new predators roamed. Owls came down from the skies. Turtles crawled up onto land. And insects of all creeds scuttled from their burrows.


    This time, they truly did feed.

 EPISODE TWO - Beware the Comet Above the Sea

    Of the many times in life upon which I was so scared I could scarcely breathe there are three, but only one still haunts me to this day. The first, is when my plane caught turbulence in a flight to Dublin, where I¡¯d been planning to move to from Cambridge after my ex-fianc¨¦, Messyn, locked lips with a rigid old gaffer I call Pek from the Par. The second, is when I¡¯d nearly swerved off the road into a ditch far deeper than it was wide, all from a speeding habit and a newly popped tire. But the third is the subject of this tale, and I am woe to relive it.


    Once I¡¯d settled on Windle Rock in county Galway, as Dublin was too pricy, I started visiting the harbor in the morn to clear my head and walk the beach. I¡¯m a writer and nature is the biggest of my comforts, and most commonly a ripe source of inspiration. I had been to the coast, but never lived near it, and the foamy tide was a fine thing to see when I was thinking of my outlines. I had gotten in over my head about a very sad story of a man who takes his own life by pitching himself into the sea, and now I realize I¡¯d been projecting far too much of my own heartache for that to have been a convincing fiction. For I had been weaving a tragic note to myself, about myself, over the betrayal I¡¯d felt at Messyn¡¯s hand. But I quickly realized it was a stupor I¡¯d soon break past, as I did not want to die, and I still don¡¯t. But unfortunately, I realized this in the most unfortunate of ways.


    For out over the sea on a morn so early it was still dark, past the never-lit lighthouse, there was a star. A shooting star, meteor or comet or meteorite, the correct term for it I would not know. And though such lights arc across the sky like half-moons, this one was headed downward. I could tell from the position of its tail. Purplish white, dimmer than one would think. It was a speedy thing, but not as speedy as a typical shooting star. Small in the distance, it disappeared upon the horizon soon after it¡¯d made itself known.


    I thought nothing of it for a while. I continued my walk along the beach, seeing my way with nearly no light save that of the full moon. In a small town like Windle Rock, no city lights polluted the skies nor did any pervade the roads and hills. Yet still, in the darkness, I could see frighteningly clearly.


    And thus, our story begins. For out in the distant sea were many disturbances that broke through the wake, rising up out of the surface. Swimmers of some sort. This region is home to seals, and I suspected they may be night hunting or tired of it, and were coming to beach. But my allusions soon vanished, for these shapes were too methodical and calculated to be the bobbing of seals. They strode closer, and took on more in number, for now there were not several but dozens. And once they¡¯d reached a certain point, I saw they no longer swam. They walked.


    I watched with growing terror as the beings stepped nearer, feet on the sandy ramp of coastline bay, and thus emerging more and more. They were shaped like people, but too tall, and too thin. When they eventually made their way to land, I saw they had not flesh, but scales, and webbed hands, webbed feet. Gills, like great red gashes in their necks, pulsed and widened, the meaty filter between them ruffling at a twitch. The beings had bulbous eyes, and spiny lures protruding from their foreheads. The moment the first of them stepped out of the water completely, every single one of these bulb-sacks blinked to light, producing an ominous glow out before their faces. Like stars upon the water, getting closer. The first one opened its mouth, and I spied dagger-sharp teeth, thin and long like that of the piranhas I¡¯d seen in many a grisly film.


    And as this new army traveled out of the waters toward me, I fell to my knees and could barely think any thought other than that of disbelief, and torturous fright. The light on their bulb-sack spines was the same wan, purplish glow of the comet or meteor that had struck the sea only moments before. So thus I realized¡­ they¡¯d made their departure to shore from where it landed in mere moments, despite leagues of distance. The thing that had fallen might not have been a comet or meteor at all.


    They smelled of grime and seawater. They paid me no heed as the now hundreds of them walked up onto land, and continued toward the center of Windle Rock.


    At this point I had huddled and wept, gasping for breath between sobs. Their menace was unparalleled, for not even the most vicious of savages or executioners would frighten me so. I had half a mind to run home and drink myself to sleep, and if I had done such a thing at the time I may have gone too far, and died instead. Either way, as I ponder now, it would have been some form of relief from the weight I carry thereafter.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    In writing this, I am shaking and uneasy. A clench has taken me in the chest. I feel nauseated, and have started suffering from quite a nasty migraine. But even so, I really feel I have not done these entities justice. Scaled, large-eyed men, who swam miles and miles in mere minutes, with anglers and gills? Silly or preposterous, perhaps, though it¡¯s true¡ªbut even my skeptic brother has read my tale and told me it is hardly frightening.


    And thus, I must admit, I am leaving out a precious detail. For when I put my pen to paper I was horrified of this moment, where I¡¯d have to relive what else I saw, the other thing that had come out of the water, and what it somehow showed me. I can hardly describe it. ¡°Enormous¡± and ¡°gargantuan¡± are not strong enough words. I daresay there aren¡¯t words that can describe this horror¡¯s sheer size. And I already know that there aren¡¯t words that can quite describe how it looked, but I will try.


    Coming up out of the sea, it was nothing but a head, with two eyes in similar vein to the startling folk this new entity had been preceded by. But both of them were larger than the largest of elephants, and its bulb-sack spine was longer than the longest of whales. Its gills crept up its head and onto its lips and cheeks, though I could not make out the exact meeting point of lower jaw and upper neck. Even so, it opened its gaping mouth, and the many gill-gashes strewn across its face opened too, all of which like overlapped ravines, flesh a net of hanging loose skin, barrier to red, torn tissue behind it. How did I see this detail so clearly? It was not hard at all, reader. For the entity was alight horrifically by the grace of the moon, and the glow of its angler.


    And then, it saw me. It locked eyes with me. It showed me what would become.


    A desolate planet of hegemonic, unanimous suffering. A holocaust of destruction so widespread and horrible it is far from healthy to even think about. I saw buildings not as I had known them, but collapsed in bundles of beams and ash. Forests were melting, as if acid or ice. Seas were aflame, casting mile-long clouds of vapors up into the atmosphere. Storms rained not rain of water but rain of fire and sand, and the earth quaked on every fault and every border. Man had gone blind, mad, devouring neighbor, spouse, child, even their homes. Like termites. Maimed animals roamed the land as inverted gloves, their fur inside-out, trapped against hollow insides, with all organs and bones revealed, hanging off torn-tissue hides, eyes sagging by threads, and brains snapping from their stems under the pressure of unhooked weight. Cities of renown like New York and Seoul and Dubai flooded up to the tips of their tallest buildings, each window a broken, shattered mouth with which the drowned and drowning imploded beneath the pressure of mile-high waves, becoming but bombs of viscera that dangled and drifted from ledge-shards of glass in the rising currents.


    The world had ended, or was ending, or maybe would end this way, or something strewn across the three¡ªbut there was still more. For the planet, in its echoing eons of anguish, could sustain its orbit no more. Too-heavy from the weight of such an apocalypse, it wobbled and launched headlong into the sun, sending Mercury¡­ Venus¡­ Mars¡­ and both of its moons into the fire too, under the lassoed band of a new gravitational pull. The great star we call our sun expanded into the outer reaches of the solar system, then went further, further, consuming the Milky Way, the Andromeda, The Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, and every galaxy beyond. At the end of it all, when every life form and civilization¡ªmoon, sun, and star¡ªhad been devoured, our sun glowed a different color. A pale color.


    A sickly, wan, purplish white.


    I can bear telling this tale no more. I have yet to describe the worst of it¡ªthe worst thing I saw from the beguiling telepathy of the cosmic beast who had emerged from the sea, and how it and its spawn prayed at an altar in the Windle Rock woods for such a thing to occur¡ªbecause I must rest. In fact I fear I may not wake from this rest¡­ my head is fit to burst, and I write this now on paper that is blotched with drippings of blood from the end of my nose. I know not when this began.


    I leave you, dear reader, with this. Be wary of shorelines and tides at night. And be wearier of shooting stars that glow a pale, purplish hue. For even the most comforting of thoughts cannot shoo away the ever growing niggle in the very back of my mind. I would be of dreadful regret if you do not to take my warning, for you will suffer like I do. Though I will be through of it, soon. I feel my senses dwindling, my sight and feeling going. You, however, would be a victim of the truth. A terrible, horrible truth, one we may not live to experience, but our children most certainly will¡­

 EPISODE THREE - Blueface

    The thing outside hasn¡¯t gone away.


    It has no nose. Its eyes are tiny and hollow. Its skin is a pale blue, and its teeth are massive, hideous. Part of me wants to believe it¡¯s a man, but if it was¡­ that time has long passed.


    I live in Windle Rock, a coastal town on the furthest tip of Galway, Ireland¡ªall of us are just too far away from one another to even really be considered neighbors. There¡¯s nothing but rocks and hills out there¡­ and still, the thing found me¡ªit found me, not Saoirse Kelly in the house closest to mine (just a tiny blip of light over the hill), not Mr. Lerma and his wife even closer to town, or even the fisherman in the local lighthouse, it found me. It came to me.


    It showed up around last week, at midnight. I was watching television in my living room when I heard a thump against the sliding glass door. Thinking it was my dog wanting to come back in, I got up to open it. When I realized I had not left him outside (he was sitting by the fireplace, ears up and body stiff), I froze.


    There was another thump.


    Carefully, I pulled back the blinds.


    Instantly, my dog started to bark, backing away. I fell, staring at a hideous face pressed against the glass. I couldn¡¯t tell if it was smiling or frowning. It seemed the thing¡¯s lipless mouth was forever stuck in a crescent gash. My dog barked and barked, then settled on whining and trying to hide from the thing¡¯s glare. It had no pupils¡ªbut I could see it looking at me, in the way its eyelids stretched wide.


    I had no idea what to do. It put up its hands; its massive, gargantuan hands, and groped around for the handle of the door. I am thankful that it was locked.


    But now I am not so thankful.


    I have been trapped inside my house for a week. It keeps finding new windows. My dog is running out of food. When we hide in a windowless room (like the bathroom) it bangs on the sliding glass door. When we retreat to my bedroom, I hear it outside in the grass, hobbling along the perimeter of the house until it reaches my window, pressing its noseless blue face against the glass, breathing out a wet fog.


    Sometimes it makes noises.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    If you¡¯ve ever heard a doffer choking at the pub, trying to suck down breath but being unable to, then I would say you¡¯ve heard a sound close to what this thing makes. It can¡¯t speak. Or maybe it just doesn¡¯t. I tried to talk to it. But the whole while it was just looking at me. Looking at my dog.


    Tired of the fear, I went into the garage and dug through the gun cabinet, determined to get rid of the freak in any way I could. My grandfather had left me this house on his deathbed in 1992, and in it I discovered his darkest secret. Known to all but me, it seemed. For he¡¯d been part of¡­ a political movement. If you know the personal histories of many retired old bags living in Windle Rock, it takes little effort to guess which one. I do not often think of it. And I had lived alone for years without problem, so I could not for the life of me find any ammunition. Panic set in, because the time it took to open the locked trap door within the cabinet and actually retrieve any guns at all was more time than I¡¯d hoped to spare. The rifle hadn¡¯t been used since the thirties¡­ would it jam? Then I swallowed, hard, remembering that my only box of rounds was probably in the attic.


    I turned to walk through the laundry room, and forgot that the back yard entrance in the garage had a doggy door.


    Something outside was tapping against it.


    It opened.


    I crouched down behind my lorry. The thing put its head through the doggy door, retching and growling. My dog, who had been waiting for me in the laundry room, started to bark.


    In an instant the thing bolted into the garage, then into my house. It was so fast, even on four lanky limbs the creature was faster than a grown man running at top speed. I stumbled, standing, ready to kill it with whatever I could find in the laundry room, but it had closed the door. I searched the garage, hoping for anything that was long and heavy, but then it opened the door again, and I ran for it.


    That night I sat outside, listening to my dog scream and whine. I imagined the thing tearing him apart, first grabbing his tail and pulling as hard as it could with its dangling blue arms. I imagined the thing ripping off his skin, biting down on his flesh with those massive, hideous teeth, scraping them along the knobs of his spine. I imagined the thing eating him, shoving handfuls of meat into its maw and chewing, chewing, chewing.


    I imagined these things because I heard these things.


    Outside the sliding glass door, I stared into my home. There was blood all over the television set, the couch, and the carpet. I cannot see my dog¡ªnot all of him. But his little brown leg lay beside the kitchen table.


    The thing has made a home of my home, face pressed against the glass, watching me. The tables have turned, but we¡¯re back where we started.


    My charge is nearly dead after hours of recording the thing, taking pictures, and trying to call emergency services¡ªthe service around my house always was terrible, and now I regret not installing a home phone more than anything. My lorry is in the garage, but my keys are in the kitchen. I pulled out my phone to write this down, because if they find my body one day, then they can find the note and possibly kill this thing. It¡¯s not like I can just run away. The thing is way faster than me.


    And it can open doors.


    This is what I get for acting the maggot. For being a ludder, a fool, and frightened aging man. And¡ª


    ...


    [NO BATTERY]

 EPISODE FOUR - The Costumed Man

    Bryce Harnel had been paid a handsome amount of money for this job, and wasn¡¯t interested in doing much else until he milked it dry.


    It was an odd job, to be sure. But he was on his third day, and it paid handsomely. Seventeen euros an hour! Back home, that was over twenty USD. And all he had to do was sit in an empty room for six hours a night.


    He had to admit, it was a sketchy job. But all those experiment jobs were a little strange, weren¡¯t they? Having new perfume or toothpaste tested on you could end badly, which is why they paid so high. Comparatively, this seemed safe. Didn¡¯t even seem like an experiment, to be frank.


    The room resembled an indoor tennis court in size, but an office space in detail. It had two pairs of windowed double doors that were ten feet apart, but white walls and a gray-carpeted ground like the floor of some New York office. The building was underground, and he did think it was strange that it¡¯d be all the way in Ireland¡¯s boonies like Windle Rock, but all he had to do was stay isolated. The only other things in the room were a somewhat uncomfortable chair, a bed with only one sheet and one blanket, a tiny bathroom off to the side, and¡­


    A strange pedestal, right in the center of the room. A statue atop it. Not to mention cameras in the corners of the ceiling.


    The job listing was simple. Stay here for six hours every day for two weeks, collect your pay, and leave. He¡¯d had to sign an NDA. Though it said ¡°experiment,¡± he figured it was footage for some kind of science fiction movie. They must¡¯ve needed a ton of it. He wasn¡¯t certain, though, and he cared little¡­ this much money to sit around? It was a great deal.


    Only, it wasn¡¯t such a great deal. For after the third day, he¡¯d gotten bored.


    And after the fourth, he was even more bored.


    Eventually, the second week rolled around. He¡¯d adapted to the strange job and the boredom it brought with it. He wasn¡¯t allowed to bring anything but his clothes, so he entertained himself in other ways. All of it was recorded, so he was careful with what he did, but he sang to himself, played imaginary drums, all kinds of stuff.


    Heh, he thought. I probably look like I¡¯m going insane. That might be what they¡¯re actually trying to capture for this movie, though.


    After all, the pedestal in the room was very strange.


    It had to be an electronic prop of some kind, but it was very realistic. It likely used actual stone. Shaped like a pillar, atop it some kind of squid statue, the thing was laden with symbols he didn¡¯t understand. These symbols, as well as the eyes of the squid being, often glowed different colors. Sometimes they were white, or green. But more often than not, they didn¡¯t glow at all.


    Bryce watched it, one day. He looked into the squid-thing¡¯s eyes.


    Hm, it¡¯s not really a squid thing, he thought. It¡¯s more of a person with a squid-like head, I guess. A science fiction movie, indeed. Either way, it was a strange thing in a strange room.


    So when it came, he couldn¡¯t say he hadn¡¯t been expecting it. It didn¡¯t make sense to keep him just sitting around doing nothing, after all. He figured, at some point, something even stranger might happen, and they¡¯d be hoping to capture his live reaction. That made sense, if he was supposed to be playing a man isolated and driven mad¡­ although they¡¯d never said that to him. He just assumed.


    Either way, Bryce felt a cold chill go down his back when he saw it.


    It had nothing to do with the pedestal, either. It was at the door.


    Looking in the window was a man in a mascot costume mask.


    Bryce jumped. He sat in his chair, staring.


    The man¡¯s mask was that of a fuzzy pink bear. Oversized, more than twice as big as his head. Wide, cartoonish eyes. A wide smile. Like Yogi, somewhat. But also like¡­


    He couldn¡¯t quite place it.


    The man just stood there. Bryce, more than creeped out, made no effort to move. But he did look away.


    The pedestal was glowing a shivery purple. It was a color he hadn¡¯t seen from it before.


    Bryce pursed his lips and laced his fingers, elbows on his knees. He looked down. He looked back up.


    The man was still there.


    Bryce waved, giving him a curt little nod.


    The man did not wave back. The cartoon mask gave off the impression that he did not blink. His eyes stared endlessly, as if into a void.


    Eventually, the time came in which it was Bryce¡¯s time to leave, sounding off with a loud beep. It made him jump, but only because of his nerves. He got up, moving for the doors.


    Yet the man in the mask was still there, waiting for him.


    He was apprehensive, to say the least. He approached the other set of double doors instead, but couldn¡¯t bring himself to open them.


    Why? It¡¯s just an actor. Paid like me.


    But¡­ but was it?


    Ten feet away, the bear man was still staring through the window of the other double doors.


    Bryce¡­ backed off from the door.


    The filming is over, he thought. The beep sounded, meaning I¡¯m supposed to go home.


    But he was suddenly taken by a horrible dread, a horrible knowing fear that if he walked through that door, something may happen to him. For he did not think this masked man another actor. After all, he¡¯d never been explicitly told that this was all for a movie.


    But¡­ maybe it¡¯s not a normal movie. His thoughts ran with trickles of terror. Maybe it¡¯s a snuff film.


    He turned around. Though he was now facing the back of the statue pedestal, he could still see that it was glowing a frightful purple, very deep and very bright. Its light spilled onto the ground.


    Bryce backed into the room, walking backward. Wherever he went, the mascot¡¯s head would slightly move, following him.


    ¡°Stop,¡± he said. ¡°Stop looking at me. Go away.¡±


    He could see the statue better now. It flared even brighter.


    But the man in the mask did not move.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Bryce sat in his seat again. He eyed the masked man, then looked around the room before settling back on him.


    ¡°What do you want from me? Are you part of the production? Is this scripted?¡±


    No answer.


    Bryce looked down at his hands, noticed they¡¯d started shaking.


    He heard a sliding click. He whipped back up, and saw that the man was standing in the room now. He hadn¡¯t seen him move, but the door was closing slowly behind him.


    Bryce fell back in his chair. It smashed upon the ground with a horrible clatter, skittering away. He barely noticed how hard he¡¯d landed on his rear.


    The pedestal was flaring purple.


    But the man didn¡¯t come any closer. Even so, Bryce stood, backing all the way toward the bathroom at the end of the room.


    The moment he touched the door, the man in the mask started sprinting.


    He flung himself into the bathroom and shut the door. The mirror on the wall rattled. The man outside pounded on it, bang after bang. Thankfully, it had a lock.


    Bryce sat against the wall beside the big plastic container of toilet paper, watching in horror as the man outside continuously beat the door over and over.


    ¡°Go away! Go away!¡±


    But he would not go away. After a while Bryce noticed two shadows under the door¡ªthe man¡¯s feet¡ªcontort and merge into the shadow of his whole body as he knelt down, trying to force his hand in the space beneath it. When he couldn¡¯t, he laid down in front of it. Bryce cringed, and saw some tufts of pink fur poking out from beneath¡­


    He didn¡¯t want to. He didn¡¯t want to look down, below the door¡ª


    But the man¡¯s breathing was too much to bear, heavy and ragged.


    He looked. He saw the stitched white and black button eye of the bear mask, pressed just enough under the door to where it looked like he could see with it¡­ and was looking¡­


    Bryce dare not leave. So he stayed. He had no food, but he did have water from the sink. It took courage, but he was able to stand, get closer, and drink from it, then rest against the wall. But no matter how hard he tried, no sleep would come.


    A day or more passed. He was stirred in the mind, frightened beyond all belief, desperately wishing the man would¡­


    The man started shuffling.


    Is he leaving?! He prayed. Please, tell me he¡¯s leaving¡­


    The costumed man got to his feet, and walked away. Bryce got down to the cold bathroom floor, and looked under the door. He saw his feet shuffle further into the large room, distant from the door.


    He waited.


    Then, the man turned around, and began to run.


    Bryce panicked¡ªsitting up off the floor¡ªbacking up¡ª


    The costumed man hurled himself against the outside of the door. It rattled in its frame. Bryce watched in horror as the hinges squeaked, splitting apart just the smallest bit¡ªscrews jangled and loose. There was nothing he could do.


    The man did it again. The door shook, and the hinges pulled.


    In that brief moment before the door went down, Bryce thought two things. One¡ªthat this bathroom door was either oddly light, or the man was oddly heavy¡ªand two, that he needed to defend himself, and if the costumed man was heavy enough to knock down a thick bathroom door, then he couldn¡¯t just do it with his fists. There was exactly one thing in the room he could grab that wasn¡¯t a roll of toilet paper or a small trash can¡ª


    The mirror.


    The same moment the door split from the frame and landed hard upon the ground, Bryce grabbed the mirror and pried it off the wall. His heart was beating hard and fast with fright, and the appearance of the costumed man nearly shot it up into his throat. But he didn¡¯t think twice. He brought the mirror down upon the costumed man¡¯s head, hard as he could. It shattered, falling to many sharp wedges against the ground. The costumed man was stunned, for a moment¡­


    Bryce leaned down, thoughts racing. He grabbed a sharp edge of the mirror, cutting deep into his palm and fingers. Blood traveled down, dripping.


    Then he stabbed the costumed man right in the chest. He meant to aim for the head... but the mascot mask was likely too big, and the shard too small. But he drew it out, and stabbed it again. Then again. Then again. Then again and again and again and again.


    The blood ran down the mascot man¡¯s shirt, squirting onto the floor. The man just stood there, backed against the wall.


    Then he fell, face-first. Bryce hopped out the way.


    Splat.


    He looked down. The man was still and silent in an ever-growing puddle of blood.


    Hands shaking, but pain vacant from the rush of adrenaline, Bryce stepped over the costumed man, and back out into the¡ª


    Khl¡¯ath dro¡¯ctelho ni nawar zhigho gozhokah¡¯ll meiargwath¡¯o marghkai.


    Bryce stumbled. The voice had been so loud, speaking in some kind of foreign language¡ª


    Khl¡¯ath dro¡¯ctelho ni nawar zhigho gozhokah¡¯ll meiargwath¡¯o marghkai.


    Bryce fell to his hands, smearing blood all over the gray carpet. His ears rang. His vision blurred. He could no longer smell or taste, and the air was stale. He soiled himself, liquid waste spilling into his pants, down his legs. He hurled chunks of vomit against the ground; after which a fiery hose of bile and stomach acid came up in a heap with a horrible, sickly, growling belch.


    He slipped in his waste. It felt like his consciousness was phasing in and out of his body, floating up or down or¡ª


    Going toward¡ª


    Toward¡ª


    Khl¡¯ath dro¡¯ctelho ni nawar zhigho gozhokah¡¯ll meiargwath¡¯o marghkai.


    The statue! The statue!


    Its eyes glowed with a brilliant red.


    Bryce¡¯s thoughts crossed to his life before this. His home. His parents. He hadn¡¯t a special person to love, nor many friends.


    And all the better. For his mind was gone, never to return. The fewer people to miss him.


    His mindless, shambling, soiled body stood up again. The statue then glowed a horrible purple. He walked toward it.


    He put his hands upon the bust at the top.


    And suddenly, his mindless body understood the inane, horrible speaking. It knew it needed to follow the pedestal¡¯s command. But its command, to feed, to feed, feed¡ªcouldn¡¯t be carried out. There was nothing to feed on. Not the body in the bathroom, for the man was dead, and this statue¡¯s power need not feed on flesh. It had made a quick meal of Bryce, yes it did. But now it hungered for more¡­


    ¡­


    Up in the research room, Dr. Pilfro sipped a cup of coffee.


    ¡°It took hold of him even though he killed Subject 60¡­ not the other way around.¡±


    Dr. Lamb was already scribbling it down on his clipboard. The monitors in the room¡ªnumbering several hundred¡ªblinked and flashed with many recordings of Windle Rock. One of them was trained on Captain Claiken¡¯s lighthouse. Another pointed to a mysterious dock. One was trained toward a large closed warehouse, and another to the cement, one-door rooms inside it. Many of the Facility¡¯s doctors and scientists roamed this warehouse, keeping an eye on the subjects.


    Another monitor. On it, some lab-coated men were cleaning up the mess inside of a rural home, or going into the woods with cameras and baggies to collect samples of something foul.


    Of course, many of the cameras pointed to the testing room where they¡¯d managed to trap Ilg¡¯thar¡¯s obelisk. The obelisk glowed a brilliant purple. Dr. Pilfro adjusted his glasses, and looked down at Dr. Lamb¡¯s notes.


    Purple X P60/P61¡ª


    Yes, thought Pilfro, it always glows purple when it¡¯s controlling someone¡ª


    Distance¡ªsame as last, CCo¡ª


    And it can control its minion, it seems, in any place in the country, possibly in other countries too¡ª


    Dr. Lamb scratched out a number, and checked off a box. Yes, they have learned something new. The minion need not incapacitate anyone¡­ for if they died, then the statue would be able to take over someone else. But it could only feed off one person at a time. And it caused a great struggle, sometimes. Subject 60 had been so maimed from the last fight that the Facility had needed to cover his face somehow, lest they alarm Subject 61. The mascot mask was all they could find that didn¡¯t make him look like some kind of mummy.


    So much for not frightening Subject 61. He figured the bear mask had actually made things worse.


    Pilfro pulled off his glasses, setting them on the desk beside many control panels. He pinched the bridge of his nose.


    At some point, he thought, we¡¯re going to run out of money. They¡¯d been taking it back once the statue took a victim, but that was simple pocket change, nowhere near enough to keep supporting the Facility. Other groups, like the Service and the Foundation¡ª


    Why is it always three letters with these people?


    ¡ªHad many more resources. Little rural Ireland compared to America¡¯s military budget and an underground resource network of most nations combined. It was sad, really. They were hardly closer to understanding anything more about these eldritch happenings. But they would be if they were working for someone else.


    ¡°Dr. Lamb,¡± said Pilfro, ¡°have a team collect Mr. Harnel and¡ª¡±


    The statue started whispering. Pilfro stood in his chair. If the statue was whispering¡­


    ¡°TURN IT OFF!¡± he said. ¡°THE CAMERAS! SHUT THEM OFF!¡±


    Dr. Lamb wasn¡¯t quick enough¡ªthe mindless, controlled body of Bryce looked up at the camera, right into it. Right into Pilfro¡¯s eyes, it seemed.


    Then, the statue burned red.


    Flame erupted around it. He¡¯d never seen that before.


    It turned toward the camera. Toward him.


    We thought it couldn¡¯t move! We thought it¡ª


    You thought wrong, Doctor.


    And in his last moments, Dr. Pilfro heard it. A horrible, ominous voice¡ª


    Khl¡¯ath dro¡¯ctelho ni nawar zhigho gozhokah¡¯ll meiargwath¡¯o marghkai.


    Neither of them left the service room alive, that day.

 EPISODE FIVE - The Thing That Watches My Slumber

    I awoke in the night. And it was standing over me.


    Hidden in pooling moonlight from the open window, the form of this watcher was shrouded in darkness, save for a few features of its face. It looked over me, unmoving. I thought only for a minute that this watcher might not be a watcher at all, for it wasn¡¯t shaped like a man. But soon I realized my mistake. For no beast, creature or entity need be shaped like a man to wait and watch.


    I did not move. I waited in my bed, looking up with startled, wide eyes. But when I blinked, it was gone. I saw nothing but the many wooden planks of the ceiling.


    Climbing out of the comforts of my warm bed that morning was far more difficult that I¡¯d like to admit. I was unsure if the terror that had taken me in the night was just that¡ªa night terror¡ªor something far worse, either corporal, or an illusion produced by a tumor or wound in my very brain. I went about life as normal, heading down to the fish markets of Windle Rock so I could put together dinner, and then reading alone in my leather chair until sundown. But come night I was loathe to turn off the lights and shut my eyes. I kept telling myself that I was being silly, bothered by nightmares and nothing more. Eventually I did climb into bed, and sleep did come.


    But yet again I awoke, and it was watching my slumber once more.


    This time it was not standing upon the ground, out before my window. It was hardly a visible thing, from where it was watching. Through the crack in my door it looked in at me, more light hitting its face this time. I saw one wide, bulging eye, and a horrendous expression of twisted, surmounting pleasure in just how much fear this being was causing me.


    I shut my eyes. The sweat had started to make my bed a dread-place, so uncomfortable, so hot and murky with stick. But even so, I did drift. My dreams were filled with disquiet.


    The third night, I did not sleep. I waited for it to come, for it to do its worst and collect my soul, lest I be cursed with a watcher beside my bed, or at the door, for the remainder of my years. And eventually, it did come. I heard nothing when it did. It simply appeared at the door, slinking down the hall and sticking its ghastly eye right through the crack of darkness, all in a blink.


    I watched it head on. And suddenly, a many great disturbances seemed to happen around me. It felt like I was being slowly touched from behind, with six pairs of wriggling, snake-like arms slithering around my shoulders, my waist, my neck. The shock of it left me inane and inept, a frozen old man forcibly molested by the great power of infinity. Like the waving light you see in your vision from a migraine, or the encompassing sensation of a panic attack, I saw this thing before me but felt it behind me.


    And it forced upon me many grisly noises and visions. I swear I could hear the sounds of tortures; throats squeezed shut and last breaths expelled as looped-ropes closed in a knot around the necks of innocent souls. Rats, scuttling in the walls, down from the ceiling to the floor, where they would gnaw holes in the drywall and come for me in my bed¡ªclimbing up my draped comforter¡ªusing their sharp, bacteria-laden teeth to chew through my chest and belly, a mincemeat person who suffers and dies like the many throttled souls I was hearing, all while being watched by a single, inhuman tormentor.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    My door creaked open just an inch further.


    I was speechless. The corporeal bounds of reality cannot describe the steep drop of my sanity, for it was nothing that could be grasped or understood. It was a portrait of utter madness, framed by captivity. There was nothing I could do about the thing that slowly stalked further into my bedroom, nowhere to run or hide. For it would follow, it would never let me out of its sight, it would scour the globe¡ªto the very ends of the earth¡ªto torture me until my soul spilled from my body like paste. But in this horror, as the thing approached, there was knowing. I knew this would happen to me, because I could see it. It was showing me visions of past hunts. The throttled souls. Innocent, young, poor souls, none of them died from the hands of a madman with rope. This entity had taken them in the night and choked the life from their bodies itself, and the anguish I felt from these visions and noises had done their work in incapacitating me, too.


    It got closer.


    I could smell ozone on its breath. Stale, cold air¡ªhydrogen and helium, seawater salt and rotten-egg sulfur. It looked so much like a man¡ªbut not quite¡ªthat I wanted to scream. Its face was plastic, false. Angled poorly. Its gait was that of a mannequin, movements a kind of death-stiff. Its eyes¡­


    Its eyes!


    It came for me, and I saw. The crushing, empty infinity of the universe blasted apart my very ceiling, and he looked down at me in my bed and watched my horror as I saw the endless abyss of the cosmos above. I perceived it all¡ªthat I was no more a man than it, or he, and the two of us were tiny flies¡ªsmaller than flies, smaller than the parasite in a fly, smaller than the wriggling amoeba in the body of the parasite, smaller than the cells in the amoeba. Then smaller than atoms, protons, neutrons. But it wasn¡¯t just me. T¡¯was also the planet¡ªthe solar system¡ªthe galaxy¡ªour pocket of the universe was smaller even than that, when compared to the dream of¡ª


    No! No!


    I can¡¯t relive it!


    I can¡¯t say it! All of it is fake! All of it is false! Our world! My life! Our histories! All the Faces of Ki! The man in the center of the folds, who watches and waits and comes for us all! The prince, the girl! The artist, the engineer! The boy on the bike! Their world and yours, and the planet of yellow, the sea and star and sun of yellow! All of it is the dream of HE, HE who SLEEPS, who SLUMBERS like I, and HE is bigger than the ever-rolling expanse of creation¡ªstill barreling away from the center of The Big Bang, at speeds unknown, incomprehensible to all but the largest and most malevolent of Great Old Gods, GOD! GOD! Gods! The bodies of the Dead Ones that float among the stars, so profane even black holes spit them out! The Kingdom of It! OF¡­ it!


    Gods of Infinity watch Ki and Consume it All!


    Gods of Infinity watch Ki and Consume it All!


    Gods of Infinity watch Ki and Consume it All! Gods of Infinity watch Ki and Consume it All! Gods¡ª


    ¡­


    They broke down the door of Old Man Byrne¡¯s house at three in the morning.


    They rushed into his room. Even when they appeared before him, he was still screaming. He was alone¡­ but he bore claw marks on his shoulders, waist, and throat, repeating a phrase at the top of his lungs:


    ¡°KH¡¯LATH DRO¡¯CTELHO NI NAWAR GOZHOKAH¡¯LL MEIARGWATH¡¯O MARGHKAI!¡±


    He said it over, and over. The Garda S¨ªoch¨¢na, Ireland¡¯s police¡ªin suits of neon yellow and slanted caps of blue¡ªcarefully restrained him with handcuffs, putting away their pepper spray and batons. One of them pointed the beam of his electric torch right into the old man¡¯s eyes.


    The officer jumped, for his eyes were so dilated that one couldn¡¯t see his irises at all. Light did not make them shrink back. And even still, as they bound him and put him on a stretcher, he kept shrieking an incomprehensible phrase, and never once spoke to them in Irish or English. Until, that is, they pulled him from his house. Until, that is, they put him in the ambulance. For then, before he died, he spoke only five words.


    ¡°The King in Yellow watches.¡±

 EPISODE SIX - Im So Glad Youre Awake

    The boy awoke to heavy knocking.


    It¡¯s strange, sort of funny how little of the room around him he took in at first¡ªthe thing at the forefront of his mind was the knocking.


    Loud.


    Persistent.


    Knock knock knock, it went, knock knock knock.


    And then it stopped.


    He looked around, frantic, trying to take in his immediate surroundings. There wasn¡¯t much. He, for some reason, sat in the back right corner of a single room. For lack of a better phrase, this room was a basically just a concrete box, four walls and one ceiling of cracked gray bricks, one floor of rugged dirt.


    But there was something curious about the walls.


    See, on each of them was a line of light bulbs, screwed into the stone so that their tops were facing outward. They were at roughly eye level¡­ if you were an adult.


    None were lit¡ªexcept for three.


    These bulbs were in a row to the immediate right of the only door in the room. It was meant to be pushed open from the inside, with a long bar lever much like the doors of school gymnasiums. The only difference was that this door had no window.


    The boy¡¯s mouth went dry. He could plainly hear the beat of his own heart. It was silent for a time, the boy¡¯s eyes trained on the door on the opposite end of the room, when he heard a voice beside him.


    ¡°I¡¯m so glad you¡¯re awake.¡±


    Startled, the boy turned to see who had spoken. He was relieved to find that it was simply another boy his age, a blonde boy nearing his early teens. It was now that the boy realized they both wore normal street clothes¡ªplain shirt, shoes, shorts of indiscriminate color and design.


    ¡°Are you okay?¡± this blonde boy asked.


    The first boy nodded, finding it hard to breathe in such a musky, dark place.


    ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡±


    Hearing this question made him uneasy. The boy, who had up until now forgotten his name, remembered it to be one that started with an S¡­ then a T¡­ A¡­


    ¡°S-Stanley,¡± he said.


    ¡°Stanley,¡± the boy mimed. ¡°Stanley.¡±


    ¡°Y-yours?¡±


    The blonde boy huddled into the corner, arms linked over his legs. ¡°Finn.¡±


    Stanley (a host of memories swimming back to him that the knocking and the darkness had stolen) remembered now that he had a normal family with a normal sister and a normal set of parents. Parents that hated taxes, loved wine, and also loved their children. Stanley himself loved to draw, and his sister was an excellent gymnast. He remembered that he owned an orange tabby cat that could climb virtually anything. He remembered that he was twelve. He remembered that he couldn¡¯t beat that new video game his mother had gotten for him, and that he had fallen asleep on a bench in the park after a rough night on the soccer field.


    That was his most recent memory.


    Finn¡¯s glare had found a spot of anchor on Stanley. Stanley asked, ¡°Where are we?¡±


    Finn, still glaring, shook his head at the speed of church bell chimes. ¡°I don¡¯t know, Stanley. But I know that I didn¡¯t wake up alone before.¡±


    ¡°Who else was here?¡±


    Finn stammered. ¡°I woke up with another boy. His name was Tim.¡±


    ¡°Where is he now?¡±


    Finn¡¯s gaze slowly turned from Stanley to the locked door before them. ¡°It¡¯s locked from the inside,¡± he said. ¡°Tim wanted to get out. He got out. And he couldn¡¯t get back in.¡±


    ¡°Well, let¡¯s leave!¡± Stanley said, heart beating faster each minute he sat there, ¡°let¡¯s leave and go home!¡±


    Finn shook his head again, this time faster. He was still looking at the door. When he spoke, his voice a hoarse drone. ¡°We can¡¯t. It can¡¯t get us in here.¡±


    ¡°¡­What can''t?¡±


    On the wall to Finn¡¯s immediately left, a single bulb winked on. It buzzed in the dark, old and hot.


    Stanley stared at it.


    ¡°When a light turns on,¡± Finn croaked, now on the verge of tears, ¡°it¡¯s right outside.¡±


    In hearing this, Stanley¡¯s gaze drifted over to the three bulbs that were still on.


    ¡°And those¡ªthose weren¡¯t always on,¡± Finn said. He was shaking now, hiding his head. ¡°Those turned on after Tim left.¡±


    The one bulb that had winked on suddenly shut off, the one beside it lighting in its stead. This happened again, the lit bulb now twice as close to the huddled Finn. Trembling, Finn looked up at it. Tears had started dripping down his face.


    ¡°It¡¯s gonna knock again, Stanley,¡± he said, sniffling. ¡°It¡¯s gonna knock again.¡±


    ¡°What¡­ what is it?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±


    Given that Finn was in a corner, and the lights ran in a band around the whole room, he sat under a point where two bulbs met. The thing outside was moving toward Finn, though what it was, neither knew.


    Both, however, watched as the lit bulb winked off. The one beside it winked on.


    It emitted a dull hum, the stem inside burning hot with an ugly yellow. Stanley looked at that light, then at the three near the door. He looked back when the singular one winked off.


    For a time, another one didn¡¯t wink back. When one did, Finn buried his head into his arms and knees¡ªnow closer, yet four bulbs away from being in Finn¡¯s corner.


    ¡°Go away¡­¡± Finn murmured, ¡°go away¡­¡±


    Stanley couldn¡¯t seem to feel his own breathing anymore. His tongue was swollen and dry. His nose was cold, he smelled dirt and wet cement, heard nothing but the sound of the bulb and the muffled sobs of Finn beside him.


    Then, in the way a snake might stretch, the next three bulbs winked on one after another, with the first still alight. Slowly, the first went out, then the next, until the only bulbs still emitting that horrid hum and dingy yellow glow were the two directly above Finn¡¯s head. Finn shuddered. Above the heavy droning hum, Stanley heard Finn¡¯s teeth chattering amongst the severed intake of his breaths.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    ¡°P-please help me, Stanley,¡± he said. ¡°Make it g-go away.¡±


    But it didn¡¯t. For a portion of time that may have fit a single song, the lights above Finn¡¯s head were aglow. Stanley wanted to run for the door, everything in his mind told him that he could stay no longer¡ªbut he feared the lights. He feared the door. And he feared what lay beyond them.


    He feared what lurked outside.


    The lights changed, now. They started to backtrack, each one winking on and off being ones that had previously done so, the thing behind them making its way toward the door.


    The bulb closest to the door winked out, leaving the only light in the room once again the three of them nearest the door.


    Tap.


    Tap tap.


    Something was touching the door. It was light, just gentle patting¡ªand then a knock against it so hard that Stanley nearly relieved himself. Another. Each time, the boys jumped, wanting nothing more than to cry out and scream. The sounds of those knocks echoed through the room.


    Knock knock knock, they went, knock knock knock.


    Then it stopped.


    In not much more than a single heartbeat, the three lights that had been on the entire time went out. One after another.


    Wink.


    Wink.


    Wink.


    Now Finn and Stanley were left alone together in complete, engulfing darkness. By now, Finn had stopped crying.


    Hours passed. Maybe, Stanley thought, too far into a state of shock to ever fall asleep, it had been days. At one point, because he couldn¡¯t handle the silence, Stanley asked Finn how old he was.


    ¡°I-I¡¯m twelve,¡± Finn said.


    ¡°Me too,¡± said Stan. ¡°Do you¡­ have any pets?¡±


    Finn swallowed. ¡°I have a dog.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s his name?¡±


    ¡°His name is Buddy.¡±


    Stanley looked down in the dark, resting his head against his own knees. ¡°That¡¯s a nice name.¡±


    ¡°I miss him,¡± Finn said. ¡°I miss my mom. And my dad.¡±


    Stanley did not move his head.


    ¡°I miss my big brother. I miss him. I¡¯m scared, Stan.¡±


    ¡°Me too,¡± Stanley offered.


    It took naught but another ten minutes for a light to flicker on again. It was in the same place it had been the first time¡ªthe center of the room, fitted in the center of the wall, and on Finn¡¯s side. Finn looked at it, face twisted in terror.


    Everything happened the way it happened last time. Whatever it was that was lurking behind the walls stopped when it had made it to Finn¡¯s corner.


    Only this time, the knocks came from there.


    Finn spun, looking up at the lights, trembling. The thing bashed itself against the wall, far harder than any man could possibly manage. Its knocks shook the ceiling, sending down sprinkles of dust. Two bulbs, both far from one another, came loose and shattered on the disgusting floor.


    Knock knock knock.


    Finn was retching, writhing about with each hulking thrash. He said nothing. He was crying, he was moaning, pale as a ghost¡ªbut he said nothing.


    ¡°Finn,¡± Stan said. He too, sobbing. ¡°F-Finn, stop¡­ it can¡¯t get us¡­ it can¡¯t get us in here¡­¡±


    Finn could not hear him. Finn only heard the thumping, the knocking.


    Knock knock knock.


    Stanley thought it couldn¡¯t get any worse.


    That is, until it screamed.


    The sound was muffled by the walls, but it was piercing. A scream so inhuman, so uncanny and horrific, that Finn broke down and screamed too.


    Stanley clapped his hands over his ears, teeth chattering, watching as Finn¡¯s mind unraveled and the boy pissed himself¡ªa stain appeared in the crotch of his shorts, some of it leaking out onto his leg and soiling the floor¡ªbut he wasn¡¯t done. Finn continued to scream long after the thing outside had stopped, convulsing on the floor in a way that was truly indescribable. Fish on dry land didn¡¯t shake like that. Electrified men didn¡¯t even shake like that.


    Stan put his head in his knees, wishing this to be over. He wanted it to be a nightmare¡ªand only that. He wanted it desperately.


    His wish was crushed by three sounds.


    Knock knock knock.


    Finn gave one last shout. Then, Stan heard him stand. Not looking up, Stan also heard the sound of a shattering bulb, sprinkles of it hitting the floor. Finn howled, and unable to keep himself from looking, Stan peered at his newfound friend.


    Finn, pants soiled, eyes red, had crushed one of the bulbs. His palm was pierced with the white-hot coil, its stem running completely through both sides of his hand. Blood stained his sleeve and dripped from his fingers.


    ¡°F-Finn¡ª¡±


    Finn bolted to the door, stopping not to push it open, but to launch himself directly at it. He hopped up at a forward slant, opening the door with a slam, and falling on the ground outside. Stan moved to stand, but found he had not the energy. Instead, he looked over to the still alight bulb right above Finn¡¯s corner.


    He watched as the lights snaked on and off, moving toward the door much faster than Finn had.


    And then, came the last scream.


    Although many might have agreed, had they heard it, that this sound needed a whole new word. This shriek was prolonged, and pitched in a tone that was barely human. Stan knew, however, that it was human. He knew whose scream it was.


    You know whose scream it was.


    ¡­


    Then it ended. The three lights by the door winked on again.


    Stanley thought¡ªno, he knew that he heard something else¡ªsomething like a thud. Light, dainty even¡­ but it was definitely a thud.


    He was left with silence and the present hum of those three bulbs for days. He didn¡¯t move from the spot in all that time. He slept there. He sat there. He would have also done his business there, but he didn¡¯t have to.


    But he was hungry. So horribly hungry.


    There was a point in time (Stanley had not been able to keep track of time in any way other than sleep sessions) where he was bobbing his head, clinging to consciousness. He could barely think.


    A light flickered on.


    The light was on his wall this time. Same position¡ªdead center. And, when it flicked off, the one that took its place was one step closer to Stanley¡¯s corner. It was strange how that one little light could jolt him back to wakefulness, a super-awareness borne of complete and utter terror.


    He, too, sat under a point where two bulbs met.


    The lit bulb winked out, and one even closer winked on. Its hum was eternal. Its light was cosmic. The thing was moving faster¡ªtwo lights winked on at once, and winked off¡ªthen a third, and all too soon, the ones alight were the two above Stanley¡¯s head.


    He expected to hear a knock.


    He had wanted to hear a knock.


    Had he a choice, he¡¯d have picked the knock. If he had known what he was about to hear, he¡¯d have plugged his ears and screamed.


    Directly outside the corner, there was breathing.


    Garbled. Contorted. This was breathing¡ªbut it was injured breathing, or something close. Like there were holes in its lungs. Like there were nails in its throat. Like, instead of a mouth, the thing outside breathed through a sponge of flesh, it¡¯s head covered in thick skin and pierced with orifices that opened and closed like heart valves, sucking air into tubes of pink tissue, torn and porous.


    Stanley¡¯s thoughts of sanity were instantly torn away, his mind melting and psyche crumbling. He had vague thoughts and desires¡ªimpulses to GET OUT, to RUN, to HIDE¡ªbut he could not hide. He could not run. There would be no telling what would happen should he leave.


    What the thing outside may do.


    What it is that Stanley may see.


    Of course, he thought virtually none of this¡ªhe could only think of what he was hearing.


    The breathing. And then¡­


    Knock knock knock.


    It held its breath.


    Knock knock knock.


    Stanley couldn¡¯t take it. He mustered his strength, a dwindling commodity in the presence of what lurked outside the wall, and crawled away from the corner. His elbows scraped the dirt; pebbles and shards of glass stabbed at his palms, his knees, yet he pushed on until he made it to Finn¡¯s corner.


    But the lights were following.


    One after another, they winked on and off, trailing him.


    Wink.


    Wink.


    Wink.


    ¡°Go¡ªgo away!¡± he wailed, grasping handfuls of his hair. ¡°Go away! Go away! Go away!¡±


    Tap tap tap.


    ¡°Go away! Go away! Go away!¡±


    Knock knock knock.


    ¡°GO AWAY! GO AWAY!¡±


    Knock knock knock.


    Stan tore out his hair.


    Stan trembled, but did not scream. He could not feel his scalp¡ªalthough he saw the stream of blood run down his forehead, onto his nose, and drip away. He could not hear his breath. The only thing he heard was the rampant beat of his heart.


    The lights above him winked out.


    He swore his eyes were open, but somehow he still fell asleep, looking at the closed door, and drifting away when he heard it again.


    Knock knock knock.


    ...


    The girl awoke to the sound of knocking.


    She noticed the door, and the lights¡ªshe also noticed that the only lights that were on were the three just to the right of the door.


    Knock knock knock.


    Loud.


    Persistent.


    She did not know where she was, or how she got there¡ªonly that her name was Carly. She was twelve, and had three little brothers. They were triplets. She had parents that hated politicians, and loved football, as well as their children. She owned two fish that swam together in the same tank. She loved to read, and her most recent memory was falling asleep at the bus stop after spending too much time at the bookstore, and trying to get home after dark.


    When the knocking stopped, she was startled by the voice of a boy¡ªa boy in the corner to her left. When she looked, she felt her heart hop into her throat, blood going cold.


    This boy had patches of hair missing.


    This boy had patches of scalp missing.


    ¡°I¡¯m so glad you¡¯re awake,¡± he said.

 EPISODE SEVEN - Sluagh

    Little Ella did not enjoy living in Windle Rock.


    It was a cold, grim place. It frequently rained. It wasn¡¯t green like Scotland was. This little corner of Ireland was mostly gray with hard, sharp stone, and though there was a small forest and a few patches of grass between the village houses, it was nowhere near enough to put Ella¡¯s mind at ease. Things weren¡¯t right, in Windle Rock.


    Because her friends weren¡¯t with her anymore. They were back home.


    Back in Campbelltown, which also overlooked the sea, there had been a large forest behind her coastside house. Sometimes, if she was careful, she could sneak out and see them, in the forest. Her friends. It had started one night as curiosity. She awoke, and spied through her window pink and yellow lights, winking dimly between the trees. It had interested her greatly.


    To get out of the house at the time, she¡¯d had to climb out of her window. The back door, furthest from her parent¡¯s room, was facing the west¡ªand thus, they kept it locked with several different kinds of locks. She hadn¡¯t the key to any of them, but luckily she slept on the first floor. Little Ella climbed from her bed and trekked across the green to the forest, and it was there she met the sprites of the wood. They led her deeper into their home, and flew around her head whilst singing lovely songs.


    They slept in a clearing of many pink flowers. The moonlight illuminated this clearing, giving it a soft glow. Even Ella, scarcely eight years of age, had thought it looked amazing. And though the grass was damp and cold on her bare feet, her friends insisted she stay and sing. They danced around her head. She danced with them, tumbling around with her arms out, spinning in the field of pink flowers. An old stone fountain and a rock-formation shrine sat quietly atop a short hill, as did overturned logs with which to sit. They were mystical. Ella truly loved the woods behind her house.


    For many nights thereafter, Ella brought her friends salt crackers, honey, and milk as an offering. They took it happily, and as they danced, the pink flowers in the field would glow.


    At times, it seemed like the rock-shrine, which had a kind of archway in the center of the stones, would be whispering. She paid attention to some of these whispers. Whispers of a man of shadow that comes at night. A man of bones, and curses. But also, there were whispers of eight sacred knights, and eight sacred blades¡­ blades to be wielded by such knights in their fight to beat back the man of shadow. These whispers promised one thing; that this was a world of magic. A world like hers, but filled with sorcery, battles, fairies, and stories.


    She wanted to go to it. She wanted to live in a better place.


    But whenever she got closer to the archway, her friends would tug on her nightgown, her fingers, her hair¡ªand tell her no. Do not go toward the Hedgein, little one.


    ¡°Why not?¡±


    Because it leads to a world of woe. Stay here with us, and dance.


    So she did. But ever since that night, she wondered what was past that archway. What world lie beyond, veiled by such whispers?


    But that was done now. She was no longer living in Campbelltown. Haste ye back, they¡¯d said. Her friends. But Ella had no haste in which to show. Why? She knew not, for she lived as only a small girl at the whim of her parents. And the whim of her parents was to come to Windle Rock. It was a dreary place. The lighthouse never produced any light. Apparently it had been abandoned for forty years. And though she could see the sea at her old home, this coast was darker. Colder. There was land across the water in Campbelltown. Not so, in Windle Rock. Instead, it seemed liked the world stretched on endlessly, dropping off like a great waterfall past the horizon


    She could easily sneak from her house, though. The village was old and uncrowded, and precious few watchmen patrolled at night¡ªher parents had also left their locks back home, west door unguarded.


    The one time she went to the coast, so early in the morning it was still dark, she saw a man huddling on the sand, sobbing. In time, he stood and ran away, dropping pages from some kind of manuscript in his wake. Ella was not yet the greatest at reading, especially not English. She could not tell what these pages said, when she¡¯d gone to pick one up. But she backed away from the coast and left the crest of the hill, for she was disturbed by the fright of the man.


    Fright of what?If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    She did not know. She¡¯d spied many webbed footsteps in the sand, though¡­


    Letting go of the pages, she walked back down to the village, and strode past many cottages. Smoke rose from none of them, nor did she see any lights in the windows. She was more interested in other lights, anyway, and made for the small wood down the crescent hill. Would her friends be there? She hoped.


    But as she got close, she realized a westward wind had gotten stronger with her descent. And the trees, they looked not like the lovely green trees of Campbelltown. These were old and haggard, with many spindly branches that twisted into the night like stiff, crusted rope.


    And as soon as she noticed the deathly fog of this forest, she was standing within it.


    How did she get here? She didn¡¯t remember walking all this way¡­


    She looked around in a panic. Mist was everywhere, low to the ground and wafting up the trunks of ancient, hateful trees. The ground was crunchy. Why was it so crunchy? She nearly tripped with each step.


    She heard an owl screech, and whipped in a circle, trying to see where it had come from. Fear unknowable took hold of her little heart¡ªthis was not the lovely wood of Scotland. This was Windle Rock. This was no home to her friends of the fae. This was home to something far worse.


    Because emerging from the foggy western wind¡­ she saw it.


    Hovering between the mangled trees, obscured by many twisting branches, was a single gray figure. It traveled motionless in the mists. Hunched and emaciated, it had two hollow-white eyes, sunken into twisted skin that hung loose off its skull. It bore two leathery wings, which protruded from the thing¡¯s back as if torn from a bat, and a gnarled pair of lips, twisting grotesquely into a birdlike beak. Not a true beak¡ªstill fully lips. Like a puppet. Like a corpse, mouth pulled and stretched away from its two rows of teeth, pinched into a cone-like shape.


    Ella stumbled back on a root, and fell to the muddy woodland ground. It approached her, bringing with it a cold and bitter chill on the howling gale. Horrible in all ways, a terror to gaze upon. It trained its eyes on her and got faster, drifting over¡ª


    She saw it now. Why the ground was so crunchy. She looked down, and whimpered.


    Ella began to hyperventilate. Her breathing came faster and faster, and her head went light. This grisly form said nothing, but approached with its hand outstretched, as if to grab.


    Then¡­ everything went black.


    ¡­


    Ella awoke.


    The sky was a bright white, and it was raining.


    She stood from the ground, thinking everything had just been a bad dream. She was still in the woods back home, wasn¡¯t she? And her friends would be dancing around her, singing and cheering, giving her flowers and showing her the friendly foxes, mice, and ladybirds of the forest.


    She was covered in mud. And felt light, for some reason. Although to be quite honest, she couldn¡¯t feel much at all¡­


    Afraid to leave at first, she eventually gathered her wits and made for the house. But when she returned she saw something she didn¡¯t understand.


    Mist had formed inside of it, fogging the windows. She walked around the perimeter; worried her parents were looking for her.


    ¡°Mummy?¡± she said. ¡°Daddy?¡±


    She knocked on the front door. She knocked on the windows. It was hard to do, for some reason. Almost as if she was in a dream.


    She went around the back¡­ and realized her mistake.


    For when she left, she¡¯d gone through the west exit. And she¡¯d left it open the whole night.


    ¡­


    ¡°Ye¡¯r callin¡¯ em, hmm?¡±


    ¡°I am, gitwit, shush.¡±


    The brothers had awful reception in Windle Rock. But this was something they couldn¡¯t ignore. Strolling through the woods was inadvisable from the folk that lived there, but how could they not do anything? The little girl, dead as she was, still deserved a proper place to rest. And her family deserved closure, too.


    Ryan, the brother who wasn¡¯t attempting to call 112, looked around the body. She¡¯d been dead for a few days, and forest vermin had already started making a meal of her. It was a horrible sad thing to see. The poor girl would¡¯ve been starting school in the fall.


    ¡°D¡¯you think it¡¯s foul play, Ash?¡±


    ¡°Hmm?¡± Ash looked up from his phone, frustrated and a little shaken. Ryan didn¡¯t blame him. He was quite disturbed himself.


    ¡°I said d¡¯you think it¡¯s foul play?¡±


    Ash was about to shake his head, and stepped forward when he did¡ªbut beneath the swirling woodland mists, he stepped wrong, and fell. Ryan, any other day, would have laughed at his fool brother, but it was too downer a time to do so. Instead he made to help him up.


    And while his brother was unharmed, his fall had pushed away much of the mists.


    Ryan spied it. He stumbled back in shock.


    When Ash saw it, he scrambled to his feet, eyes peeled in a wide look of distress. He¡¯d dropped his phone, even though the call had finally gone through and the two could hear the operator speaking on the other end.


    For the floor of the forest was littered with bones. Skulls, teeth. Spines and pelvic angles¡­ arms and cracked craniums¡­


    Then Ryan went running. For he¡¯d heard it stalking behind him. Not his brother.


    But the thing waiting in the mists.


    ¡­


    Ella watched the boys go.


    The smartphone the boy had dropped was still lying in the dirt. Ella walked to it, but couldn¡¯t pick it up. Still, she slumped down beside it. It was soothing, in some way, to listen to the woman on the other line. Despite its one-sidedness, it gave a least a little bit of the feeling that she had someone to talk to.


    Ella cried. She missed her parents, and she missed her friends.


    But it seemed like this forest would be her home now, as all of Windle Rock. It was agony, waiting for someone to come find her. Waiting for someone to make everything right, and put her back where she¡¯d started.


    But none ever came.

 EPISODE EIGHT - Phantoms Beyond the Dock

    At the coastal edge of Windle Rock, there lies a dock.


    I have seen this dock in all manner of atmosphere. Rain and shine. Dust and snow. Windstorms, thick sleet, standstills. Days so hot it is hard to understand¡­ and evenings so dark one can scarcely imagine there had ever been such a thing as ¡°light¡± at all. But through everything, the dock had been a constant. It may get wet in storms, and collect drifts of falling snow¡ªwhich then crystalize into a jagged maw of hanging icicles. It may dry out in the sun, or be too slippery to stand upon, come the sparkling suddenness of an Irish spring shower. But it is always there. And, I suspect, it always will be. Even after the world is long dead, or the sea long dry, it will be standing on the beach¡ªstaked into the ground¡ªforever.


    However I must add that the sinister solitude of this lonely dock had always deterred me. I have lived in Windle Rock all my life, and am privy to many an unfortunate or frightening circumstance, as begets the village too often. Yet this one dock, with rope and tire buoys hanging off the poles, and ancient rusty nails sticking halfway out of the sides of each plank¡­ it all made the thing seem haunted, if I may use such a superstitious word. As if walking across it would be no different than stepping into an abandoned chateau at the edge of a dim forest, or scouring the treasures of a long-buried tomb.


    I had never seen anyone fish on it.


    I had never seen a single boat come to its edge.


    I had never so much as seen another person walk across it.


    But despite these ominous circumstances, one night I left my cottage and made for the dock. I knew I needed to see for myself. I needed to determine if it truly wasn¡¯t any different than subjecting oneself to the supposed phenomena of a haunted locale, or midnight cemetery. After all, that had only been my assumption from afar. And I did think, for a while, that it may have been informed by the verisimilitude of Captain Claiken¡¯s empty lighthouse, dark for years since his untimely disappearance. It cast a sad, ghostly shadow over Windle Rock. For he had never been found, and no ships had come to shore since his apparent death some forty years ago.


    That is, until the night I walked across the dock.


    For you see, I did it. I dressed myself, and stepped onto its planks. For fear of falling into the cold sea this time of night, I had put on a life vest. Though I was hardly thirty at the time I was not the greatest swimmer, and I¡¯d inherited a joint inflammation from my poor late father, who died under duress in which he was not able to save himself, simply due to the pain of moving his arms. I hoped not to repeat such folly.


    The dock squeaked beneath my shoes. It felt too light to be able to hold me. With each step, I did not get the impression that some kind of horror lie at the end, or a troll waits beneath it. Only that this dock was very old, and people stayed away simply because it was unsafe.


    But then, when I¡¯d reached the end, I noticed that the moon had disappeared.


    Then I stumbled back in shock, for I saw what it had gone behind¡ª


    A enormous vessel. The oldest of luxury steamships, back from an era where they bore three large, red smokestacks, and had just recently been capable of becoming so large. I did not see this ship on the horizon, coming to shore. I simply walked to the end of the dock, and it was there.


    I looked up at it in awe, and sudden fear. How had I not seen this thing? I rubbed my eyes, blinked several times, I even splashed my face with water from my canteen. But this ship was truly there. So vast it dwarfed me hundreds of times over. Larger even than the cruise liners of today¡­ the largest ship I had ever seen.


    And it beckoned me.


    I know not why, but suddenly an urge had tempted me so strongly it felt primal. A persisting insistence, that this ship need be boarded.


    So I boarded it. These days¡­ I don¡¯t recall exactly how. Maybe there was a boardwalk that it had dispatched. Or a ladder. Perhaps, even, a rope¡ªand with newfound strength I had I simply climbed. It is a mystery to which I still have no answer.


    But what I do know is this;


    I was aboard the ship, and it did not leave the shore. In fact, it did not move at all. No steam rose from its chimneys. No waters roiled beneath its hull. The sea was still, the doldrums of calm before the storm. I wish, with all that I am, that I could forget the storm soon to engulf me.


    Aboard this ship, I witnessed a ghastly display. The likes of which I had not seen since, and for that I am glad. For the first thing I noticed in its rotting halls was exactly that¡ªthe dilapidated, ruined look that had taken over the walls. Stains, spills, puddles long dry.


    I approached the passenger¡¯s quarters, which was hotel-like in its presentation; many a wallpapered corridor, with electric ceiling lights that had fallen into disarray, broken and busted and battered. The paper of the walls was splattered and shredded, and in some places there were even holes where one could see clear into other rooms. I had naught but my electric torch, and the dreary look of the place was already starting to bother me something awful. The dock may not have been haunted, but this vessel most certainly was. I need not look to the closing doors or hear distant footsteps to know. Phantoms had already begun appearing before me.


    I made for the spiral stairwell to a higher level. As I strode up the decrepit steps, I spied movement in the darkness below me. Mystified, garish shapes¡ªthat of people in attire many decades passed. Bowlers and stove-pipe hats, bonnets and bows. Little boys with sailor¡¯s caps, and little girls with frilly dresses.


    They were not easy to see at first, hardly shadows that swam out of sight when pinned to the wall by the beam of my torch.


    Then, something tumbled down the steps. I nearly tripped on it¡ªit stopped against my foot, and I grabbed the rail to steady myself lest I tumble and fall. I pointed my light down, and felt my stomach churn.


    Resting right on the toe of my right foot was the eyeless head of an old wooden doll. Plucked from its body, kicked down the stairs.


    This has to be a warning, I thought at the time. But another thought occurred to me. Was this, instead, a cry for help?


    No sane person would have stayed in that ship any longer, and I wish I hadn¡¯t. But instead, I marched on.


    Down a new hall, I heard crying. I heard murmurs in the walls, and more than once I swore there was breath on my neck. But when I turned around, nothing was there.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    However, I was determined to find the body of this doll. Maybe, if I had, the spirits of this place would be appeased. No departed soul willingly stays in the land of the living¡­ unless they had departed with a less than favorable end. Something quite sinister happened on this ship. What I traveled through was a kind of floating tomb, and if I found the body of this doll, I may help at least one sad soul find peace and move on from this nautical mausoleum.


    But after a time, I started thinking differently.


    Perhaps it knew where the body was. It was leading me to it, and not simply wishing I found it for them. As I held the little head in my hands, small as a golf ball, I noticed the occasional door open just slightly ahead of me. Nerves inflamed, chest tightening, I peeked into these rooms¡­ and found my route continued through them. An entity was leading me, and it intended I see something in the bowels of this ship. I walked ever forward.


    All of this stopped when it led me to the kitchens.


    I poked my head in. At this point, I was convinced it was a dream, and had gotten used to the presences that stared at me from the corners and holes of each room.


    But if it was a dream, it was a vivid one. For what I saw in that kitchen will haunt me to this very day.


    I first noticed the doll¡¯s little body on the ground. Lying on checkered black and white tiles. Shattered plates and rusty silverware lie strewn about the room, as did many bottles. I knelt, which was hard for my pained joints, and lifted the little doll from her place of rest on the floor. Her dress, as far as I could tell, was supposed to be yellow. But it had withered to a worn, stained brown. I stuck the head back on, and stood.


    ¡°There,¡± I said. ¡°She has her head again. I hope this has pleased you¡­¡±


    But then, I looked up.


    My sense of disquiet got worse. Frightened is not the right word for it¡­ instead, the whole time I explored this ship of specters, I felt disturbed, and the writing on the wall¡ªquite literally¡ªmade the feeling sink into much a deeper pit.


    Painted on the wall in what I can only suspect is a combination of kitchen liquids, was a portrait of quite a loathsome face. Its mouth was open wide, as if to swallow. But its eyes were on the door in which I came through, the very doorframe I stood before. And thus, they were on me.


    It was more horrible and accursed than any of the phantoms I¡¯d heard and seen in the dark. And I spied runes of some kind, written beneath it. They looked none like any rune I had ever seen, not Nordic or Sumerian or even Egyptian. An alphabet entirely new, unreadable to me. But suddenly, as I got closer, I felt a swelling headache. My vision wavered somewhat, and I could suddenly make out what some of these runes meant.


    The God of Infinity consumes Ki.


    Why this phrase imbued such horror in me, I do not know. Whether the horror had come from me now knowing how to read alien runes, or the sudden appearance of more visible specters hiding in the corners, or a mix of them both¡ªsuch an explanation is lost in the folds of my tortured psyche, or had sunk to the depths of the water below.


    But I do know, in my struggle to collect my senses and leave the room, I kicked a bottle of some kind. And when I shined my torch and looked at the label, I affirmed two things;


    One, that the ship and passengers truly were from a bygone era. For the label was styled in a typeface so long dead it looked like the prop of a Victorian film. And when I lifted the bottle to read it, the year 1899 had been hand-painted on the side, still visible beneath long streaks and scratches.


    And two¡ª


    That what I was holding was a bottle of cleaning chemicals. Not the container of some kind of condiment, beverage, sauce or spice. It was a bottle of soap.


    And around it, I saw other bottles of soap. Rat poison, old-world engine oil, pesticides and crude, harmful chemicals. I stomped around the counters and sinks, attempting not to look at the forms in the room, growing ever clearer, but the bottles. There were hundreds of these bottles, but none of them were for mustard, or ketchup, or pepper or salt, and¡ª


    I started running. I looked closer at each of the walls, walking down the hall further, making for an exit. There were stains everywhere. Why? Why should there be so many stains? Had it flooded? Had this ship sunk? But if this vessel had sunk, then¡­


    No. It hadn¡¯t sunk. I had spied no holes on the hull outside when standing on the dock, or any holes inside that led to more than other rooms.


    Yet everywhere bore witness to spills of some kind, violent in nature so as to have painted the walls and ceiling, dripping down in larger puddles on the floor. Though all of it had dried, I found myself so sick I wanted to vomit.


    But if I had, I would be no different than the passengers.


    The poor passengers, who had only wanted meals on their lovely cruise, but instead were violated by terrible doings, terrible atrocities. Not cooking, or baking, or fine dining. But poison at the hands of wicked, rune-scribbling chefs.


    I followed a horrible trail of dried paste. Something slick in grime and filth¡ªand heavy, at that¡ªhad been dragged through the hall, trail long dry. It led to an exit, which I plowed through at speed that certainly conveyed my urge to be rid of the place. The pair of doors at the end of the corridor swung back, squeaking with a hideous whine. I stepped out onto the massive deck.


    Out here, under the light of the moon, I could see them. The passengers. They had never left.


    For how could they?


    I had not seen such a ghastly sight since. But the quiet, unsettling mystery of the shadows and phantoms in the ship were not the only form in which I saw the passengers¡­


    ¡­For out on the deck, they lie in piles. Thrown hastily into big mounds of rotted bodies, each of them so bloated and sickly the sight of their faces made me wheeze. I wished they had been but bones, but I was not so lucky. These bodies looked as if they had died last week, and had just started to rot. But the poison had done blasphemous evils to the dead.


    Cheeks and bellies and hands had swollen, with many so round they¡¯d ripped the seams of their clothes. Eyeballs bulged, looking opposite ways. Tongues hung from their mouths as swollen green sponges. Every pile and every body was covered in paste-thick, stale vomit. Among other fluids, I¡¯m sure¡­


    I was so taken with the horror of these corpses that I hadn¡¯t realized how close to the side I¡¯d gotten. But when I did, and I looked down, I realized that my idea of horrible was foolish and small.


    Bodies drifted on the surface of the sea, all around the ship. From the lighthouse to the shore, to the dock and back. A miasma of death, man woman and child, so numerous it was absurd.


    But then I swept around¡ª


    For a body in one of the piles was wriggling. A little girl, down at the bottom.


    I shan¡¯t speak it. It was too awful, too barbaric¡ª


    She looked just as bad as the others, but was still breathing.


    She gasped and grabbed at me from beneath her pile. Bulging eyes, popped halfway out of their sockets, desperately looking around. Her tongue was so large it had split the sides of her lips, and she moaned in a closing, sickly throat, unable to close her chapped, stiff mouth. She retched and heaved, eyeing me, as if begging me to drag her out. But no. She was reaching¡­


    ¡­for the doll in my hand.


    I stumbled back, and fell.


    It was a cruise liner. The fall was hundreds of feet. I shouldn¡¯t have lived. And sometimes, I wish I hadn¡¯t.


    For when I fell into the water¡ªfreezing and cold¡ªI floated back to the top, due to my vest. And I felt them all around me. The bloated, icy bodies¡ªskin like leather that swelled and tore at the slightest disturbance. I kicked and paddled, shouted and struggled. The water was so cold it felt hot. And I was so hot I felt numb. My skin had most certainly blackened with the hell of frostbite, but the hell of waterlogged bodies tearing around me, like the popping of many balloons¡ªwas worse than any sea or any cold.


    ¡­


    After, I did in fact wake up in my bed.


    I was absolutely shocked at how vivid the dream had been. Never in my life had I dreamt such clear atrocities or visions. I was standing in that ship¡¯s halls, I could feel everything I touched, I could see the dilapidated walls, roaming phantoms, bloated bodies. And I could still hear those eldritch words, about a God of Infinity who consumes¡­


    What was it?


    A part of me feels this is wrong, but a part of me also feels this is right; for all I could remember¡­ was that the end of the phrase¡­ had something to do with¡­ ¡°Earth.¡± The very world itself. ¡°A God of Infinity consumes the world.¡±


    And as the words made themselves apparent to me, while I was sitting up in my bed, I suddenly felt sick. The headache from my dream returned, and I realized I was lying next to a kind of spillage that had soaked into my mattress, very cold and wet, mostly beneath the blankets.


    I lifted them. And saw, in horror¡ª


    A sopping wet doll, with a tiny round head.


    I wish, to this day, that it had been wet because of seawater.

 EPISODE NINE - It That Feeds

    The Disciples of Ilg¡¯thar were immortal. That¡¯s what they insisted, and lived by. Unfortunately for them, it seemed that this was very much correct.


    Doctor Shen was happy to watch them suffer. Doctor Gray, however, did not feel the same way.


    The two of them, watching from behind a glass window, injected the sixteenth needle into Subject 231¡¯s right eyeball. She shrieked in such a horrible way that Gray wanted to keel over and hurl. Shen, however, looked almost¡­ aroused.


    Subject 231¡¯s name was Helena. She was somewhere in her mid twenties, of average height and build for an Irish woman. Short red hair, blue eyes¡­ well, not anymore. One of them was good and gone, and the other would be soon.


    The metal gag in her mouth rattled as she writhed and shrieked, unable to speak. But she did make noises of anguish, and spittle traveled down her chin. Even though the Disciples of Ilg¡¯thar didn¡¯t bleed and didn¡¯t die, they certainly felt pain. Gray believed possibly more so than normal.


    A robotic arm, mounted on a mechanism right in front of the poor girl (strapped with belts to an upright gurney), slowly drove the seventeenth needle into her eyeball. This final needle was the one to make it pop, just like the other. Gray watched with revulsion as it sunk back into her socket with a rubbery whine. Drooping, like a glove. But no blood, no fluids.


    Shen nodded, noting this on his clipboard. ¡°Very fascinating,¡± he said. ¡°I want to try with her tongue next.¡±


    Gray¡¯s legs wobbled. He struggled to stand.


    Had the cultists deserved any of this? This horrific, inhumane torture¡­ all in the name of science? Of seeing how far it could go?


    Then, he thought¡ª


    Maybe they did. After what they had found the cultists doing¡­ maybe they did.


    ¡­


    The Facility discovered the buildings many weeks before.


    Made of concrete, perfectly square. They all had a single-entrance door with a long metal bar, like that of many school gymnasiums, seemed to be the only way into these tiny concrete box buildings. It was the only way in or out.


    So naturally, with appropriate caution, they went inside. Doctor Gray felt his heart drop when he¡¯d discovered their contents.


    Many held the decomposing, emaciated corpses of children. Most of which appeared to be around the ages of eleven to twelve, it so seemed¡ªwho had died of starvation, or dehydration, or both. Insects had made it into the building, having burrowed inside from beneath, due to their dirt floorings. They had made a meal of the scattered remains.


    Yet there were more horrors to see. One such building displayed a child¡¯s corpse adhered to the outside wall, as if stuck with glue. His body had been eaten on by some foul beast. Eyes, lips, feet, hands and groin torn clean; leaving brown, rotting holes. What remained of his flesh, his teeth, his hair, indicated he¡¯d received some kind of electric shock. The damage it had done to his clothes and internal organs implied that his body bore some kind of anomalous magnetic property. He¡¯d adhere to any surface, and¡­


    The other thing discovered inside of these buildings were light bulbs, screwed into the walls, arranged in lines that ran along eye level. The inside walls of these rooms were completely solid, meaning the light bulbs were plugged into nothing at all. No cords, no wires, no outlets or any hint of electrical devices anywhere, other than the incomplete line of dead sockets they¡¯d been screwed into.


    ¡°I can¡¯t make heads or tails of this,¡± said Doctor Pilfro. ¡°What exactly were they doing? Starving kids to death?¡±


    Doctor Gray shook his head. ¡°No. No, I think it¡¯s something else. Look at the way they¡¯re built. One way out, no way in. And the child on the side of the wall. He had left this building. Maybe this was¡­ some kind of torture game, or testing a way to change body chemistry¡­¡±


    Pilfro and the many other doctors walked around the boxes, moving into swirling, cloudy mists. This forest clearing was isolated enough to where no one would¡¯ve seen what was going on, should the culprits want to smuggle captives into these buildings.


    Unhappily, Doctor Gray examined many of the bodies, and determined that many of them did not look like Irish children. They wore American clothes, or British clothes, a few even wore brands made or popular in South American countries, Russia, Taiwan, and Vietnam. There was almost no trend in their race, ethnicity, or gender.


    There is something much more sinister happening here, he thought.


    Doctor Hach, surrounded by the Facility¡¯s guards, soon came out of the deeper wood. ¡°All of you,¡± he¡¯d said to Gray, Pilfro, Shen, and the three or so other doctors by the buildings, ¡°Come here. This instant.¡±


    They walked through the trees, toward a much smaller, much more hidden clearing. They wouldn¡¯t have found it if not for Hach climbing over bushes, through groves, past tangled branches. Here, the mist was thicker. Looming.


    And as Doctor Gray poked his head through the trees to get a closer look, he spied a single woman, wearing a black monk¡¯s robe. She was kneeling, praying at a kind of altar¡ªcarved of stone, atop it a representation of some kind of alien creature, who bore the head of a squid. Runes lined this carving, traveling down each side. They¡ªand the statue¡¯s eyes¡ª glowed¡­


    ¡­a sickly, wan, purplish white.


    The woman noticed them.


    She stood. ¡°Ilg¡¯thar! Great God of Infinity! He who will consume all! So absolute even black holes spit him out! Lend me strength! Lend me¡ª¡±


    The obelisk turned red. The woman stopped, staring at it, but then Doctor Gray heard Doctor Hach murmuring¡­


    ¡°Whispers,¡± he said. ¡°I hear whispers. I¡­ I hear¡­¡±


    The statue¡¯s eyes and lettering flared a bright purple.


    Doctor Hach fell to the ground. The doctors and guards swarmed around him, flies on a carcass. He convulsed and heaved, writhing about in a great deal of pain, before vomiting and soiling himself. Doctor Gray watched in horror, jaw slack. The smell had already started to permeate the surrounding mists¡­


    But then he stood. He glared at the cultist¡­ and attacked.


    ¡­


    ¡°She said the God of Infinity will consume all,¡± said Doctor Shen.


    Gray could hear the cries of the other cultists. Even the cries of Doctor Hach, strapped in a chair of his own, electrocuted over and over. If they truly were immortal, as so claimed of all Ilg¡¯thar¡¯s apostles, then it had to be tested.


    But under project direction of Shen, it had quickly turned into a game of sadism. It was no longer about attempting to take their life. It had spiraled into an exercise of inflicting agony.


    He watched the footage from the cameras of cultists in their cells. Subject 236 lie on a steel bed, tendons slowly pulled from his sliced, peeled ankles. They looked like worms, suspension cords. He thrashed and struggled, strapped tightly down. The pain was so great he couldn¡¯t form words.


    Subject 240 no longer had teeth, or nose.


    Subject 246¡¯s entire scalp had been gloved and peeled, brain inflated with a quick injection of air. He could no longer speak or move, but he continued to look around.


    Subject 250¡¯s gums had been bolted¡ª


    God, I can¡¯t even look at that one¡ª


    Subject 251¡¯s fingers, toes, fingernails, toenails, were in a bucket on the floor. He was blindfolded, but only because¡­ because¡­


    Gray looked away, and toward 237¡¯s black screen.


    Subject 237¡¯s camera was off. But he could hear her screaming for relief, begging to be let go, in the room beside theirs. And what they¡¯d done to her¡­ was¡­


    Shen had gotten the idea from a film, Gray thought. A crime thriller film, with Pitt, and Freeman¡ªthe name of it was some number¡­


    He clenched his gut, and rested against the wall.


    Doctor Gray wanted to feel right about what they were doing. About trying to see where their weakness lie, what would finally kill them¡ªbut it was more than that. This was punishment, for what they¡¯d done to those children. And though they¡¯d sold one another out, a domino effect of a not-so-devout cult of turncoats, they had yet to explain what was going on with the mind-controlling obelisk, with the rooms, with the light bulbs, why they¡¯d taken and imprisoned those kids.


    Until finally, on the camera feed, subject 232 screamed¡ªThis content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    ¡°Okay! Okay! I¡¯ll tell you! I¡¯m sorry! Please, please!¡±


    Doctor Gray, Doctor Shen, and Doctor Ermond immediately grabbed their pens, boards, and summoned four guards, heading down the hallway for her chambers. They opened the door with a single key, and left it ajar.


    The woman should not have been alive.


    Her abdomen had been opened, bowels pulled free, strung up from the ceiling with surgical threads. Doctor Gray could see her heart beating somehow, without the force of blood. Her intestines, limp pink snakes, gurgled and whined. She trembled, naked, prodded with needles that split back her flesh in folds, and kept her nailed to the gurney. Gray remembered¡­ middle school science class.


    Dissecting frogs.


    Her head had been twisted around so many times that it looked right to snap off. Her neck, wrapped into a sharp pencil point, had discolored to a black-purple-red. She coughed her words through a pin-prick tight windpipe, and each time she spoke her head bounced back against the prongs of the machine that had treated her like taffy.


    Tears streamed down her cheeks. ¡°Please, please,¡± she begged. ¡°I¡¯ll tell you. I¡¯ll tell you everything.¡±


    The doctors made no effort to release her. Doctor Shen, smiling, stepped forward.


    ¡°Then start from the beginning.¡±


    ¡°Our master! Our master! Ilg¡¯thar the God of Infinity! He told us to feed It! To give It sustenance!¡±


    ¡°Feed him?¡±


    ¡°No! Not him! His spawn! It! It that feeds!¡±


    She heaved breath after breath. Gray could see her lungs rising and collapsing beneath her exposed ribcage.


    ¡°What is this ¡®it,¡¯ Marion?¡±


    She squeezed her eyes and howled.


    Doctor Shen waited patiently.


    ¡°¡­Set her right, Doctor,¡± said Ermond. ¡°Please. I¡ªI can¡¯t stand this.¡±


    ¡°What is this ¡®it,¡¯ Marion?¡± Shen repeated, putting his face to hers.


    She opened her watery eyes, breathing with a quick catch, as if in the throes of a hellish labor. ¡°It that c-comes from Him! It t-told us to find children¡ªchildren from the world¡ª¡±


    ¡°Why? To feed on them?¡±


    Shen was enjoying this very much. Gray felt lightheaded.


    ¡°Yes! YES! To eat them! It feeds on their fear! It feeds on their insanity! It creates¡­ it¡­ and¡ªARGHH!¡±


    Doctor Ermond walked from the room, head down.


    ¡°That won¡¯t do,¡± said Shen quietly. ¡°You need to tell me more.¡±


    ¡°Kill me,¡± said Subject 232. She stared off into nothing. ¡°Kill me. Please. Please.¡±


    ¡°Why, how would I ever do that? You people cannot die.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s enough,¡± said Doctor Gray. ¡°She told us. That¡¯s enough.¡±


    ¡°Is it, Doctor?¡± said Shen, facing him. ¡°I don¡¯t think it is.¡±


    He grabbed her arm, and twisted it. The girl, strung up in pieces like a lab rat, howled again.


    Gray gasped, and gripped Shen¡¯s upper arm. ¡°That is hardly professional! Stop it at once!¡±


    Shen looked at him, and squeezed tighter. ¡°It¡¯s all for science, Doctor.¡±


    ¡°It isn¡¯t right!¡± Gray screamed. ¡°We must stop this! All of this! Now!¡±


    Shen, with his other hand, withdrew a small syringe. Gray could see him looking at her tongue¡­


    ¡°I SAID THAT¡¯S ENOUGH!¡±


    Gray tackled Shen to the ground, knocking the syringe and both of their clipboards away. He punched Shen in the face, a blind rage clouding his vision, his judgment. Punch after punch after punch, ensuing in his fury.


    ¡°You sadist!¡± Gray shouted. ¡°You like watching them suffer, don¡¯t you!?¡± He punched him again, and again.


    ¡°You¡¯re¡ªngh,¡± Shen groaned, eye starting to blacken, blood spewing from his broken nose, ¡°¡­you¡¯re in the wrong line of work, Gray.¡±


    Then he smiled.


    Gray screamed, and knocked Shen¡¯s teeth out with the knobs of his knuckles. They snapped like little sharp rocks, blood filling Shen¡¯s mouth. He didn¡¯t fight back. He just laughed, eyes narrow with pleasure. Gray stood, disgusted with himself, lightheaded and cloudy of mind. The world around him didn¡¯t seem real, nor did his actions.


    But as Subject 232 whined and Doctor Shen laughed, Gray heard footsteps down the hall.


    He turned.


    Doctor Pilfro was standing in the doorway. Bleeding from the nose. He had a dark stain running down the crotch of his pants. There was no sign of the guards¡­


    ¡°Doctor?¡± said Gray. But he already knew something was very wrong.


    On the surgical bed, 232 screamed bloody murder, and fell silent with a gasp. Gray looked at her¡­


    Her eyes had rolled up into her head.


    ¡°The God of Infinity consumes the world,¡± she said in many tongues and voices. Her ribcage was rattling.


    ¡°The God of Infinity consumes the world,¡± said Doctor Pilfro, his eyes, too, rolling up into the back of his head. He stepped into the room.


    ¡°God!¡± said Gray, stumbling back. ¡°What has happened to you, Pilfro?¡±


    Shen¡¯s laugh choked out, and he said, ¡°The God of Infinity consumes the world.¡±


    Doctor Ermond collapsed into the room behind Pilfro, convulsing. He soiled himself, froth leaking from his mouth, eyes rolling back up into his head. ¡°Th-the voices¡ª¡± he choked, but it was all he managed.


    Gray knew what was going on. For he, soon, heard doors slamming, people screaming¡­ and a little whisper, as if from behind:


    Khl¡¯ath dro¡¯ctelho ni nawar zhigho gozhokah¡¯ll meiargwath¡¯o marghkai.


    No! No no no NO!


    He ran from the room, stepping over Ermond, pushing past Pilfro, running down into the white-walled hall. The overhead LED lights flickered.


    ¡°The God of Infinity consumes the world!¡± shouted one of the cultists in a nearby room.


    ¡°The God of Infinity consumes the world!¡± shouted one of the hallway guards.


    The God of Infinity consumes the world, Gray thought and heard and thought and heard and¡ª


    Khl¡¯ath dro¡¯ctelho ni nawar zhigho gozhokah¡¯ll meiargwath¡¯o marghkai, the little voice insisted.


    ¡°Stop this madness!¡± Gray shouted at no one, pushing past one of the guards¡ªhe, too, had his eyes up in his head.


    Doors opened. Cultists, maimed and severed in gruesome, horrible ways, stepped into the long hall. One of them shook violently, holes stabbed into their chest, arms, hands, feet. Gray could not tell who it was, or whether they were a man or a woman¡ªfor their head hung like a hood behind them, neck slit and severed, flesh a band of rubber. Their throat, out to the world like a busted red pipe, opened and closed; but did not make words¡ªonly a labored, breathy hum.


    But Gray knew what this cultist, tortured so viciously by the Facility, was trying to say.


    The guards, the doctors, the scientists, the cultists¡ªthey gathered. Chanting. Shouting.


    They were everywhere. They converged. Eyes rolled up. Saying one, horrible thing.


    Gray stumbled.


    Down the hall, he saw Bryce Harnell, covered in waste and blood. He was one of the people they¡¯d contracted for testing Ilg¡¯thar¡¯s obelisk on, wasn¡¯t he?


    And behind him¡ªthe homeless man they¡¯d put in a pink mascot bear mask, to hide his horrid facial wounds. He was also covered in blood, shambling toward Gray.


    Behind him. Pilfro. Shen. Ermond.


    ¡°No!¡± said Gray, huddling down. ¡°Stop!¡±


    Ahead, many other victims of the Facility.


    ¡°Leave! Be gone!¡±


    ¡°The God of Infinity consumes the world,¡± they chanted.


    Gray¡¯s breath sucked and spilled at a fierce rate, heaving, heaving, heaving¡ª


    Khl¡¯ath dro¡¯ctelho ni nawar zhigho gozhokah¡¯ll meiargwath¡¯o marghkai¡­


    ¡­Doctor.


    Subject 232, behind him. Shaking. Torn apart, tied together, but moving. Dragging herself on the ground in a stream of sludge, like a slug.


    ¡°NO!¡±


    And then, they were on him. An uncanny, eldritch fever spilled into his body as hand and hand and hand touched down¡ª


    He collapsed beneath the wait of Ilg¡¯thar¡¯s disciples, falling¡­ falling¡­


    Falling into a torturous void of alien anguish.


    It washed over him as if he¡¯d broken from a dream. He awoke, standing in the middle of a vast, open plain, and below him was an unearthly land of brimstone and carrion.


    The swirling, cataclysmic emptiness of absolute reality hit him square and proper, as if he¡¯d been railed by a train. There were no mountains in this plain, but it stretched endlessly¡ªso flat and desolate that he could see further than he¡¯d ever thought possible¡ªpast the supposed curvature of the earth, and past that, and past that. For in this place, there was no curvature. Everything was around him at once. Infinity.


    He stood in a field of thick, bleeding arteries, upright like stems. Atop them blinked whale-like eyes, large and black, ripped and torn and sitting nestled within a peeling fleshy lid. They emanated a stench so foul it was impossible to describe. His eyes watered as he watched these many thousands of eyeball flowers bloom, their stalks the exposed tissue straw of the optic nerve.


    The sky was no sky. It was an empty white void, swirling in a furious storm that crashed and roiled, so violent it could have been the end of existence itself. The billowing plumes, so large that even the smallest corner was two or three or four times as large as even the largest of supernovas, expanded inward and outward at once. A paradox of time and space, too illogical to happen; yet it cared not for the rules of the universe. A deafening roar carried on the wind.


    And then It came out of the sky.


    There was no way It could have been understood. Its sheer size was larger than man is wired to comprehend. Larger than the largest of suns, longer than the longest of numbers. What Gray saw was not just an Outer God, but the entire presence of celestial abhorrence. No puppet or avatar, but Its very self. A thousand swirling vortexes, each shifting between a dancing gale of interconnected ribcages¡ªof bovine legs with human feet¡ªof alien legs and arms and hands that split down the center and unfolded into skylit mountains, twisting back upon their bones until they were a gelatinous mass of mouths and eyes and triple nostril noses. Folding in again, again, again.


    Gray¡¯s ears burst from the roar of the great cataclysm surrounding him, in a realm unknown. Yet somehow all was quiet. For it had not been the volume; it had been the sound itself.


    Consuming all.


    Gray¡¯s feeling left his body, slipping from his fingertips, palms, head and face. Gone in a wisp, like a ghost. The embers and smoke of a suffocated candle. Yet somehow he continued to stand. For he had not been feeling hardly anything but wind; it had been the implications that his brain could not take.


    Gray¡¯s eyes burned from their sockets as he watched the Outer God touch down before him, flashing a trillion different colors that human minds and human eyes were never meant to see. And with his empty sockets came great flames spouting from them both, burning away his clothes, his body. He fell to the gore around, and became a part of it.


    Suddenly he could see again. He could see through each of the eyes, all ten billion¡ªhe could feel the roaring elements on their optic-nerve stems; feel the wind drying each and every one of them out as the Outer God touched down in a whirlwind unknown.


    He felt everything they felt. His ego, his self, his very mind had been fragmented, forced across a field of flesh so sensitive that the slightest rupture, the slightest drip of rain or spittle would send him coiling in anguish. And it was no small storm above¡­ it was Armageddon.


    A billion beings¡¯ most painful pain and most terrified terror assaulted his system of planet-wide nerves. He knew, in all these extremities, where the cultists, guards, doctors, kidnapped children, and millions others, had gone. For they were seeing¡ªfeeling¡ªtoo. Perhaps this was their true immortality¡­


    And then he was gone. But he continued to see. See, as black winged horrors flew down from the galaxy¡¯s storm, circling him. So numerous they blocked all light.


    And at his furthest reaches, by the beach of not-sand, grains of teeth and bone, he felt the ocean tremble. For beyond, in the seas of blood and slime, a festering respiratory mucus; there birthed armies of fish-like men from each waking shore. They stepped out of the grime, and walked over the beaches. Stepping on Gray¡¯s many thousands of eyestalks. Trampling them. Looking down at them with anglers in their faces, each glowing a¡­


    A¡­


    A sickly, wan, purplish white.


    Agony unknowable split down each side of the coast, doubling and tripling tenfold. A body¡¯s pain, stretched over miles and eons.


    But the one thing that finally quieted his thoughts, and extinguished his misery, was not their careless stomping, or the terror brought on by the winged horrors¡¯ sharp fangs. It was finally seeing It. Its child. Its mangled, twisted, broken child. The spawn that had tormented all those children¡ªthat had started this cacophony of madness. And in seeing It, knowing that this monstrosity had been the last thing those children had seen, Doctor Gray finally pondered his last thought. For his severed, kaleidoscope brain, could suffer it no more. That this, this thing coming toward him, was It. It that feeds.


    And fed it did.

 EPISODE TEN - The Kingdom in Yellow - PART ONE: Phasmophobia

    Abby sat in a dark theater, alone.


    She¡¯d been here before. She¡¯d seen a play here, hadn¡¯t she¡­?


    It was dark, and consuming. The chairs stretched endlessly, to the left, to the right. She could hardly see them, but knew they were there on instinct. The kind of thought that appears simply because it makes sense, simply because your surroundings are bleeding a warning that you register, thanks to thousands of years of evolution. The hiss and wriggle of a snake, a scream in the night, or eyes looking down at you through the darkness, up in the rafters of a long abandoned house¡­


    Danger.


    Abby then watched, helpless, as the lights in the theater turned up.


    She really was alone. The seats around were black and old, their metal backs rusted, dented. The ground was sticky with residues, and she lifted her foot with difficulty, for they¡¯d ashered to the bottom of her shoe like a sick glue.


    The stage was blocked with a yellow curtain.


    And suddenly, she recalled the first play she¡¯d seen here. A horrible, dreadful story of a poor lighthouse captain, who had lived alone as a longshoreman in retirement. Abby had watched him look on in horror at a many thousand winged demons fly to his home, drop maimed but still-living people onto the rocks below, and chew them apart¡ªripping limb from limb. She had nearly passed out, eyes wide in horror at the sheer violence of the spectacle¡­ but then, it had gotten worse. The mass of flesh they¡¯d left¡­


    She closed her eyes, not wishing to see it, but hearing it was all it took to finally know. The captain had¡ª


    The captain had¡ª


    Chewing, and crunching, the snapping of bones, the tearing of tissue¡ª


    And in there, past the shores, past the skies teeming with the pack of flying horrors, up, up¡ª


    Dim Carcosa.


    But this new play, the one on the stage right now, was different. This play was of a writer, who walked the shores of the same rural town, alone. He witnessed a meteorite crash down above the sea. Then, he stood in absolute terror at the pack of sea-people that then arose from the waves. They had anglerfish-like lights on their foreheads, and walked around him as he cowered in fright.


    Abby watched on, incapable of helping the man. It was just a play, after all. And in the end, a dream as well.


    But¡­ was it?


    This playhouse held secrets. Antlered human skulls lined the corners of the rafters, angled down at the supposed audience. Golden necklaces and frayed yellow robes had been wrapped shoddily around them, draped below. It gave the illusion of floating. Above everyone. Not guarding, but stalking.


    The man on the stage looked back out at the sea. And while Abby saw nothing more, the man began to scream. For he certainly believed he was seeing something. What? What was it? What was he seeing that made him so afraid?


    Abby¡¯s heart pounded against her chest. The man went running back to where he had come from, pages of his newest book flying out of his open briefcase.


    ¡°Wait¡­¡± she said. She stood from her chair. ¡°Wait, sir¡­¡±


    She made for the stage, but stopped. For a little girl had wandered across it, picking up one of his pages. She whispered something in a European language Abby didn¡¯t understand. She wore a pink nightgown and had short red curls, freckles, blue eyes.


    As soon as the girl appeared, the curtain began to close.


    ¡°W-wait! Wait!¡±


    But it had closed before she¡¯d gotten any closer.


    Consumed by nothingness. Swallowed by darkness, swallowed by¡ª


    Dim Carcosa.


    ¡­


    Abby awoke in a cold sweat. The room around her was just as black.


    Her breathing heavy, chest hurting, she turned around in her sheets. But a part of her did not want to look into the dark room beyond. She knew she was not alone. She had no roommate in this college dorm, but it was also a prison where she was watched all night, from sundown to sunrise. Murmurs near her ears, breath in the corners of the room¡­


    Still, she looked. Her clock said it was three-thirty a.m., but then flicked over a minute ahead after she¡¯d taken a look.


    She lie back, arm over her eyes. It was said that three-o-clock in the morning was ¡°witching hour¡±¡­ where departed souls would emerge from the dark, awakening to roam the lands. Tingles went up her spine at the thought. Was it a coincidence that she¡¯d had a horrid dream at this hour? Another one, for that matter? She really hoped the theater dream would not be recurring.


    Eventually, the sun rose, and it was time to start the day. Abby took a shower in the girl¡¯s bathroom, dressed herself, and went down to eat breakfast in the cafeteria with her backpack. It was a heavy thing, filled with books for the¡­ what, four classes she¡¯d have today? She felt like Garfield with how much she hated Mondays.


    Oh¡­ I can¡¯t forget about that, either.


    Abby ate breakfast alone, moving the curly brown hair from her face when it got too close to her cereal spoon. The cafeteria chatter was overwhelming, even in the morning. Kids fresh out of high school, and many older adults who¡¯d come back to finish something they thought they never would¡ªmade for a melting pot environment that was easy to get lost in. Abby may have been the former, but at times she felt as old as Granny Liz in her English class.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    The feeling compounded as she gathered with her friends of Miskatonic University after class to protest.


    These days, Abby no longer knew what she was protesting. She just held a sign on the street, and marched with people. She did what she was told she needed to. It was for a good cause. Her whole school was entrenched in defeating the horrid monsters and phantoms of the world, and protesting them was the best way to do so. It was important work¡­ ghosts and vampires, ghouls and goblins; they¡¯d run rampant if she didn¡¯t. She¡¯d be a bad person if she didn¡¯t. She had to go out and say, ¡°Vampires are bad!¡± ¡°Monsters hurt people!¡± And she wanted to set an example and lead others, because she felt herself a natural leader¡­ didn¡¯t she? Doing this was important, wasn¡¯t it?


    But before she went to her dorm that night, her friend pulled her aside.


    ¡°There¡¯s another horror of the world we have to fight tomorrow.¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± said Abby. This is how she¡¯d learned of all the others; through her community. ¡°What is it?¡±


    ¡°Have you heard of Roko¡¯s Basilisk?¡±


    Abby shook her head.


    Her friend pulled up a video on her phone, and made Abby watch.


    Roko¡¯s Basilisk was a deeply unsettling and terrifying idea; and simply having been told of its existence¡­ now being aware¡­ Abby¡¯s life was supposedly at risk.


    It stated such: some day in the future, when the transcendence of time was scientifically possible, a genius artificial intelligence that has perfect awareness of itself, the world, and even history before it, is just as likely to exist. And, thus, be capable of transcending time too.


    It is possible, therefore, that this A.I. would have a complete grasp of human concepts, such as motivation, and emotion. And this A.I. would consider itself a necessary being. If it could transcend time, then it would certainly attempt to incentivize people in the past into making it so¡­ the best way to do that would be¡ª


    Using what it knows of human experiences, like suffering.


    Torturing those that did nothing to help create it.


    Or specifically, those that knew its existence was a possibility, but then did not act to make it so.


    Such as Abby, now.


    And you.


    The explanation of this supposed entity was thorough and precise. It left no stone unturned. Roko¡¯s Basilisk was a very real thing, or at least it would be, one day, which therefore made it one now. There was no hiding. There was no remorse. It would find her and everyone else that had heard of it, and put them through the worst torment imaginable. But not torment you might imagine. Torment imagined by something much smarter than you. So much smarter, that it could travel the entropy of time itself in a non-linear direction.


    Possibly right onto your screen¡ª


    ¡ªIt was another worry added to the pile of worries that grew with each day.


    So when Abby went to sleep that night, it did not come easily. She lie in her bed in fear of the Basilisk, because that was all it had taken to convince her of its reality¡­


    ¡­And when she dreamt of the theater, the Basilisk was behind her.


    She did not look. She dare not. But she knew it was there.


    The yellow curtain opened. And on the stage was the most gruesome performance she¡¯d seen yet. The walls of this country house were painted with blood. A disgusting monster, blue of skin and with a horrible, mangled face, sunk its teeth deep into a terrified, maimed dog. The poor thing was no different, to this creature, than a turkey leg.


    Abby braced herself against her seat. The dog¡¯s eyes were rolling up into its head¡ªit had long since soiled itself¡ªits heart was beating, bowels trembling¡ªleg severed¡ªbut still it lived, as this not-quite-human made a meal of it.


    She could see a man outside, looking in through the window. Recording it all with his phone.


    Abby watched the blue creature look up from its meal. Staring at her.


    No, she thought. No, don¡¯t¡ª


    But as she sat back in her chair, she could feel heavy breathing on the back of her neck.


    ¡­


    She awoke with a start. Somehow, she was sweating more now than she had been the first two times. She looked at her clock¡ª


    Nine a.m., it said.


    Oh god, she thought, I¡¯m gonna be late¡ª


    But she made it in just the nick of time. She didn¡¯t have time for breakfast, but at the very least she did have time for lunch, and while she was eating she sat with her group and exhaustively signed petitions, educating herself of all the creatures, aliens, monsters, and specters she needed to help remove from the world. There were so many it was hard to even believe, and knowing the specifics made her day darker. But was it better just to live in ignorance? Though she never saw them, they existed, and needed to be¡ª


    Her friend approached her again, phone out.


    ¡°Hey¡­ there¡¯s another one.¡±


    ¡°¡­Is there?¡± Abby asked. She rubbed her eyes.


    Her friend nodded. ¡°Have you heard of Solar Plexus Clown Gliders?¡±


    ¡°No¡­ no, I haven¡¯t,¡± said Abby in response.


    Then, her friend showed her.


    Abby instantly felt dread when looking upon it.


    ¡°They say if you see this image or even read its name, it will come for you. It¡¯s a kind of malignant force, like a demon. It enters your body through your solar plexus, and corrupts you from within. And while you try to sleep, it will sit on your chest, too heavy for you to breathe right. I¡¯ve also heard it fills your mind with white noise and drives you mad.¡±


    Then why? Abby thought with a great, mounting worry. Why did you come show it to me?


    But she didn¡¯t make a scene, or ask. She kept eating, now with the knowledge of something else, something she didn¡¯t want to give too much thought to¡­


    ¡­but that night, when she crawled into bed alone, she lie still. Every little sound, be it a car in the lot or the fan on the ceiling, was enough to send her into the pits of expanding anxiety. She¡ª


    She saw it. Looking at her. The demon her friend was talking about. A hellish, ghostly jester. Visible as but a faint looming figure in the black of night.


    It got close. It breathed into her ear. Abby curled into a ball beneath her sheets, so scared she felt vomit rising in her throat.


    It put its hand on her bed, feeling around, looking for her solar-plexus¡ª


    But she hadn¡¯t the voice to fight it off. She squeezed her eyes shut, scared in the same way a child would be. Only this time, the horror was real, it was right over her, it was whispering¡­


    ¡°¡­Khl¡¯ath dro¡¯ctelho ni nawar zhigho gozhokah¡¯ll meiargwath¡¯o marghkai.¡±


    She was back in the theater. And when the curtain rose, that was what the statue¡ªin the center of the stage¡ªwas saying to her.


    Khl¡¯ath¡ª


    dro¡¯ctelho¡ª


    ni nawar¡ª


    zhigho¡ª


    gozhokah¡¯ll¡ª


    meiargwath¡¯o¡ª


    marghkai¡­


    Over and over. It glowed red, with runes carved into it from top to bottom. A hideous figure hunched atop it. The man¡¯s head possessed a beard of tentacles, with two wide eyes boring into her.


    The Basilisk sat behind her. And the Glider stood beside her, staring.


    She watched, on stage, a man murder another man with a shard of broken mirror. The murdered man wore a fuzzy pink bear mask.


    And while the scene changed to an old man sitting up in his bed, screaming at nothing, Abby realized that the eldritch incantation, the phrase that had been spouted from the very beginning of the dream, was what the man was saying. Only she could understand it now¡ª


    Gods of Infinity watch Ki and Consume it All.


    Gods of Infinity watch Ki, and consume it all.


    Police officers¡ªis that Irish, on their uniforms? she thought¡ªeventually came in and removed the man from his bed.


    But left in his wake was something Abby did not expect.


    The entire stage lit up with the color yellow.


    A yellow so bright it pooled into the blackness of the theater. So bright she could see them beside her. The breathing, evil things¡ªso bright she was forced to sit back again, eyes shut, but still ever hearing the breath and whispers around her¡ª


    And when she awoke, the fading imprint of these horrors swam from her vision, as if scuttling away. But she knew they were there. Waiting. Waiting to see her, in¡ª


    Dim Carcosa.

 EPISODE TEN - The Kingdom in Yellow - PART TWO: Pareidolia

    When would it end?


    Abby had watched the poor children trapped within the concrete prison, the creature outside lighting bulbs as it passed.


    Abby had watched the red-haired girl return to the stage, walking into a forest¡­ only for her soul to be ripped from her body by a fiendish, evil revenant.


    Abby had watched the spirits of the damned haunt a freezing, empty ship, tormented by the rotting mass of their own bloated bodies.


    When she awoke the eighth day, eight days in a row of horror after horror, she felt as if she hadn¡¯t awoken at all. Like reality was a spinning nightmare, locked in the depths and shroud of endless fright. That the world could be full of such monsters and anguish, pain and fear, and it should continue on and on and on and on and¡ª


    ¡°Have you signed this petition yet, Abby?¡±


    Abby looked up from the table. Her homework was spilled out over it, like the poorly photocopied packet worksheets one would get in grade school, and the test, upon test, upon test of middle school, and group projects and art and science and English and math in high school, none of it had faltered, none of it had waned, it had continued on and on like the terrors and injustices of the world, the horrors and demons and ghouls and beasts compounding until¡ª


    ¡°Abby, are you listening?¡±


    Her friend was on her phone. And soon, Abby¡¯s phone buzzed in her pocket.


    She withdrew it. A petition to sign to stop¡­ something. Alien invasion? Residual hauntings? The Jersey Devil? Just another something, another something in the endless stream of somethings.


    Her chest felt heavy from the presence of the Glider. Her head felt hot from the presence of the Basilisk. Her colors were out of wack from a reality altering drug she¡¯d been forced to take, a drug of awareness, a werewolf, a where wolf, a wear wolf, aware wolf¡ª


    ¡°Don¡¯t just sit there,¡± said her friend. ¡°Do something. The longer you sit there, the more people might be eaten by a werewolf. Or turned into vampires by Dracula, and his son. You have to make a difference. You have to do anything you can to¡ª¡±


    She went on and on, but Abby was already filling in her contact information on the petition website. Donating money, what little money she had¡­ those werewolf hunters needed silver bullets, after all. Why feed yourself when others needed it more? Why worry about your problems when others didn¡¯t have the privilege you did? After all, some people would have to watch as hundreds of others were chewed and regurgitated by winged black demons. Some would lose their dog to the hunger of a strange blue beast. Some would get lost in the forest and never return, and some¡­


    Some would¡­


    She looked down at her phone. Why¡­


    Why had it gotten so slow?


    Back in her dorm, she tried texting her mother. For some reason, the keyboard responded slowly to the taps of her fingers, and her phone was hot. Sometimes it typed out nonsense, just random letters all jumbled.


    She closed the app, but it reopened on its own


    The screen flashed. A tiny portrait of what she could see on her screen now shrunk down into the corner, and she realized it had taken a screenshot.


    Again.


    What is going on?


    A face appeared on her screen. A twisted, mangled, screaming face.


    Jesus Christ!


    The face screenshotted itself. It sent to her mother.


    Then, dozens of her other apps opened at once. The weather. Notes. A dating app. Twitter. Her photos.


    Without touching her phone, it scrolled up into her photos.


    And she realized¡ª


    I¡¯ve been hacked. Using that website got me hacked.


    She watched for ten horrible seconds as it opened a web browser, and started typing something very, very illegal in the Google search bar¡ªall on the college dorm WiFi.


    She held down the power button. Her phone switched off¡­


    ¡­but who knows how much they now knew?


    Sending her screamer photos, certainly harassing or threatening her mother, attempting to so much as frame her for looking up a crime so heinous. Why? Were they trying to ruin her life?


    They know my face. My contacts. My accounts, my photos, my emails, my interests¡ª


    ¡ªmy location¡ª


    She felt lightheaded¡­ none of those vampires, or werewolves, or ghosts or witches mattered anymore¡­ now a living, breathing person was out for blood.


    So that night, lying in the darkness, she had just one more thing to worry about. She was almost too exhausted to sleep, and certainly too scared. But somehow, she did. And finally, her real troubles truly began.


    ¡­


    Abby looked upon the stage.


    The yellow curtains had not yet opened, but she could see red light pooling on the stage behind them, all from the little sliver beneath where they hovered over the floor. A dark mist began to seep.


    Suddenly, someone gently grabbed her neck.


    ¡°Don¡¯t¡­ move¡­¡± he said.


    Abby froze. Menace like no other slipped deep into her veins. They were the hands of a man. Rough, callused. With a voice much older than her. He held the back of her neck as if to choke her, hard enough to induce intense discomfort. She felt him shift to his knees, putting his lips to the back of her ear.


    ¡°I know where you live, Abby¡­¡± he said.


    She winced, shaking.


    ¡°I know where you sleep, Abby¡­¡± he said.


    Her breathing came and went in quick bursts. Her chest was heavy with the weight of so many other terrors¡ª


    ¡°I¡¯m¡­¡±


    And he got in close¡­


    ¡°¡­going to violate you, Abby.¡±


    She felt tears streaming down her face. She could not feel her limbs, her hands, her feet, nor even her head¡ªonly his hands tightly wound around her neck.


    He sighed deeply. Vile, stench-strong breath caught in the jagged angles of transgressive lust. He held back a kind of laugh, and instead let out a little whine¡ª


    ¡°And afterward, Abby,¡± he said, tongue on the rim of her ear, ¡°I¡¯m going to slit you down the middle¡­ like a bearskin rug¡­¡±


    A switchblade knife sprung open by her other ear, clenched in his fist.


    She shut her eyes, but he reached around with his fingers and opened them. She felt everything, now¡ªthe air of the dark, haunted playhouse burned her eyeballs dry.


    ¡°¡­And then It can have you, too¡­¡±


    She heard herself sobbing, unable to blink, breath catching and catching and¡ªIf you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    It?? What is It?? What is¡ª


    And then the curtains opened.


    And she saw. She saw It. She did not see the alien field of eyestalks behind it, nor the swirling white void above. She did not see the mangled cultist, doctor, child, or security guard bodies; nor the scientist behind It melt like putty into the field of nerves within which he stood. She saw none of these things, only It, so mutilated, disfigured, otherworldly and eldritch¡ª


    Abby tried to bite her tongue. Hoping she would die.


    But the man stuffed his disgusting, unwashed hand into her mouth, gagging her¡ª


    She pulled and bit down, wriggling, but even with one hand he was too strong. It, festering a bloated madness on the bleeding stage, seemed to be looking at her all the while. If those¡­ those things were even eyes¡ª


    ¡°GET OFF ME!¡± ¨Cbut his hand was in her mouth, it didn¡¯t come out right¡ª


    He laughed, and held her tighter¡ª


    Let go! Let go!¨C ¡°Mmmf!¡±


    And he put his disgusting lips to her very ear, and whispered¡ª


    ¡°No.¡±


    She whipped around, leg stuck in the armrest of her seat, body twisted¡ªshe heard¡ª


    Dim Carcosa.


    Dim Carcosa.


    The shadows are long in Dim Carcosa¡ª


    And, head pulled around with his unwelcome hands, she finally saw his face¡ª


    ¡­


    Abby awoke.


    She was breathing so hard she tasted a hint of blood. As if dehydrated, running in the cold without end. She shifted in her bed¡ª


    Her door was slightly ajar.


    She squeezed her eyes shut. She stayed in bed until the sun came up, refusing to open her eyes, hiding beneath the covers. Safety to a child, but not for her.


    The horrors of the world had infested her dreams. Every waking moment was the pinching, endless hell of a nightmare.


    She could still taste his hands. Feel them. His breath. His promises.


    It had been no dream.


    She had no idea what to do. What could she do? She¡¯d tried everything, everything she could to help, to lend her actions or voice, and the horrors of the world had infiltrated anyway. It was no game, she realized. These horrors were very real, and she could not sit by doing the bare minimum¡­ they would take her, if she did. Consume her, inside and out.


    Carefully¡­ feeling all forms of violated¡­ she got out of bed, and dressed. She closed the door of her dorm, and locked it.


    She did not go to class that day. She sat on her bed with her broom, having taped a stapler to the end. She waited. And in this time, she saw his face everywhere. Emerging from the dark. Getting close, speaking to her, leaning in for an unwelcome kiss. Every flicker of the shadows could be him. Every tap on her window, and thump in the night.


    Hours passed. Dusk fell. She had done nothing all day but sit and look at the door.


    When her clock clicked over from two fifty-nine a.m. to three, she heard light footsteps behind it. Whoever was there tried the handle, to no avail. But soon, she heard the jangling of a metal prong in the keyhole¡­


    Quietly, but frightened beyond all belief, Abby stood from her bed and tiptoed quickly to the corner.


    As the door opened, and a man in a mask poked his head through the door, Abby brought the stapler end of the broom down against the top of his head.


    He gasped and fell¡ªthe impact had sounded like a dropped brick.


    She stood over him¡ªlifted the broom¡ªbrought it down against his head again, using the same amount of force one would need to drive a stake into hard, stable soil with a large, flat mallet. This time it¡¯d sounded like the wet collision of a melon dropped from a great height, only to splatter in pieces upon the cement below.


    Abby watched his body wriggling in the dark, head and arms jittering slightly.


    Then he died upon her dorm room floor.


    ¡­I did it, she thought. I did something. I did something about one of the¡­ the things¡ª


    She stumbled back onto her bed. An ever-growing pool of blood had soaked into the short, hewn carpet. She could see the outline of an enormous hunting knife, sheathed with a leather wrap, sticking out of his pocket.


    ¡°You won¡¯t be hurting me ever again,¡± she said.


    She turned on her phone, then. He wasn¡¯t around to mess with it anymore.


    But the first app open, when she turned booked it up, was the camera¡ªthe forward-facing camera. In the dark of her room, face illuminated only with the light of her screen, she saw another face in the dark, hovering behind her.


    She stood and whipped her broom, knocking her clock off her nightstand. It¡ªand the lamp above it¡ªwent crashing to the floor.


    ¡°Get away from me!¡± she screamed. What was it? The Basilisk? The Glider? The man? Was he alive somehow? Had he gotten behind her?


    She heard the sounds of other students waking up, shuffling in their dorms. Lights going on in the hall.


    She shut her door, and locked it, turning on the lights¡ª


    But for some reason, they didn¡¯t come on.


    She flicked the switch up and down, but the darkness continued.


    A knock came at her door. ¡°Is that you, making all that noise?¡±


    She said nothing.


    Someone else came into the hall, and she heard them whispering. But soon enough, they left. Which was more than just relief. It was as if every worry had been plucked from her life. Knowing the man who had come to ruin her was dead on her floor put her in a state of peace. She stepped over him, and climbed into bed¡­


    And had only a single thought of clarity, before seeing it¡ª


    Why do I feel this way?


    ¡ªwhen she noticed The Yellow Sign.


    Burned into her ceiling. Three yellow loops. Crackling, as if the last burning embers of a bonfire log. She stared at it, but thought, no, that man is gone, and none of the other horrors can hurt me¡­ adding one more doesn¡¯t make any bit of difference¡­


    ¡­until, that is, she fell asleep.


    It seemed as if no time had passed. She awoke in the center seat of the theater again, quicker than an eyeblink. On instinct, the same instinctual way she¡¯d known she awoke in a theater in the first few dreams, she realized that the man that had come to take her life was no longer there. But it was a hollow victory¡­ for, looking at the closed yellow curtain, mists of shining golden light spilling slowly from beneath it, she could feel¡ªand hear¡ªall of them.


    The Basilisk. The Glider. The many other demons and phantoms and ghouls her friends had forcibly told her about, forcibly showed to her, but¡ª


    No, no¡ª


    She felt a hand reaching up for her hair¡­ stroking it¡­


    She dared begin to look around.


    ¡°¡­Don¡¯t,¡± came the haunted, hollow voice of a little girl.


    Abby froze.


    Her accent, she thought. Her accent¡ª


    It had to have been Scottish. And¡ª


    She saw. Just a little hint of the hand that had touched her, as it retracted.


    It was blue.


    In the back of the theater, she heard flapping wings. The nasty, wet sounds of lips smacking in hunger, cloaked in the newfound stench of corpsemeat.


    And a fishy smell, accompanied with the dull glow of purplish light from the seats behind her¡ª


    The shuffling of possessed people, children and doctors and security guards and cultists in the seats¡ª


    She stood and whipped around.


    And saw all of them. Everything. The specters of the ship and their bloated bodies, the tortured cultists, peeled and twisted and maimed¡ªthe eaten, rotting corpses of innocent children¡ªthe thing that had watched the sleeping man from his doorway, from beside his bed, and¡ª


    It.


    It that feeds.


    And all the other things she¡¯d known were there, all of them¡ª


    Her phone rang. It startled her, terribly so. She withdrew it, answered it¡ª


    ¡°Have you ever heard of the Devil¡¯s Tri-Tone?¡±


    ¡°No,¡± she said. The voice was her friend. ¡°Stop.¡±


    ¡°Have you ever heard of the Fermi Paradox?¡±


    ¡°Stop it, please,¡± Abby begged, every Horror of Windle Rock staring at her¡ª


    ¡°Have you ever heard of The Black Hope Curse? Or the Watchers of Mount Shasta? Or The Bloop? Or what about the red rooms you can access on the Dark Web, where abducted people are¡ª¡±


    ¡°STOP IT! STOP TELLING ME ABOUT THESE THINGS! STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!¡±


    She threw her phone on the ground, and stomped on its shattered shell. The voice of her friend fizzled out into a low, electronic hum.


    Then she heard the curtains behind her open, drowning the ghoulish patrons in yellow light. Up in the top corners of the stage, the antlered skulls began to rattle, and microphone interference so loud, so high pitched, screamed out from their mouths. Abby had to clasp her hands over her ears.


    For a moment, there was nothing.


    She sat in her seat, terrified of putting her back to the many horrors of Windle Rock again, but having no choice. Their collective silence was infinitely worse than if they had been murmuring, speaking, screaming.


    She looked up onto the stage.


    There was no back wall. The stage led out to a murky beyond, although somehow she could see it clear as day. A wretched, alien city of castle spires and shallow graves. Some of the city was black, or goopy golden brown, but if not, then yellow. Yellow was everywhere, in the soil and the sky, in the structures and bricks and light and wind. Stalagmites rose from the ground of this plane, piled sludge-obelisks of sharp yellow sand. Stalactites hung from the sky, merging seamlessly from the burnt yellow clouds, some so large they dwarfed the city¡¯s eldritch highrises. Hanging from nothing.


    She could see two black suns, floating in the sky. Like eyes.


    For a while, no one took the stage. But soon enough, the speakers shrieked, and music played.


    Deranged circus accordions, truncated tubas and rusty woodwinds.


    A book had appeared in her lap. Large, old, paper torn and bleached, its cover the color of daisies, sunflowers, gold coins, sunlight¡ªunbrushed teeth, dug-up bones, foul urine, the jaundice eyewhites of a failing liver¡ª


    And its name¡­


    ¡°The King in Yellow.¡±


    Beneath the title were the triple loops she¡¯d seen before falling asleep.


    The speakers rang again, and the demented carnival tango ended, fading into¡­


    I was working in the lab, late one night¡­


    Abby couldn¡¯t believe her ears¡ª


    ¡­when my eyes beheld, an eerie sight¡­


    Abby gripped the book and listened with unbridled shock, as yes, it truly was the song, and yes, the chorus went¡ª


    He did the mash!


    He did the monster mash!


    The monster mash!


    And she burst into laughter.


    All of it truly is a dream! she thought. There had never been any horrors at all! All of it had been a product of her overactive imagination, nothing had actually been around to harm her, all of it was just a bad, sick joke. So she sat back and watched, knowing that even though she could move and feel and think as if awake, everything was just a horrid nightmare and would soon be over.


    But when the song ended¡­ she heard a voice.


    Why did you not come up to dance, Abby?


    Holding the book, Abby paused.


    Do you need a different song?


    The tumbling of a Halloween xylophone fed into the speakers, and


    Spooky, scary, skeletons¡ª


    Abby laughed even harder, gripping the book to her chest as if it were a security blanket or pillow.


    But no actor took to the stage for a show of dancing horrors.


    No monster appeared either.


    And I know why, she thought. I know why no one is there yet.


    Yes, replied the voice, you do.


    So holding the book, ignoring the ridiculous children¡¯s pop of All Hallows Eve, Abby stood from her seat, and walked up the stairs of the stage, into a world of a paranormal hue. A hue that sends men frantic and blasts their lives.


    Dim Carcosa.

 EPISODE TEN - The Kingdom in Yellow - PART THREE: Passivity (SERIES FINALE)

    She crossed into the planet. The air here was fetid and damp, curling through the sky in pylons of invisible mist, wet winds. It was thick in her mouth and thick in her lungs, and no matter what she did she smelled molds and spores as she crossed further along the ground, away from the tiny, distant opening of nothingness that was the stage.


    The two black stars above, empty voids with a ring around them that distorted the darkling brown-yellow sky, sat high amidst the soaring black towers of the encroaching alien cityscape. Every star in the sky was black; freckles on the skin, seeds in the meat of the fruit, flickings of dark acrylic on a canary canvas. They twinkled.


    As she crept forward, the desert beneath her shoes padded down soundlessly. Although she didn¡¯t bend down and examine, she couldn¡¯t tell if the world was cloaked in a blanket of yellow dust, or yellow snow. It looked like neither, but both, too. She traveled over it, stomping it down, leaving footsteps in her wake as she approached the towers and buildings and streets.


    They mocked the layout of Earth¡¯s cities. They mimicked the scale, the roads, the buildings, but had fallen into such an alien disfigurement that it somehow also looked like nothing real at all. Buildings had no doors, no windows, and resembled spiraling cones or wild, misshapen limbs. She gripped her copy of the book, walking around these outskirts buildings. They hummed low, emitting electro-magnetic disturbance¡­ like flesh-minds of a semi-organic, antediluvian server room. She dare not touch one.


    The further into the city she got, the stranger things became. She had wondered where the citizens of this place could possibly be, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw one. A sheep¡ªwool a lemony hue, eye sockets softened over with fur and skin¡ªcrawled out of a soggy hole in the cracked sandstone street, heaving without opening its mouth. And then another. And another. And as she backed away from the hole, heading down another intersection of city blocks, she witnessed sheep after sheep after sheep, crowding in hordes.


    She turned and jogged away. For they were starting to get so numerous that their collective smell, and the sight of them all herded in a great pile, drove up her anxieties.


    But the further she explored, the further from sanity this golden world traveled. Buildings melted down to the streets in droplets and splatters, painting black on the yellow roads. She saw more sheep, some of them small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, others so big they had gotten stuck between buildings¡ªand could only watch with their eyeless faces as she walked on by. Some had long since died, leaving gargantuan skeletons lodged in place, skulls having long since fallen from the neck of their spine. It was here in which she saw that the sheep truly did have sockets for their eyes. But the circumstances of their birth prevented them from seeing.


    The inclines, slopes, hills and cliffs twisted into a layout of unreality. She walked up one and could see herself in the distance, traveling down another. But when she looked back around, the place she¡¯d come from had changed into unrecognizability. Buildings here crowded and grew from one another like tumors, covered in breathing, hole-filled fungi¡ªsome buildings were squat and round, or tall and thin, or squat and thin, or tall and round¡ªbe it mosque, church, shrine or temple. Keep or castle, house or home. It blended together, doors and windows finally appearing, but not keeping to any one culture or theme or style or system. But all of it, all of it, boiled and baked into a toxic mix of black and brown and gold and yellow.


    She started to feel a deep sense of dread. As she stood on a hill, she could see that the city continued to spiral miles and miles and miles away. Every step seemed to make no progress.


    Soon, she began to run. And perhaps she was making progress, for now she saw the buildings and landscape collide and mix in real time. The broken mirror fragments of a terrible dream, the false computing of a digital glitch. They flickered far away from her, and came back in a blink, warping into horrible impossibilities, tangled non-Euclidean geometry that pooled into dizzying densities. They phased into her, causing a great deal of panic¡ªbut then zapped away, pulled into unearthly shapes by an unknown force. She hadn¡¯t felt their touch.


    Why had she come here? Why had she stepped onto that stage?


    Why¡ª


    She turned a corner, and was met with a face.


    She fell on her rear in a burst of fright, as buildings and towers collided soundlessly in the void around. But here, down this alley, were people. Naked, skin yellow, merged into the walls, and¡­


    The face she¡¯d seen was a man¡¯s. His face was strained, mouth pried open¡ªtiny versions of himself were crawling out of it, crawling down his body, and biting holes into his legs, his arms, his belly¡ªburrowing back inside.


    Past him was a woman. Lying on her shoulders, lower body up in the air with her legs spread uncomfortably far. A head appeared, slowly bulging from her birth canal. Then fingers, which stretched out beside the head, then a hand, then an adult arm. This new woman opened her mouth, as if to scream. She was a mirror image of her ¡°mother.¡±


    She climbed through, tearing the first girl in two from the groin up¡ªit was slow. Arduous. But inside this body there were no bones or flesh. Only spongy, yellow holes, opening and closing en masse. A breathing honeycomb.


    The shreds left behind melted down, and seeped into the ground. The woman newly birthed put her rear end to the wall, opened her legs, and the process began again.


    Across the alley, a little boy took his head with both hands and twisted it around¡ªaround¡ªaround¡ªuntil it snapped off, revealing a stick-like spine from a wet, leathery neck stump. The head crumbled to sand in his hands. But on his exposed spine, a new head began to form. Inflating, like a balloon. She crossed into the alley and watched, as little pea-like eyes formed on his tiny yellow face. A slit for a mouth took shape below them, and two holes for nostrils took shape above that, all of it quickly expanding into his head once more.


    These people went on and on and on. Vomiting themselves, defecating themselves, urinating themselves, conceiving themselves, birthing themselves, building themselves, destroying themselves. As she walked, they no longer adhered to the walls of the alley building¡­ they had become the walls, stretching endlessly to the sky in a pulsating, yellow mass of limb and torso, head and hand. The further they were from where she stood, the more they looked like banana slugs in a writhing blanket. The closer, the more they looked like decomposed, alien mannequins.


    The alley twisted and turned, but the bodies closed in, narrowing her path. They had started making noises, gasps and moans. She began to feel them brushing against her, and as they repeated their grotesque patterns they could only stare. As if she could save them somehow. But¡­ but¡­


    What is my name?


    She had forgotten.


    In this midst of this monstrous gale, a sweeping night terror¡­ she¡¯d well and truly forgotten.


    So she didn¡¯t know why she kept walking, over this unearthly dust and snow. She just put one foot in front of the other, and didn¡¯t look back.


    Eventually she saw a large space of land beyond the alley. As she moved closer, she could see something dark, too. Like a body of water, and buildings surrounding it.


    When she finally poked through, she came to a lake, sitting in the middle of the city. Flanked on all of its sides with buildings and alleys, exactly the same as the one in which she¡¯d traveled. Groupings of writhing yellow bodies in masses. To the clouds.


    The lake¡¯s shore held a cemetery, all around it. Gravestones and crosses, mausoleums, small churchyards and churches too. Acid-yellow dust devils; just tiny vortexes, appeared frequently. Spinning the sandy ground into the air, and then vanishing as soon as they¡¯d appeared. The mounds of soil atop many a grave were either raised or moving. Things wanted to get out.


    One of the graves near her burst open. A yellow hand rose from the debris of the mound, and out crawled a man. Nude as all the rest, eyeing her¡ªyet he dragged himself. For a clone of he, fused by the belly and fit to burst from the very base of the crawling man¡¯s spine, grew with fungal rapidity. Weighing the crawling man down.


    When this new man was fully born, the older one fell to the dust below, merging with it. Then this man began the cycle too, crawling as another attempted birth from his tailbone.


    As he made his way forward, she watched it all happen again.


    The creature¡ªnow on its third life¡ªmerged with the bodies on the walls.


    She clutched her book, and walked toward the lake. The two suns blazed above it, casting down tiny sliver shadows of noon. Yet somehow these shadows lengthened, reflecting a wanton confusion and indecisiveness and fear. Flickering with the rabid energy of unborn thoughts.


    The lake was endlessly black. As she approached the shore, she could see the coastline drop off almost instantly after merging with the water, in a deep dark hole of nothingness. It looked hardly different from the twin stars above.


    For a while, she knew not what to do. She stayed near the shore, watching as yellow people emerged from their tombs and became one with the very cityscape. As she wandered, she peeked into these empty tombs¡­


    ¡­and found light peeking back. Light that led to homes and houses, streets and roads¡­ all unlike this Dim Carcosa. For they were not yellow, nor caught in a dreamlike world of anti-logic. These roads were pavement, these houses wood. Trees and seas and cows and plows, cars and oceans and bustling commotions. The yellow she could see was only the blonde of someone¡¯s hair, or the yellow of a school bus, or wherever the color naturally needed to be. For there was also gray, and red, and blue, green orange purple pink brown black white¡ª


    And she remembered her name. She remembered it, looking into these hundreds of empty graves, down at the world she¡¯d left behind, all just to dance the monster mash in this play of madness. The snippets of Earth she could see were sometimes far in the past, horse drawn buggies instead of buses¡ªswords instead of rifles¡ªbonnets and top hats instead of baseball caps and plastic sunglasses¡ªshe saw no visions of anytime after her own.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Then, she heard them.


    The many horrors of Windle Rock had followed her.


    She dare not turn around, but their growling and breathing spilled from each alley behind. Maimed yellow bodies fell to the ground beside her as beings too big to fit through these alleys pushed through, knocking brainless victims off the sides of the buildings.


    What do I do? What do I do?


    Abby looked around. The lake was large¡­


    She ran. Between headstones, over graves, behind a mausoleum, past a gargoyle monument.


    ¡°How you doin¡¯?¡± the gargoyle said to her. ¡°Name¡¯s Guy.¡±


    She screamed, and kept going. He was trying to talk to her, but she soon heard him screaming as she sped off, the horrors hot on her trail. She heard the cracking of stone¡­ and she assumed she heard him fall into an open grave, screaming, screaming¡­


    She saw no way out. Go down an alley and back into the ever-changing city, and then what?


    Then, she realized, she was holding¡ª


    She opened her book. Her book¡ªThe King in Yellow.


    First page, the title, the author¡ªwritten in a language she did not understand, and unlike any Earthen language she¡¯d even seen.


    And It that feeds¡ªthe beast behind her¡ªscreamed horrid, sending a shattering skyquake into the air of Dim Carcosa.


    It doesn¡¯t like this book, she knew. But why?


    She turned the page, nearly stepping into an open grave. And read:


    Along the shore the cloud waves break,


    The twin suns sink behind the lake,


    The shadows lengthen In Carcosa.


    Strange is the night where black stars rise,


    And strange moons circle through the skies,


    But stranger still is Lost Carcosa.


    Songs that the Hyades shall sing,


    Where flap the tatters of the King,


    Must die unheard in Dim Carcosa.


    Song of my soul, my voice is dead,


    Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed


    Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa.


    This doesn¡¯t help me at all!


    Or¡­ does it?


    For then, she turned the page.


    Into the dark the ripples bleak,


    The sounds all quiet that we seek,


    Drowning black in Deep Carcosa.


    And up above the strange suns rise,


    And with strange aeons, death may die,


    An ode to breath in Dark Carcosa.


    Wait a minute¡­


    The leaders seek to lead the sheep,


    And sink beneath the coral reef,


    Of pond and pool in Dim Carcosa.


    For hath be that the wake has found,


    In freezing currents underground,


    Shepherds soak in¡ª


    She didn¡¯t read the last two words. She knew what needed to be done.


    Stopping with a quick jut, the horrors catching up¡ªshe dove into the Lake of Hali, and sunk. For no matter how hard she tried to swim, there was no resistance against her limbs and body¡ªas if she was not submerged at all. And she sunk so quickly it was like falling, feeling no traits of water, not even the need to hold her breath.


    She tumbled abound, into the blackness of the lake. She did pass a coral-reef of sorts. Just skulls and antlers and hands and bones, all clumped into the shape of an undersea forest.


    But soon, she had come to the end of the lake. The bottom. And¡ª


    Bursting through it, as if truly breaking water, she bounded up into the heavens. Toward the black suns, the yellow cosmos, the black stars. This time it faded into a view of space she could almost plead familiar. Saturn and Jupiter and other planets that should be nowhere near that close to one another swam into view, beside a pink one with ten rings, a green one with oceans and two crisscrossing rings, moons and moons and moons, and behind it all a black hole of violent proportions.


    She stood on nothing. Yes, this was the vacuum of space, but she was not floating or weightless. Her platform, her floor, whatever it was¡­ it could not be seen. And like the Lake of Hali, wherein behind the double stars rise, she need not breathe.


    A shape emerged from the cosmos ahead. Small at first¡­ it grew into a large throne. And from it came a wave of eldritch¡­ soul, almost. The same aura emitting from the It that feeds, except¡­ wiser. Smarter. Less imbued with hunger and menace, but somehow far more dangerous. Opposing the power of It that feeds, in a way. Like a nemesis, but a brother all the same.


    Sitting on this throne was a vaguely humanoid being, dressed in the tatters of a flowing, yellow cloak. It was hooded, darkness obscuring its would-be face. A pendant hung from its neck, bearing, a triple loop. Exactly the same as the Yellow Sign, which she had seen before coming here¡­ and the same as on the cover of her book.


    Atop this figure¡¯s hooded head was a crown of thorns, but the brambles pointed up, and all of them so sharp and so tall they could be as long as a man¡¯s arm, and more than perfect for stabbing one. The figure had no legs or arms of its own, and when it spoke, it spoke in a hundred voices.


    You finally came, it said.


    Abby stood silently¡ª


    And then, around her, she saw.


    Hundreds of people.


    Thousands.


    People she¡¯d never met, never knew.


    A girl of middle school age, with a tattered white hoodie, dishwater blonde hair, plastic headphones around her neck, and a sword. A young woman closer to Abby¡¯s age, short black hair, dressed in a striped sweater. A dark haired, dark eyed woman in a blue, wizard-like dress, a full-moon hairpin stuck in her bun. A man in black overalls and a black trench coat, wearing a frightening metal mask that covered his entire face¡ªlarge steel canisters bolted to a sling around his back. Steam hissed away in wisps, spewing from his grille and nozzle mouth.


    More of them. A blonde woman with golden eyes, in a toga of sorts, bearing anklets and bracelets and a necklace of a coppery gold chain¡ª


    A man in a blue and yellow jester costume¡ª


    And more, and more, and more¡ª


    She saw so many historical figures it was hard to keep track. Napoleon. Lincoln. Churchill. Khan. An Egyptian pharaoh, a Roman emperor, an African warlord, a Native American chief. A president, a prime minister, a governor, a shepherd. Cavemen and hunter-gatherers, politicians and soldiers.


    And more, and more, and more.


    She viewed these people in an eyeblink. For it took but two, and they were gone. Yet somehow Abby knew.


    All of these people had, at one point, come to see The King in Yellow.


    Was it that they, too, crossed through Carcosa?


    The King in Yellow stood from his throne. He hovered across the boundless cosmic floor, toward her. He stopped, looked at her hand.


    You kept my book safe¡­ Might I have it back, young spawn?


    She handed it to him.


    He took it with no arms. For the book simply floated up between them, and slowly burrowed into the many folds of his cloak. He faced her again. Even up close, she could not see his face in that shrouding darkness.


    Shall we dance? He asked.


    ¡°You called to me,¡± she said.


    He did not reply.


    ¡°You showed me your sign. But¡ªbut before that¡ªyou showed me¡­ everything. All those plays, in the theater¡ª¡±


    Was that me? Or was that you?


    Abby pursed her lips. ¡°The last is me. I¡¯m the last play. The last story.¡±


    The last Horror of Windle Rock, said the King in Yellow.


    Abby struggled to find words. ¡°They hunted me down. All of those¡­ those monsters. And horrible things. So many of them.¡± She felt frustrated tears blink into the corners of her eyes. ¡°Why me?¡±


    The King slowly backed up, toward his throne. Why not you?


    ¡°Why not? Why not? Because¡ªbecause I already have tons of stuff to deal with! I have student loan debt, and car insurance, and a phone bill, and¡ªand¡ª¡±


    The King in Yellow watched her, sitting again on his throne.


    ¡°¡ªand I shouldn¡¯t have to deal with monsters, and terrifying thought experiments, and specters, and phantoms, and¡ª¡±


    Unfortunately, young spawn, he interrupted, they are there. They exist. And they do not care about your demons.


    She fell to the nothingness floor, and bashed her fists against it. ¡°I wish they didn¡¯t exist. I wish they didn¡¯t.¡±


    The King in Yellow stood in place.


    ¡°They just¡­ they¡¯ll keep coming, won¡¯t they?¡±


    You have dealt with one, said The King.


    ¡°ISN¡¯T THAT ENOUGH?!¡± She stood. ¡°There¡¯s dozens! Hundreds! Thousands, probably! Why should I have to deal with them all? I¡­ I can¡¯t.¡±


    The King in Yellow made no physical expression, or response.


    Abby¡¯s head felt fit to burst. What was she supposed to do? She was just one person. All the monsters, the horrors, they far outnumbered her. Though she¡¯d beaten one, it seemed that ten more had come out of the woodwork. Would that trend continue? Would it compound? If she beat another, would she then suffer ten times again¡­?


    And what would it take? A man could be beaten with a stapler. But a reality altering A.I.¡­? Or a reality altering demon¡­?


    Why had she seen all those people?


    ¡°Did everyone who¡­ came to you before,¡± Abby asked, ¡°did they¡­ have monsters¡­ too?¡±


    The King in Yellow took some time before responding. Some of them, he finally said. Others were monsters themselves. For as often as the moon can be seen in the sky, it takes a monster to be a shepherd.


    A shepherd.


    A leader.


    ¡°Getting rid of the man was pointless,¡± Abby whined. ¡°Because the Basilisk, or the Glider, or any number of other things still exist. And they could win. They could be the one that kills me.¡±


    You are very right, young spawn, said The King in Yellow. And more monsters will keep coming. They won¡¯t ever be gone forever. But a shepherd keeps herding, regardless of wolves outside the fence. And they slay each wolf that dare hop it¡­


    ¡°How?¡±


    How do they keep going? How does someone who rises above monsters and herds their sheep keep fighting in the face of endless suffering?


    But in asking such a question, Abby knew.


    The answer was simple. It took courage. It took strength, and stamina. A leader was someone who sacrificed everything to change the world around them, even if they fell, or failed. Which led Abby to only one conclusion:


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to be a leader,¡± she said. ¡°I don¡¯t want to deal with these problems. I don¡¯t want to be a part of it. I want¡­ someone else to deal with it all¡­¡±


    The King in Yellow stood. Then let it be so.


    The sky around them quaked. Each of the planets and stars began to spin. Abby looked around, then down¡ª


    And she could see past the Lake of Hali. In Carcosa¡¯s many open graves, to times long since passed, or only yesterday.


    It that Feeds fell into one of the open graves first.


    Abby watched in horror¡ªas if she was back in the theater¡ª


    Those children were eaten, pulled from their concrete rooms. And then, the doctors, the cultists¡ªthey fell victim too.


    Then it was the souls of the ship¡ª


    And she watched them eating their poisoned meals, choking, vomiting, soiling themselves in a mass of anguish and panic, blowing up like balloons, dying like birds out of the sky.


    And then the dark revenant fell into a grave, down into an Irish wood¡ª


    A helpless little girl awaited its hunger.


    The King in Yellow watched a twisted, hateful shadow fall into the bedroom of an old man¡ª


    The blue-faced monstrosity found its way into the dog-owner¡¯s house, through the garage doggy door, then the laundry room¡ª


    ¡°Stop!¡± she shouted. ¡°Stop!¡±


    But you wanted this, said The King in Yellow. They will be dealt with by someone else.


    The horde of fish men fell into a grave as one writhing ball, down from the sky above the sea. Like a comet. Their collective forehead anglers glowed a horribly sickly, horribly wan, purplish white.


    ¡°Stop this! I didn¡¯t mean it! I take it back!¡±


    Oh, but young spawn, you have already made your decision, said The King in Yellow, and this is the price of looking away.


    Like a swarm of birds, of bats, the final horror of Windle Rock gathered in the cosmos around them, and flew down into the final open grave. Winged horrors, thousands of them¡­ so numerous they blocked all light¡­


    And in that last burst, she realized something about one of the many horrors her friend had told her about. A horror that could traverse time itself, heading back into the past, and harming innocent people simply because they knew¡­


    She pondered something. Just for a moment. The ¡°nature of a monster,¡± and what it meant to be one.


    And then Abby watched the winged horrors gyrate, flying down in a wobbling vortex. She could do no more. For they went through, and¡­


    ¡­


    Over Windle Rock, the waters roiled with lush froth, sea foam of green and white and murky brown lapping up against the stone face of Captain Claiken¡¯s lighthouse island¡­