Before them a small statue stares back. It scares him. Hollow, stone eyes watch him intently. A stone mouth pulls back into a tight mouth of indifference. Tiny stone knees pull up to the chin, stone hands draped over them. He can’t stop speaking until his mother tells him to.

Beside him she rises. Her eyes are closed while Jimmy glances over to follow her movement exactly. Sweat breaks out on his forehead from the hot candles. His mother drops her head abruptly, utters the phrase for the last time, and turns to Jimmy.

This part is hers and hers alone. She whispers words too silent for him to hear, and when her eyes open, the way she studies him, every time it makes him nervous, as if she’s waiting for him to do something wrong.

She never says a word to him. The two stand in unison. They leave the small room hidden behind the pantry wall. Hollow stone eyes watch them leave.
****
An eight-year-old Jimmy runs quickly up the stairs. Mr. Barrie is waiting for him in the third bedroom on the left. He sits on the edge of his thinly framed bed, wearing only an undershirt and boxers.

“My water?” he says while raising a shaggy, gray eyebrow.

Jimmy hands him the glass. Sweat glistens on the man’s balding head, his undershirt stained yellow. “When’s the air conditioning getting fixed?” he asks.

“Soon,” Jimmy answers, his tone polite, his arms at his sides as he waits to be dismissed.

“It’s always soon. I’ll leave before it happens. You tell your mother that, you hear? I’ll leave if it doesn’t get fixed tomorrow.” He guzzles down half the water before slamming the glass on the bedside table. “And put some ice in it next time. Now get out of here.”

Jimmy’s gone, down the stairs, sticking out his tongue even though Mr. Barrie can’t see it. He had said last week he would leave if the air conditioning weren’t fixed.

“Did you attend to him?” Jimmy’s mother asks when he walks into the kitchen. She is preparing her special dish the two of them always eat before the ritual, laced with her seasonings.

“Yes. He says he’s going to move out if the air conditioning isn’t fixed.”

“Let him.”
****
Three days before Jimmy’s eleventh birthday he kneels before the alter, his forehead on the ground, his mother beside him. The statue no longer scares him. The childish fears of his youth, of the dim glow of the candles, the hollow eyes always watching him while he repeats his prayers, has left. The words, however, remain as meaningless to him as they were when he was younger. Perhaps, he often considers while awake at night, they have lost even more meaning.

When his mother rises he rises as well. He doesn’t need to look to know when she moves. Every action is engrained into his body. They stand together, leave together, while up above them Mr. Barrie sleeps. As soon as they emerge into the dark kitchen Jimmy can hear the man’s snores.

“What were you thinking?” his mother asks him suddenly, her face a silhouette in the darkness as it turns to face him. She has never asked him this question before.

“What?” he asks, aware of the hesitance in his voice.

“Your mind wasn’t focused, was it?”

He wants to turn on the light. He wants to dispel the visage standing before him.

“It was,” he protests. The hard slap sends him stumbling into the wall.

“Never lie to me again.” Her voice is a force more painful than any slap she could deliver. Tears spring from Jimmy’s eyes. He lays huddled against the wall, cowering before the person towering over him.

Suddenly she’s kneeling down in front of him. Her face comes into his view, eyes wavering before she reaches out and pulls him closer. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, “but you mustn’t stray. You mustn’t deviate at all.”

He holds her, feeling awful for the thoughts he had had. She is his mother. She wants only what is best for him. He tells himself he won’t allow his mind to wander again.
****
Jimmy stands at the top of the staircase and stares at the neighborhood beyond his home. Across the street some children play, younger than him, he thinks, but not by much. In his thirteen years of life he has never spoken to another child.

Behind him he hears Mr. Barrie. He is dressed neatly today, in his good suit, and won’t be back for the next week. Jimmy’s mother isn’t home, gone to the store, but she’ll be back soon to see Mr. Barrie off.

He stares at Jimmy, a different man, Jimmy thinks, when he’s wearing his work clothes. He travels around on occasions to sell whatever it is he sells. Jimmy has never asked.

“Nice day out,” Mr. Barrie says. He sets down his bag and walks up behind Jimmy. The suit hides most of his growing gut. His hat covers up his balding head.

“I guess,” Jimmy says.

“Why don’t you go out there, play with the other kids?” Mr. Barrie asks even though he knows the answer. He asks Jimmy a lot of questions he knows the answers to.

“My mom won’t let me.”

“Your mom is a bit of a nut if you ask me,” Mr. Barrie says with a snort. Jimmy resists the urge to get drawn in. Mr. Barrie enjoys drawing out the anger. Jimmy won’t give him the pleasure.

“She only does what’s best for me.”

“Keeping you prisoner is what’s best for you? No way to raise a kid if you ask me.”

“I don’t mind.” The lie is flat and obvious.

“Well,” Mr. Barrie says, and leans down as he says it. Down below they both can hear the front door opening. “If you ever want to get out and explore a little, just let me know, and maybe I can help you out. Shame to see a kid lose his youth.” He winks, pulls abruptly upright. His eyes focus on only the window by the time Jimmy’s mother reaches the top of the stairs.

Wrinkles line her face framed with straight brown hair, and in the middle of it her eyes leap between Jimmy and Mr. Barrie. “Hello, Ruth,” Mr. Barrie says as if suddenly surprised by her appearance. But her hardened eyes focus only on Jimmy and the look he can’t wipe away from his face.

“I’ll see you off, Michael,” she says.

Mr. Barrie picks up his bag and actively avoids looking at Jimmy as he walks down the stairs. Jimmy can hear the two of them talking in hushed tones before Mr. Barrie leaves and Jimmy’s mother returns with a look Jimmy doesn’t like.

“I don’t want you talking to Mr. Barrie anymore unless it has to do with getting him something, you hear me?” She grabs his arm, jars it painfully, and Jimmy can only stare into her worried gaze, at the wrinkles around her eyes. Mr. Barrie told him once that his mother had been quite a looker, as he had put it, before she had had Jimmy.

“Go to your room for the rest of the night. I’ll bring you your dinner. And I don’t want to see you staring out this window.”

She turns from him before he can answer. She’s walking down the staircase before Jimmy can settle his thoughts. He spends the rest of the night in his room and listens to his mother down in the kitchen. She forgets to bring him his dinner. He’s never gone without food for so long before, and his stomach keeps him awake late into the night.

The next morning Jimmy awakes to the sound of his mother’s voice. She stands in his open bedroom door. She hasn’t slept; he can tell from the reddened eyes she stares at him with.

“Come,” she says, and Jimmy follows her down the long staircase and through the kitchen into the pantry.

The ritual has grown in frequency ever since Jimmy turned twelve. Now they regularly do it twice a week, some times more. Never have they done it so early in the morning.

Jimmy’s head spins as he walks through the pantry. He glances back at the kitchen where he knows his mother spent her night. Through the kitchen window the world outside looks darker than he thinks it should, the air thick with fog, but when he blinks the image is gone and the sun is rising.

Now he is forced down onto the floor while his mother’s shaking hand lights the two candles. Rather than lower his head Jimmy stares at the stone statue and its hollow eyes, the darkness in them deeper than before, like when he was a child and it still scared him.

His mother’s fingers dig into the back of his neck, force his head down, her words sharp as she tells him to begin. And Jimmy does, repeating his meaningless chant, letting it absorb his entire mind until he knows nothing but those words circling through him.

It calms him. The dizziness goes away. He glances up at the stone statue, but it doesn’t frighten him anymore. It looks like nothing but a statue. Quickly he lowers his head before his mother can see him. They perform the ritual as always, perfectly in sync. By the time they’re finished his mother’s shaking has stopped. She offers a tired smile.

She makes him a large breakfast that morning, everything he loves, covered in her special seasonings. Mr. Barrie won’t eat anything with her seasonings on it. Everything Jimmy eats has at least a little of them in it. She apologizes for forgetting his dinner. “I was just so angry at Mr. Barrie I couldn’t think straight,” she says. He’s never heard her apologize so much. She promises to never forget to make him a meal again.
****
When Mr. Barrie arrives back Jimmy’s mother yells at him. Jimmy awakes to the sound of them shouting. This isn’t new. Lately, Jimmy’s mother shouts at Mr. Barrie a lot. Jimmy can’t hear what they’re saying. He never can. Occasionally he hears a few words louder than the others before the voices quickly drop.

“Should be free,” Mr. Barrie says along with other words Jimmy can’t hear.

“Needs to be controlled,” Jimmy catches from his mother. He kneels on the floor in his dark bedroom with only the thin line of light from beneath his door. Suddenly the voices stop. Footsteps pound loudly across the floor.

“Jimmy?” his mother calls out.

Jimmy hurries as quietly as he can across the room and jumps into his bed. He feigns sleep when his mother walks up the stairs, opens his door. She closes it without saying a word. They don’t fight anymore that night.
****
On Mondays Jimmy’s mother goes into town to get the groceries. When Jimmy was younger he was allowed to go with her. Now he doesn’t get to leave at all. Six months have passed since the last time he has left the house.

His mother leaves shortly after their morning ritual. That, too, has changed. “Now is the difficult time,” she said to him once. “You mustn’t stray from your duties, and you mustn’t allow anything to distract you.”

First it became daily, every night, and then twice a day, every morning as well. Often in the afternoon they go into the back room.

On that Monday morning Jimmy cleans the dishes. Mr. Barrie walks down the stairs when Jimmy isn’t paying attention. “Hey kid,” Mr. Barrie says to him, smiling from the kitchen doorway. Jimmy doesn’t talk to Mr. Barrie very much anymore.

“Beautiful day out,” Mr. Barrie says. Jimmy doesn’t answer him. He finishes up with the dishes and gets ready to start up the laundry, but Mr. Barrie is standing in his way.

Mr. Barrie looks more youthful than normal. His spirits have been up in the past few months. He says his money has been good lately. Jimmy’s mother mutters other things under her breath, and won’t tell Jimmy what they are when he asks.

“Look,” Mr. Barrie says, kneeling just a little to look at Jimmy eye to eye. “Your mother’s gone for the day. You know it, I know it, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately that you need to have a day free. Can’t tell me you wouldn’t like that.”

Don’t talk to Mr. Barrie, Jimmy’s mother says in his mind, but his mother’s authority isn’t what it once was. The repetition of the walls surrounding him lights a fire of rebellion in Jimmy’s mind.

“What do you mean?” Jimmy says to Mr. Barrie’s growing smile.

“I’ll take you into town is what I mean, drop you off at the library. Never been to one, have you?”

“No.”

“Thought as much. You just spend your day there and I’ll pick you up tonight.”

“But mom will be angry at me. I won’t be here for-” Immediately the words cut off. Jimmy’s face scrunches with hesitation and a hint of fear.

“What is it?” Mr. Barrie asks.

No one is supposed to know about the rituals, and to Jimmy’s knowledge, Mr. Barrie doesn’t. On most Mondays they hold both an afternoon and evening ritual. Jimmy will miss the afternoon one for sure, and probably the evening one if he’s gone too long. But, the yearning to leave outranks his mother’s voice screaming in his head.

“Okay,” Jimmy says. “Please take me to the library.”

They drive in silence. Mr. Barrie smiles the whole way. The smell of fresh air through the window and the breeze across Jimmy’s face blocks out whatever punishment his mother will have waiting for him.

Mr. Barrie stops in front of a large cement building covered in stone carvings. “I’ll take all the blame for it, okay?” he says as Jimmy gets out.

Jimmy nods and knows Mr. Barrie is wrong.

Time leaves him then without his knowledge. The building is massive, dominates all his attention, until ten o’clock turns into one, and then into five, and still Jimmy wanders through the long rows of books, picking one up to glance through its pages before moving on to the next. At eight he realizes how late the time is, but when he walks outside, Mr. Barrie isn’t there.

The night is cool, but a fever burns in Jimmy’s temple. He stares at the street in front of the building and sees what looks like a haze of fog drifting in from the north. This feeling, he realizes, was with him in the building as well, but he had been too preoccupied to notice. Now he feels the heat inside his body. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast.

He turns to study the building, to distract him, but the stone animals stare at him. He thinks of the statue and its hollow eyes always watching him. He feels the heat of the candles across his face. A deep headache pounds behind his eyes. He can almost feel them pulsing.

Mother, he thinks. He needs to get home. Leaving was wrong. His mother told him to never leave the house without her, and now Mr. Barrie isn’t coming. They have a phone, he knows, because he has heard Mr. Barrie make calls, but Jimmy doesn’t know the number.

The fog grows thicker. It swarms down the street, towards Jimmy, engulfing everything but the area directly around him. He can feel the stone eyes of the animals at his back and he runs from them.

He knows the way home. He was watching carefully during the drive, and even with the fog, Jimmy knows where he has to go.

The heat pours through his legs. He wants to stop it hurts so badly. Thinking isn’t easy anymore with the pulsing in his head. He sees Mr. Barrie’s smiling face as he kneels down to tell Jimmy to get out. Mr. Barrie knew this was going to happen he suddenly thinks, and knew about the rituals in the room behind the pantry.

Up ahead, through the haze of the dark fog, Jimmy can see the two-story house he has spent his entire life in. A light glows in the living room.

Just being in the house makes him feel better, but it doesn’t stop the pain. The fog doesn’t follow him. This house, he suddenly thinks, is protected against the fog.

As soon as he’s through the door he hears his mother calling to him. Through a haze of pain he sees her appear, drag him towards the kitchen without a word. On the kitchen table is a bowl of soup. Her special seasoning is mixed into it, the smell of it everywhere, and the smell makes Jimmy feel sick. He doesn’t want to eat the seasoning.

Behind him Jimmy hears movement.

“That stuff won’t work anymore,” Mr. Barrie says.

Dark anger tenses in his mother’s face. “You stay away from him,” she screams, her hands clawing more at Jimmy’s arms. He allows her to pull him through the open pantry. He has trouble thinking. The pain in his head is too powerful. His mother pushes him to his knees. “Repeat your prayers,” she whispers in his ear, her voice thick with emotion.

Quickly his mother darts out of the room, while behind Jimmy he can see the long shadow of Mr. Barrie in the doorway. “This is for the best, Ruth. You shouldn’t have tried to contain it.”

In front of Jimmy the stone statue watches him. He can’t remember his prayer anymore. The throbbing won’t let him remember. The first words start to come to him, but his tongue, tense with pain, won’t form it.

His mother emerges with a bowl of her seasoning, lights them on fire. A thick, noxious odor fills the room. Jimmy has trouble breathing the smell is so awful.

Jimmy coughs, entire body shaking with it, his throat being torn to shreds by the painful coughing fit. He can’t speak anymore. He collapses onto his side.

“Please,” he hears his mother say beside him. She grasps at his shirt. She tries to pull him closer, her teary face right in front of his. “You have to say it. Don’t give in yet. Breathe in the fumes and say the prayer. I can’t do it for you.”

But her words are hard for Jimmy to hear. The smell is too terrible, the fumes acid down his throat. He can’t say the prayer anymore. His eyes flutter upward. He can see the hint of a dark fog infiltrating the house.

Beside him his mother’s soft voice keeps begging him. All Jimmy knows is the stone statue in front of him and the dark tunnels of its eyes.

“Leave it be,” Mr. Barrie shouts. “This is what we wanted. What was the point if we keep it contained?”

“It can’t be controlled,” Jimmy’s mother screams, and suddenly she’s gone from his side.

The two are fighting, their shadows jumping across the small room, but Jimmy can’t break his eyes away from the statue to see. Mr. Barrie screams in pain. A heavy body falls to the floor followed by footsteps running into the pantry.

“I’m so sorry,” he barely hears his mother whisper before the pain pierces his back. Finally his eyes leave the statue. In the middle of his chest he can see the tiny point sticking through his shirt, where red spreads outward, and then the feeling fades along with his vision. His mother’s arms wrap around him, draw him close. He can feel her tears on the back of his neck. “Forgive me,” she whispers over and over again in his ear.

The fog grows thicker, clouding out the flames and the statue, before absorbing Jimmy completely.
****
He awakens to the gaze of the statue. It can’t control him anymore. The statue shatters against the wall. There is no pain when the knife slides out of him.

His mother is gone. On the kitchen floor he stares at Mr. Barrie and the ragged remains of his face. The pungent smell of seasonings lingers in the air, but they can’t harm him now. A smile touches his face, and he says his prayer slowly, letting each word crawl across his tongue. That, too, cannot harm him. He knows what it means now.

He opens the back door to a world of deep fog, where somewhere the mother of his flesh has disappeared. Given time he’ll find her.

He steps out into the welcoming arms of the fog, and back into the world from which he had been summoned.

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His sight diminished by the gloom, Derrick stopped at an intersection to make out the street name. He sat at the corner of two streets he’d never heard of.

He turned left onto Franklin because he didn’t think he’d gone down Franklin yet, and continued on.

Asking someone for directions was always an option, but Derrick didn’t feel like knocking on a stranger’s door. Other people managed to find their way around this place without directions.

As much as he’d grown to despise the neighborhood in the past hour, he had to give them credit for their dedication to the holiday. Almost every house was well decorated. Cobwebs hung from trees and skeletons coated doors. Not a single house was lacking in decorations.

At another stop sign light caught his eye, pouring from beneath a closing garage door. There had been two people in the garage. One he saw only the bottom half of, jeans and boots covering him. The other guy had been hanging upside down, hands draped limply on the ground, a bucket under his head, and if what Derrick saw was accurate, it almost looked like blood had been pouring down the guy’s head into the bucket, like a deer hung up by its feet, the blood drained from the body.

Through a window on the side of the garage he could swear he saw a man’s face, watching him, but no, that was probably just in his head as well. Derrick laughed at his own paranoia, and drove straight, thoughts of plotting out his path momentarily forgotten.

The night grew darker, and in the distance lightning flickered. He saw fewer and fewer children the farther he drove. He turned right, then left, then right again.

Before, the streets had just kept coming around. He had been driving in circles around the exact same neighborhood, coming at it from a different direction every time, but now the street names were different.

Sure enough, the rain began. Luckily it wasn’t pouring, but still, it made reading the street names even harder. It also made seeing the children harder, a fact Derrick took to heart when one walked out into the street.

Fortunately, the road wasn’t slick just yet, and Derrick managed to bring his car to a skidding halt before striking the child, who looked no more than seven or eight. His hands tightly gripped the wheel, more amazed by the kid’s lack of reaction than the near collision. Little bastard didn’t even look over at Derrick and just kept on walking.

In the light of his headlights Derrick got a good look at the kid. He wore a black Dracula cape and wore what appeared to be gloves on his hands, but the gloves were apparently designed to look like human hands. From Derrick’s perspective, it looked like the kid had the skin from another person’s hands covering his own. All of this was complimented by blood around the boy’s lips and dripping down his chin in the falling rain.

Only after the boy had crossed the street did Derrick realize it wasn’t a big candy bag gripped in his left hand, but what had to be a dead dog.

His tires spun on the slick ground for a second before propelling him forward. He ran two stop signs before he finally got himself back under control. His speed slowed to the appropriate twenty-five, and he continued on.

If the last houses he had passed had been good at decorating for Halloween, the houses he drove by now were outstanding. Not only did cobwebs cover the trees, but stretched towards the houses, and in the glare of the lighting he could swear he saw spiders crawling on them.

The look of the houses themselves helped compliment the decorations. These weren’t the cookie cutter homes he’d grown used to, but old and unique. Most looked to be deteriorating, shingles missing from the roofs, paint peeling and chipped. The lights on in windows revealed dark smudges of dirt and grime.

Up ahead of him a girl hung from a noose, latched onto a tree in the front yard. He slowed his car to stare at the hanging body. Her dead face was youthful, only a teenager, but long wet brown hair obscured most of her face from Derrick’s view. She wore a t-shirt and jeans, bare feet swaying lightly above damp grass.

Then Derrick was driving past her and he looked in his rearview mirror at the amazing decoration. She was only the first of the displays to come.

On the next house a body had been nailed to the front door. The man’s hands were fastened to the upper doorframe and he hung limply forward, head resting on his shirtless chest. Derrick marveled at how real the man looked. Blood ran down his arms from the metal drilled into his hands.

Next came the most realistic looking of them all: a middle-aged man impaled on a massive stake in a front yard, and Derrick found his stomach tightening into a deeper knot.

Someone had shoved a seven-foot tall stake in the ground and impaled it through the overweight man’s back. He hung suspended three feet in the air, his body limp, head hanging back, face aimed towards Derrick’s car. The base of the stake was soaked red, and in the bursts of lightening Derrick could see the man’s guts shoved up through his stomach on the tip of the spiked pole.

Derrick stopped his car to stare, transfixed by the gory image, his mind swirling as it attempted to rationalize everything he was seeing.

The man’s eyes opened with a jerk; mouth wide as he screamed into the night. His hands reached up and touched his own intestines wrapped around the stake. He struggled, which only dug the spike deeper through him, and after two minutes, his struggles ceased and he hung limp once more.

A soft moan ran through Derrick’s body followed by the fiery taste of stomach acid in the back of his throat.

Only then did he see the children.

Both sides of the street were cluttered with them, candy bags in hand; each was dressed just as horribly as the child he had almost hit. Many had masks made of what looked like a person’s face. Other’s Derrick actually believed had mutilated their own faces to obtain such grotesque appearances. And maybe they had.

Derrick’s foot struck the gas pedal, forced right away to slam on the brakes when he saw two children walk across the street in front of him.

Unlike the last child, these took notice of him, as did all the others. Every child turned towards his car; their faces slick with what he knew was both rainwater and blood.

They began to walk towards him, and through the pounding rain he heard them speak, each of them chanting, “Trick or Treat,” over and over again.

Without thought Derrick locked his car door. A little girl approached, her hand stuffed into her bag of candy. She lifted up her prize, the skin from an old woman’s face, and pressed it against Derrick’s window.

His car rocked as a child climbed onto the trunk, then another climbed onto his hood. There were too many of them in front of his car for him to start driving. Through the terror the thought came: what if these really were children and everything around him was fake? What would he do when the police showed up at his door because he ran over school children in a panic?

An older boy, probably thirteen or so, pulled out a baseball bat. Derrick’s passenger side window cracked from the impact, and Derrick couldn’t stop himself from screaming. Around him the chorus of Trick or Treats grew louder, the children’s faces distorted into gleeful grins of dark joy.

A teenager jumped on the hood of his car and shoved aside the two kids who had been there, knocking both to the ground. He brought up the axe until it rose above his head. His face was painted red and in his eyes were contacts made to look like snake eyes; at least, Derrick hoped they were only contacts. The bat struck his passenger window again, made his eyes jump to the side, but only until the axe came down and lodged in his windshield.

The car lurched forward. He watched the teenager on the hood fall off and felt the bump of tires rolling over the fallen body of a child.

He didn’t look in his rearview mirror as he shot through the night, his windshield and passenger side windows all but destroyed.

How, he wasn’t sure, his trip through the night erratic and without destination, but somehow in his panic he found the exit, a stoplight up ahead.

The light was red, but Derrick didn’t stop. A car screeched to a halt just in time to stop from smashing into the side of Derrick’s, and he heard the driver honk, but only barely. After five minutes Derrick realized where he was, and fifteen minutes later, drove into the parking lot of his apartment building.

He stepped out of his car in a daze and slowly walked up to his door.

Once inside he didn’t bother with the lights, but stood in the darkness, eyeing his living room. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do or what had actually happened. His windows were shattered, proof of something, but Derrick didn’t want to think about the rest. He didn’t want to see the man’s face turned towards him, impaled for nothing more than decoration.

Behind him he heard movement as someone walked up to the door, followed by a light knocking, and then a child’s voice. “Trick or Treat.”

Derrick couldn’t stop screaming.

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Pronounced stubble, matted down hair, and reddened eyes made Chuck feel like the bum he knew he appeared to be. Though wrinkled badly, the suit Chuck wore still reflected the wealth he had access to. Even the hint of a manicure was visible on the tips of the fingers Chuck held out a credit card with. “Like a room,” he croaked quietly.

Chuck grabbed the key quickly and hurried on towards the elevator. When the door opened Chuck had to pause, almost unable to make himself walk into that confined box, but the thought of the eyes still curiously watching him from the desk forced him to step inside.

As soon as the doors closed he could hear the metal begin to squirm. He clamped his eyes tightly shut, stomach sucking into itself when the elevator shook and began moving. He knew it moved up to the third floor, but all his senses told him he was being taken deeper into the ground instead. The light ding of the elevator came to him from far away.

Rows and rows of closed doors greeted him. Behind all of them he could hear the scratching, the faint screams of pain, the warbling cries of things he’d never seen in the flesh before. Some doors creaked open as soon as he passed them, but a quick glance back showed only an empty, silent hall of wooden doors.

Thankfully his room offered him limited peace. The second he entered he unzipped the bag over his shoulder and began writing across every wall he could. With each completed image the abnormalities grew more distant, until by the time he finished, he finally felt himself again.

Chuck fell face first onto the soft bed. Though his eyes closed instantly, his mind still seemed to writhe inside his skull, presenting him with day after day of endless paranoia, of sounds growing closer, and the deformed husk Odell Kottke had become.

Perched on the bed, Chuck stared at his reflection in the dark TV, saw through the screen to a different room covered in similar symbols, except on the floor and ceiling as well.

What had sparked this descent into the unknown? Chuck could barely remember the days once filled with little more than pissing away his bottomless inheritance, sheer boredom to blame for his first conversation with the more scholarly Odell. Chuck had taken to giving out money to almost any vague academic cause to make himself feel intellectual. Odell’s interests prompted a greater degree of curiosity from Chuck. A friendship of sorts bloomed between the two men, even if Chuck always suspected Odell merely befriended Chuck’s money. Still, the money was what allowed him to sit in that room when Odell first picked up the book and began reading.

The writing on the walls was meant to protect them, and perhaps if Chuck’s nerves had been stronger it might’ve. Their warning had been very clear: if a single symbol was incorrect, they would have no protection at all from the existence they were opening a doorway to.

The skinnier, more bookish looking Odell with his pronounced overbite and neatly combed red hair hid any hint of fear. Chuck watched the wall before them melt away, shimmering into a twisted, violent caricature of what it had once been. The rising cries of pain, the rolling echoes of massive things moving towards them, even the hallways taking form in the altered wall wasn’t enough to draw any hint of reaction in Odell, stern face opening up more in wonderment then fear.

The first hint of real fear marred Odell’s face when Chuck grabbed hold of the door handle. The second the door opened, as it altered the protection they’d drawn, Chuck understood just how protected they had been. A deep wrenching jarred his organs, so painful he thought his lungs were being torn through his back before the door slammed shut behind him, and the sensation ended.

The last sound he’d ever hear of Odell was a hysterical shrieking. It didn’t matter that the symbols had been returned to their rightful place. The seal couldn’t be fixed.

Three days passed before Chuck found the nerve to return to that horrible structure. He didn’t go back for Odell, too sure of his friend’s death to believe he’d find anything, but for the papers instead.

Trips through unsavory regions during their research had embedded in Chuck the desire to always carry a gun. Standing in the dim living room, Chuck was glad to have the weapon as he listened to a faint scratching from the floor above him.

The bright glare of the overhead light revealed to him what his friend had become. He saw only the vague resemblance of Odell’s humanity, his body melded into a new, grotesque form. Several additional limbs had torn loose from his torso, but they remained curled, rotting against his body. Both legs had all but melted into each other, though Chuck could see the jagged edge of flesh covered bone splinters shoving upward. Dried blood coated most of the nude, bulbous body, and Odell’s gut looked like watery skin that had oozed across the floor.

The abomination could barely move, one stubby hand with a single clawed finger groping towards Chuck. What must’ve been Odell’s eyes glistened wetly within deep sockets of flesh, but Chuck couldn’t actually see the bulbs themselves, and was thankful for it. The mouth that opened looked like it had once been covered entirely in skin, but a few patches had been torn loose, the edges of the flesh crusted with dried red. Only a thick gurgling came from Odell’s attempt at speech, and before he could try further, Chuck shot two bullets into the creature’s head.

Countless days of research and sleepless flight had led him to his seat on the edge of the bed, the slightly more public setting of a hotel chosen on purpose, too afraid to be completely alone when he opened another gateway.

Leafing through the old tome, he understood now what had happened when he’d opened the door and left Odell to his fate. Something had approached the gateway, perhaps had merely been waiting for its opening, and as soon as the barrier was broken it had stolen from Chuck something deep within him, what could be considered his soul, he thought.

“You have no choice,” Chuck told himself, but the command couldn’t make his body stop shaking. Stuck as he was between the world he knew and the other existence where some part of him was being kept, he would continue to deteriorate until he’d no longer be able to tell which one he existed in.

Survival, rather than any sense of bravery, led him to open the book to the page he had marked and begin chanting words similar to what he’d heard Odell utter. Behind him the window rattled. The TV shook on the dresser, skittered towards the edge, and a pungent odor seeped into the room.

A crescendo of mournful wails nearly masked Chuck’s carefully formed words, his eyes clamped tightly shut until the last syllable faded. At first the room dropped into darkness. Things rattled nearby, and he could still occasionally pick out faint whimpers as if carried from a distance on the wind.

His eyes opened to a soft, dark purple glow illuminating the room, the light just bright enough to allow him to make out the furniture. His barrier kept the walls mostly intact, save for a single space roughly the size of a door that he’d left untouched.

Odell’s chant had been intentionally forceful, one meant to draw the attention of whatever creatures this other world might contain. They had wanted to observe, after all, not walk over the threshold. His incantation had been meant to create a smaller opening, a silent backdoor, the gateway opened up before him.

Words of self-encouragement lingered on his tongue, but he thought better of doing anything to potentially catch something’s attention, and instead passed a shaking step into the tunnel. Immediately a muggy blast of air washed over him, but within it he felt also a frigid touch, the temperature shifting rapidly from extreme heat to bitter cold.

The tunnel opened into a warped variation of the hotel’s hallway. In here the walls seemed to squirm with life, almost as if they were covered in thousands of maggots crawling over each other. He thought he could even hear their fleshy undulations.

Just as quickly as he noticed them, the tiny creatures were vanishing into the walls, though he saw no holes for them to crawl into. The walls themselves seemed to ripple, as did the ceiling. A thick, mucus like substance could be seen oozing from beneath some of the doors, only to soak rapidly into the floor, gone as quickly as Chuck could see it.

Nothing about the hallway remained constant for long beyond its general shape. Even doorways melted into the walls, only to tear open further up in a spray of black liquid. Every so often he swore he could feel various things crawling across his skin, the back of his neck, but he never felt a thing when he’d jerk his hand up to swat them away.

Near the middle of the hallway, close to where an alcove with what should’ve been the elevators lay, Chuck saw the opening in the wall and the staircase leading down. A sense beyond normal reason told him his other half rested at the bottom of that staircase. Even before entering this place he’d known that his other half would never be far from him, and this idea alone had allowed him to work up the nerve to open the gateway.

The staircase twisted abnormally in its descent, rarely next to the wall, sometimes spiraling, and sometimes turning sharply to one side or another. Chuck stepped hesitantly down the first few steps, the material spongy, feet sinking in slightly only to have the next step be on solid wood or metal. The walls stretched out away from him, left him descending a staircase suspended in the middle of a dark void. A single blink brought back the darkened, stained walls, far closer than they should’ve been.

An updraft carried with it the stench of rotting skin, brought a stink he’d found with the warped remains of Odell. The gun held tightly against his chest still irrationally gave him a sense of protection when he finally saw a floor at the base of the winding staircase.

The door before him took up an entire wall, its handle level with his face. The metal was thick and colored by splashes of dark red. From beneath it something brighter glowed, this one more reddish orange in quality, like a fire burning. Though appearing too thick and heavy for him to possibly move, he found the door grinded open with minimal resistance until he was met with a wall-less room.

A thin, stone walkway gave him the only means of advancing further, one that quickly became another staircase, only now he could see a platform at the bottom. The edges of what appeared to be stone shimmered and blended with the oily darkness around it.

Here the smell grew worse, as if beneath him mountains of corpses rotted. Had Chuck had any food in him he thought he might’ve thrown up then, the burning touch of stomach acid crawling up the back of his throat. The platform allowed him to move past his revulsion, because the closer he drew, the more the images atop it began to take shape as if they hadn’t been there before.

His gun clattered to the ground. Tears streamed through the stubble on his face, body numb and distant. The limitation of his physical senses prevented him from grasping at the true form of whatever he stared at, mind latching instead onto parts that looked partially familiar in some way, and he suspected his mind somehow constructed the image before him more than the creature’s flesh did.

It never held just one shape, body always in movement, limbs forming and melting back into the glistening, sinewy flesh spread across its body. What might’ve been organs throbbed rhythmically through holes in its pulsating form, but they too seemed to take on new shapes, splitting open to reveal jagged teeth, massive eyes, festering legions. Parts of the skin appeared to rot, the twisted shape of bones jutting out until a larger wave of skin would absorb the protrusions back to wherever they had come from.

The creature stood some ten feet tall, size varying only slightly with each continuing change. The overall form looked vaguely human, tall and upright, the swollen shape of a head near the top, though sometimes melding more into the chest. Several mouths, some lined only with reddish gums, others a mess of flat, rotted teeth, and yet others spilling over with jagged points, ripped into existences with a deluge of dark liquid that splashed down the warped flesh.

Words drifted through him, a physical force piercing into his head, his muscles. The sensation enveloped him completely until he fell to his knees, pain arching its way through all of him, and when it finally ended, he understood its message.

It offered him thanks for breaking the original seal, and for providing it with entertainment. The form in front of him seemed to solidify more, misshapen arms gesturing around it, towards the hazy forms on the platform. Chuck recognized Odell and himself, both motionless.

It had captured them, the words said, and found them of interest, just as it had found Odell’s flesh of interest for a time. It had no interest in Chuck’s flesh, already bored with the limitations, but the spirits still offered more to explore.

As a gift, it would let him have one back, there being no need for two. Chuck could pick whichever he wanted, but only one.

The oily darkness seemed to condense around them. “What will you do to the one you keep?” Chuck shouted, but the creature made no reply, or motion of any kind, and he suspected his voice couldn’t even reach it.

He didn’t care what friendship there might’ve been in the past. No hesitation plagued his decision to accept back his own essence rather than free Odell from whatever horrors might be inflicted on him. Chuck banished the image of that repulsive thing he’d shot to death in Odell’s room, and the agony his still living friend had endured to end in that state. Only the smallest prick of guilt affected him as he walked up to his form and reached out to touch it.

Searing heat shot through his veins. His eyes clamped shut, body tumbling to the ground, curling into a ball until it subsided. Reality had returned when his eyes opened to a grungy basement. He got up from the cold cement floor, an old, rusty brown boiler beside him, and a door leading to a laundry room not far away.

No one saw him climb sluggishly up the stairs; weeks of near sleepless nights descended upon him. The bed accepted him, but still his mind refused to allow him the reprieve of unconsciousness.

He sat on the edge of the mattress once again, gaze fixed on his haggard reflection in the TV, its rounded glass making his appearance more grotesque. Closing his eyes brought back memories of the creature he’d witnessed, along with other thoughts born from the side of him that had been its captive. Buried deep inside these memories he understood they contained a greater understanding of what he had really encountered, allowing him to see beyond the constantly mutating flesh. Even the hint of what it offered sent a shock of intense fear through his body, trembling at the very thought of sleep, of letting his subconscious mind free to show him what it had been through.

Instead he watched his reflection with dead eyes, curious how long he’d be able to continue without ever closing them.

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He grudgingly got down on the floor to stare through the small crack in the wall in hopes that his quarter hadn’t rolled very far. Slowly he reached his fingers through the crack, only to prick his hand on a spike in the wood, and jerk his fingers right back out. They caught just a little on the wall, jarring it forward, he noticed, and revealing the clear outline of a door.

He gently nudged the door, and with a dry snap of old wood the door swung completely inward to reveal a rather large space in the wall. Tom glanced behind him at the empty laundry room before he stepped through the threshold and picked up his quarter.

But now he had more interesting things to see, eyes moving upwards, squinting through the dust swirling in the air, and fixing on the ladder built along the wall. He could see multiple small platforms up above him.

He grabbed hold of the ladder and pulled himself up a few rungs until he could make it to one of the platforms. The wall in front of him was entirely flat wood except for a small square at about eye level with a latch attached to it. Cautiously he pulled the square out to reveal thin wallpaper on the other side. Someone was humming, and leaning in closer, he could see a woman sitting at her kitchen table, papers strewn in front her.

He pulled back as silently as he could. Across from him was another platform with another little door, just as up above he could now see that each one of the platforms matched each of the apartments in his building.

He quickly slid down the ladder and closed the door behind him. He was careful to close it in just the right way to hide the fact that it was there.
****
Shortly before four Tom pushed back from the computer and logged out of the game he had been playing.

The library was only a few blocks from his apartment complex. Tom listened to his joints crack as he stretched out his shoulders before stepping out into the warm summer day. He ran a finger through his growing stubble. Stacy would complain eventually, but he had a few more days before that, and he’d get to it before she had a chance to. Tom found himself more and more willing each day to jump to her commands before she had a chance to utter them if at all possible.

And there she was as he walked up to the building, just getting out of her car; her blonde hair pulled back, skirt appropriately long yet short all the same it appeared to Tom. She stopped to let Tom reach her, her smile reserved, body language cautious.

“How was work,” Tom asked her. He reached in to quickly kiss her neck and smell what he knew was another man’s cologne.

“The usual. Get a lot of research done?” He didn’t like her smirk but couldn’t say if it were real or in his head.

“Enough.”

They proceeded up the stairs, stiff and separate from each other. The day was Tuesday. They wouldn’t have their obligatory dinner out and quick sex for another two days.

Tom prepared dinner while Stacy sat at the kitchen table, her slender frame bent over a fashion magazine. He had always found it amusing that she spent all day sorting through legal documents, only to come home and read such trash. “How much longer do you think it’ll be before you finish up with your paper?” Stacy asked him without looking up.

“Who knows with these things? Can’t know when I’m going to stumble across something really useful, after all.” He forced a smile even though he had his back to her.

“Well, if you wouldn’t mind I’m going to need the apartment to myself tomorrow night,” Stacy said as Tom set down their plates.

“Greg coming over?”

“Yeah. We have some files we need to go through.”

Screwing him in our very home, he thought. “Sure. I’ll just be at the library.”

“I figured.”

Of course she did, and had Tom not been so fearful of her leaving him he might’ve had a little more to say on the matter, but his eyes lowered instead.

He thought of his father then, as he often did in moments like this one. He could see the veins pulsing through a red face, and the bloody gash across the side of his mother’s cheek as Tom stared silently at the scene, hidden behind a partially closed closet door.

Tom had trouble making eye contact with Stacy, a woman who’s beauty far outshined Tom’s own meager appearance, just as her job outshined all of Tom’s failures that had led him to start up his ‘research project’ he currently labored through for as long as he could get away with. How long had it taken her to get through college compared to the nearly nine years Tom himself had taken? He had often mused to himself that the only reason she had even married him was so she would always have someone to feel superior to, or perhaps that was merely his own delusions. The only thing that mattered was that he would never be in control.

He glanced over at the wall.
****
Age made climbing the three-story ladder to reach the inner wall of his apartment harder than he would’ve preferred.

He could probably tell her he knew she was cheating, hold it over her head to make sure she knew not to cross him. The mere prospect made his heart quicken, to feel like he knew his father surely must’ve felt when he swung his fist. Tom wasn’t as brutish as the man he had seen lowered into the ground six years before.

He paused, still on the ladder, and glanced between the platform next to him and the one across from him, not entirely sure which apartment was the right one, sense of direction limited in the enclosed structure. He chose the one closest to him.

Stacy sat on the other side of that thin wallpaper, watching TV as she waited for her lover to show up. Tom tried to keep his breathing shallow. Already beads of sweat broke out on his forehead in the hot confines of the walls, but his wait wasn’t long.

He had seen and spoke to Greg before. The man who walked into his apartment was nearly two inches taller than Tom himself, and probably five years younger.

Tom couldn’t say what exactly he had been expecting to see, but he certainly hadn’t imaged they would live up to his expectations so thoroughly.

Immediately Greg’s hands were moving over Stacy’s body, the two choosing the couch rather than the bedroom. Tom could only watch the first few minutes before he found his eyes pulling away. He knelt down on the platform and pressed his ear against the wall.

There was no feeling of empowerment. All he felt was a sense of deep impotence. His lips curled back in a snarl of rage as he envisioned himself returning to the apartment before the act was completed, and putting an end to the relationship right away. Cowardice kept him in place.

They were at it for ten minutes before the final cries, Tom’s own legs shaking from the strain of kneeling down for so long. He managed to pull himself upright enough to stare through the window at his wife’s nude form in the arms of another man.

And then the words came. “When are you going to leave him?” Greg asked.

“Tom would never let me divorce him. Not without a good reason, at least.”

“He’s practically stealing your money. Why wouldn’t you leave him?”

“I doubt Tom’s lies about his little project would be enough to keep him from any more of my money, Greg.”

“Then maybe we need to figure out another way to get rid of him.”

“I don’t want to talk about it now. We’ll…consider things later.”

Tom’s fingers shook as they slipped the wood panel back into place. He stared down into the darkness below him and imagined his shaking fingers slipping on the ladder. Luck saw him through the journey to the floor.

The numb shock didn’t change into confusion until after Tom had stepped out of the laundry room door into the stairwell leading up. The laundry room was on his right, along with the apartment he had been looking into. But now, standing in the stairwell, Tom could recall that his apartment was on the other side of the staircase.

He ran up the stairs. He nearly slammed open the door to his apartment. Stacy sat at the kitchen table, alone, papers and files strewn in front of her. “What the hell, Tom?” she asked.

“Where’s Greg?”

“He hasn’t arrived yet. What’s wrong? What happened to you?”

Tom ignored her. He stared over at the wall. Even the furniture had been right, everything exactly as it should’ve been. “I don’t know,” Tom said. “Sorry for startling you.”

He turned and left before she could answer. For the next fifteen minutes he stood outside near the edge of his building until he saw the familiar car pull up and Greg Toller get out.

After that he went to a bar.
****
His drunken slumber left him thick headed, his back in pain from an awkward position on the couch, clothes still on from the night before. What had Stacy thought when Tom had returned? The idea made him laugh.

Something clicked lightly to his right. He stared at the far wall to the living room. Just briefly he thought he heard a soft shuffling, like feet shifting positions on the other side of the wall.

“Who the hell is there?” Tom asked, shaking, unable to shift his gaze from where he knew a section of the wall had been removed. He received no answer. “I know it’s there,” he said.

Nothing. Not a single thing for over fifteen minutes of tense waiting. There was no shuffling, no click of the panel being put back, just Tom’s own rapid breaths and pounding temple.

He wouldn’t have moved at all had the vomit not started to bubble up in the back of his throat. He welcomed the sensation to give him a reason to move from those eyes he knew were watching him. A few dry heaves later Tom managed to take a shower. His hand shook too much for him to shave.

As soon as he stepped back out into the living room he could feel the eyes again. Before he could reach the door to his apartment that soft click repeated as someone slipped the panel back in place.

He almost fell down the stairs. The laundry room was empty, the door along the wall properly hidden. Standing in the walls Tom stared up at all those platforms. He was alone. How the person had made it out so fast he couldn’t imagine. Maybe there was another way out.

Hung over as he was the trip up was considerably harder than the night before. The panel to his apartment was gone. Tom stepped across to the platform and stared at his empty apartment on the other side. The square block of wood was at his feet. He spun around, squinting through the haze of dust and dim lighting as if a person would suddenly appear.

His eyes settled on the wall across from him. He stepped over onto the other platform. Trying to move as silently as he could he pulled the square loose. The lights were off on the other side. He moved in a little closer, trying to peer through the darkness.

His face was up against the wallpaper when the light clicked on, when he saw Stacy’s face pressed against the other side directly in front of him, eyes staring directly into his, face pushing so hard into the wallpaper it stretched it closer to Tom, and distorted her features. “You’re never going to change, are you, Tom?” she laughed.

Tom nearly plunged to his death right there. The sturdiness of the platform was the only thing that saved him.

The opening was dark. There was no face anymore, nor any sound of movement.

He stumbled down the ladder. He didn’t bother to close the door behind him, and was out of the laundry room when he realized he hadn’t closed it the night before, either.

A minute later and he stood in front of the apartment next to his, hand poised over the door, ready to knock. He couldn’t make himself do it. Instead he leaned in close enough to hear the shuffling on the other side.

He had put his cell phone in his pocket without thought. Standing in front of the door he called Stacy.

“Tom?”

“Are you…you’re at work right now, right?”

“God damn, Tom, you know I don’t have time to talk during work. I’m on the other line. Is this an emergency, because if it isn’t I’m hanging up right now.”

“No emergency, I just…I don’t know what. Something…I don’t know.”

“I’m hanging up now. We’ll talk about whatever this is when I get home.”

He hadn’t heard her voice coming from the other side of the door, not that he seriously thought his wife was there. Besides, she could’ve left. So who was moving on the other side?

Suddenly he thought he could hear voices. He leaned in closer. There were two voices, soft but there, a man and a woman—Stacy and Greg, something in him said.

He pulled away from the door without trying to hear anything else.
****
“What’s going on with you? I’m not even sure I know you anymore, Tom.”

He sat on the edge of the couch, face still unshaven, hands practically shaking as they rested on his knees. Stacy seemed to tower over him, staring down as she would at a spoiled child, and Tom once again saw his father’s red face and his mother’s gashed cheek through the thin slit of a door.

“There’s, uh, in the walls, there’s this space, and you can, well, each apartment has a little hole you can see through. Right through the wallpaper.”

“Where is this?”

“I’ll show you.”

Her reluctance was clear, but she did follow him as he led her out of the apartment and to the laundry room. The door was once again well hidden. Stacy didn’t say a word as he pushed it open and led her inside.

“Come on,” he said, and started climbing, Stacy behind him, until they had reached the third floor platforms. Both panels were in place. She moved to their apartment and lifted the block of wood enough to allow her to see inside. As she did so Tom took out the one on the other side and stared into the darkness. He couldn’t see anything.

“When did you find out about this?” He could hear the slight tremble in her voice, though he couldn’t place what specifically was causing it.

“Just a few days ago.”

He could see the shift in her body language. She turned swiftly back towards Tom; cheeks flush with visible red even in the dim lighting, augmented by the light red of her lipstick. “That was you last night, wasn’t it then?”

“Last night?”

“Watching us. Greg said he thought he heard something.”

Tom saw the two of them intertwined, saw the sweat on their bodies and heard a kind of moan she had never uttered with him. “That…really happened?” he whispered.

“What really happened? Did you think you dreamt up spying on us? My God, Tom, is this really what we’ve come to? You aren’t working on anything anymore, are you? Are you even going to the library?”

There were too many things mixing together for Tom to absorb it all. Buried beneath it was that feeling of impotence, made worse by the sense of being watched in this moment of humiliation from the darkness behind him. Why did he remove the panel?

But one thought did break through all the others. If she were cheating on him, he had an advantage in the divorce, and he felt the small smile creep through the tension. “Yes, I’m going to the library but I haven’t been researching anything in a long time. What does it really matter? You’re the one screwing around on me.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not sleeping with Greg. And who the hell are you to accuse me of such a thing when you’ve been lying to me all this time? I’m going back down.”

It hadn’t been real. Whatever Greg had heard, it hadn’t been Tom, and all Tom could do was stand there and watch Stacy climb down the ladder, and ignore the overwhelming urge he suddenly had to shove her off of it and watch her fall.

A minute passed of isolation before he heard it. “You know what you are, Tom,” Stacy’s soft voice said from within the darkness of the apartment. “You’re a wife beater who doesn’t have the guts to beat his wife.”

His journey down the ladder was just as fast and risky as it had been earlier in the day, but now the thing that drove him was anger, not fear. He didn’t knock on the door to the apartment next to his. The door opened and let him into the middle of a dark, empty room. There was no furniture like there had been the night before, certainly no couch for his wife to have sex on with Greg.

He squinted in the darkness of the apartment in an effort to make out whatever he could see moving through the hallway in front of him.

“What the hell are you?” he screamed.

The hand reached out from behind him. Tom spun around to see Stacy’s smiling face, eyes hidden by shadows, dressed in the same outfit the real Stacy had been wearing. “You’ve never really been in control, have you? From the moment you first set eyes on me two years ago you’ve been mine to do with as I please. You had one moment in your entire life to take a stand and do something right, and you chose that moment to show who you really are.”

Her words were snide and cut through him. Right then, standing in the middle of the darkness with this image of his wife in front of him, Tom couldn’t stop himself anymore. His fist caught her across the cheek, and he felt the flesh against his fist, and saw the surprise turn to fear when the second blow came.

She stumbled back, but his third punch threw her off balance, dropped her to the floor, and Tom was falling down on top of her, letting his fist swing again. She tried to say please, tried to bring up her hands to stop him, but Tom wouldn’t relent, wouldn’t stop his body from following through.

Some part of him stood in the middle of a thin crowd of false mourners as his father was being lowered into the ground, Tom’s own mother already dead from his father’s hands, and while everyone standing around that grave suspected the truth, only Tom and his dead father knew there hadn’t really been any man who broke into their house that night, and Tom had never spoken a word of the truth. He could still see the look on the officer’s face as Tom’s father gave his story. Their town was small, the violence low, and even the police didn’t throw around the accusation of murder too often if they had any way to believe otherwise.

The light clicked on. Tom stared down at the pulpy remains of Stacy’s face, at the blood spattered out from where her head repeatedly collided with the floor. The room was filled with the furniture from his apartment, everything exactly as it should be, and Tom could only stare dumbly around the room until his eyes settled on the wall and he heard the muted sound of Stacy gasping in fear followed by the creaking of her descending down the ladder.

The fear of a little boy that gripped him then was momentary but so powerful he felt his heart freeze for just a second, but almost immediately it was being replaced with something else. Beneath him he stared at the large splash of blood on the wood flooring where his fist had repeatedly struck, his knuckles raw and slick with red. There was no furniture and there was no corpse. Tom sat alone in the bright living room.

He didn’t bother to turn off the light when he left the apartment.

He pushed open the door in the laundry room and stepped into the walls. He climbed up the ladder with clawed, stiff fingers.

The panel was gone from the apartment next to his. He listened to the sound of his father shouting. Inside he saw his father throwing Tom’s mother to the floor. He stared through that small window just as he had stared through the thin crack of an open door, knowing this time was going to be worse than the others, and understanding when that final blow came and his mother’s eyes went blank, that the end had finally come. When the officer’s eyes would eventually shift towards Tom, to ask him in an almost pleading tone if he had seen what had happened, Tom could only look away and shake his head and never say a word just as he hadn’t left the safety of the closet to save his mother.

Somewhere Stacy was screaming. Tom turned around towards his apartment. He reached forward with indifference and removed the panel. Inside he could see her pretty face contorted in fear. He leaned in and watched himself grab her shoulder and throw her into the wall. He watched himself pull his fist back for the first time and repeat an act his father had perfected.

Tom was aware of the tears streaming down his cheeks, and remembered for the first time in his life he had been crying on that night as well twenty years ago.

Once again he stood back and didn’t say a word or try to stop the violence right in front of him. He only leaned in a little closer and watched another life come to an end.

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A decent-sized patch of ice lay in front of him, covering a good three feet of the path, created by a dip in the pavement. The ice would normally be of no interest, except that rather than the typical glassy clearness, the ice was red—a deep, dark red.

The ice itself was still thin, the weather not cold enough to generate anything thicker. Below the surface Jacob could see the liquid, a thick substance, and he quickly rejected the notion that he was staring at a frozen pool of blood.

No trail of red led away from the hole as if from an injured animal. If a frozen body rested in the center of the ice, everything would be different, but he saw no signs of what might have bled to death in order to create such a large pool. The ice was probably the result of nothing more than children playing around with food coloring. He walked around the red, nearly past it, when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Although it seemed impossible, he thought he’d seen a human hand, ever so briefly, brushing along underneath the ice. A closer look revealed nothing, and after a full minute of staring, he decided he hadn’t seen anything to begin with.

He first saw the ice on December twenty second. Jacob pondered the odd little sight for the rest of the day, but by the next morning, he’d forgotten.

Although he frequently jogged along that particular path, due to the holidays, the next time he made it out wasn’t until January third. The weather had grown progressively colder as winter plowed on, and snow had struck in the last few days of December.

White flakes floated everywhere on that January third as Jacob set out down the path. It felt good to walk it and clear his head, routine once again reestablished now that the chaos of the holidays had ended.

Trees surrounded the path, all of them bare and lifeless, the small patch of wilderness around him quiet. This time Jacob saw not a patch of red ice, but red snow instead covering the ground up ahead, maybe three feet long. In truth, he’d forgotten about the ice, and he put no thought to it as he moved towards the bloody snow, fully expecting to see a dead animal at the center.

He found nothing. There wasn’t even an indention in the snow where an injured animal had lain. The snow wasn’t melted and no white covered the top of the red. It seemed as if the new snow that fell on the spot simply soaked up the red instantly.

Jacob fell to his knees and began to dig through the crimson snow, only a few inches deep. What he found jogged his memory as his eyes took in the ice, just as red as ever.

Slowly, he reached down and ran his gloved fingers over the surface, thought of a hand brushing against the other side. A part of him expected to see the hand once more, following his fingers as they moved across the top of the ice, but nothing happened.

Jacob pulled his hand back and stared at the wet red covering his glove. The liquid on his gloves wasn’t watery, but thicker. As impossible as it seemed, Jacob almost believed blood covered his fingers, as if the ice bled.

He stood up abruptly, and in his bulky winter clothing, almost fell back down in the process. Jacob wanted to get away from the ice, to forget about the way it bled when he touched it. He turned and left the patch behind; retreated into the warmth and comfort of his home.

Three days later and the ice had consumed his thoughts. It danced around in his mind and blocked out everything else.

On two occasions during those three days he started down the jogging path in order to see it again, but both times he had only made it a few steps before turning back. He tried to believe it was nothing, a perfectly good explanation available for what he’d seen; he just didn’t know what it could be.

On the third day he decided to do something.

He walked along the path that afternoon, the sky nothing but grey clouds. In his hand he gripped a metal baseball bat. He’d break it open and see what lay underneath, and when he found nothing, he’d walk away at peace.

It had snowed the day before, but the spot remained as red as it had been three days ago, contrasting starkly against the fresh white surrounding it. Jacob wondered if anyone else had walked along this path and seen the red, but no footprints marred the snow, still smooth and undisturbed.

He dropped to his knees and unburied the ice. He pushed away snow until he could see the entire patch; both of his gloves dripped with red when he stood back up.

The bat rose above his head. This time he could plainly see the human hand, moving just barely beneath the surface. He brought the bat down with a loud crack.

The effect was immediate. Given the thickness of the ice, he thought he’d need to swing three or four times before it broke, but on the first try a geyser of blood sprayed ten feet into the air. Jacob stumbled away, thankfully far enough to avoid the scarlet shower.

The spray lasted for only a few seconds before it retreated back into the puddle. From out of the hole blood still bubbled up, melting the snow around it, bathing the ground, an endless supply kept within the ice.

Jacob could only stare, bat still in hand. His eyes remained fixed on the hole he’d made, and as he watched, a hand rose out of it and gripped the ice. It broke away another piece, sharp and red like stained glass, widening the hole. An entire arm reached upward, dripping wet.

When the head appeared, a man’s face visible, bald, face strained as he tried to break more of the ice away, Jacob ran. He didn’t stop until he reached his door, and then hid away in the bedroom of his apartment, contemplating the reality of the past half hour.

Had he actually seen a man pull himself out of a bloody patch of ice in the ground? Just as he’d thought about the patch of ice itself, there had to be a reasonable explanation, but nothing Jacob thought sounded plausible. If a man had actually been frozen in the ground like that, he couldn’t still be alive, and nothing could explain away the blood.

That night Jacob didn’t sleep. He stared at his door and waited for the knock to come. The man from the ice would be out there.

No one knocked on Jacob’s door, and when the morning came, he knew another walk was needed.

Baseball bat once again in hand, Jacob trudged down the jogging path. Even though things were always quiet during the winter, he found the silence even more encompassing the closer he got. The only sound came from the crunching of his feet in the snow and his own breathing.

No blood stained the path anymore. The patch of ice remained, just as red as ever. A thin layer had begun to freeze back over the top.

While he saw no blood, he did see footsteps leading away from the hole and off into the forest, and that’s where Jacob went. The man, naked and curled up into a fetal position, lay dead in front of a tree, his body caked in frozen blood.

The bat fell from Jacob’s hand as he stared at the corpse. Maybe if he had stayed this man would still be alive and his story told, everything explained, but now that couldn’t happen. Jacob shook his head and turned to leave when behind him the man stirred.

Jacob heard a whisper of a groan. He turned towards the stranger and watched as he lifted himself off the ground. He appeared to be in his early thirties, maybe younger. This time Jacob didn’t allow fear to cloud his judgment. He moved to help the man.

As soon as Jacob touched his shoulder the man turned towards him and punched. The fist buried into Jacob’s stomach, stole away all air. He fell to the ground, both arms wrapped around his waist, and watched as the man picked up the baseball bat. The next thing Jacob knew, he woke up next to the patch of ice, freezing.

Movement caught his attention. His eyes found the man, now in Jacob’s clothes. Jacob himself lay naked on the ground, shivering violently.

The man, noticing Jacob had awoken, knelt down in front of him. He smiled, his face still covered in bloody frost.

“Sorry about hitting you,” the man rasped, his voice little more than a whisper. “Even more sorry about what I have to do now, but when you have to do it yourself, you’ll understand.”

“W-w-what are y-you d-doing?” Jacob managed to say, colder than he’d ever been before.

“I have to make a trade,” he said. “Like I said, I’m sorry.”

He didn’t look sorry as he walked up to Jacob and grabbed his shoulders. The man still smiled as he dragged Jacob over to the hole and used the bat to break the thin layer of ice. Jacob tried to fight back, but his head throbbed and his body was numb. His muscle didn’t respond as the man picked Jacob up and dumped him in the hole.

Jacob screamed as he hit, his mind crying out for survival. He tried to grab hold of the ground and pull himself back up, but the man wouldn’t allow it. The bat struck Jacob’s arm, and then his head. Jacob remained conscious, but what little strength he had vanished, and he found himself sinking into the blood.

The cold he felt now was all encompassing. He felt it creep into every part of him, and up above the ice began to harden over. Through it he saw the man, still smiling, staring down at him as Jacob tried to swim back to the surface.

His hands touched the ice, but he couldn’t break it. He tried to punch but found he just didn’t have the strength. He should’ve been dead already, no source of air, but his lungs didn’t burn, slowed down by the cold, just as the rest of his body was.

When the man left, Jacob could do nothing but drift through his new home. He couldn’t see anything through the blood other than the patch of ice up above him.

The man had been trapped down here until Jacob set him free, and for his kindness, Jacob had to take his place. Eventually someone else would come along and see the ice, just as Jacob had, and maybe they’d set him free. If what the man had spoken was true, and a trade was needed, would Jacob put his savoir in this hole as well?

Jacob told himself he didn’t know the answer, but deep down he knew it for a lie. With nothing else to do, Jacob stared up at the world outside the ice, and waited.

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This story and all materials on this site are © Philip M. Roberts. All Rights Reserved.

“Yeah, what’s the job?” Frank asked, eyeing all three of the interviewers, barely visible courtesy of a glaringly bright light bulb hanging directly above their table. The bulb provided the only light in the room, and Frank was already nervous, more so than he normally was when going into an interview.

“A most pertinent question, Mr. Reynolds, and one we will address in due time. Anything else?” The man in the middle finally looked up at Frank, not that this granted him a better view of the man’s face.

The man wore large glasses, and the light reflecting off them made the lenses appear white. A stern, yet somewhat amused smile lightly touched the man’s lips as he waited for Frank to respond. He wore a suit, fitting of the man’s clean cut and well-maintained appearance, and his hands were folded in front of him.

“I guess your names. I like to know who I’m talkin’ to,” Frank finally said for lack of anything better.

“But of course, how discourteous of us. My name is Richard. The female associate to my left is Francine, and the gentleman to my right is Henry.”

Francine was a short, portly woman, just as well dressed as Richard, her hands folded in front of her as well. While attractive wasn’t a word Frank would use to define her, dignified was. Her brown hair was pulled back neatly behind her head, and just a hint of makeup could be seen. Her mouth lacked even the slight smile Richard’s contained, and instead showed at least a small bit of what Frank thought was hostility. Something told him Francine had little interest in hiring him.

Aside from his height, which looked a few inches taller than Richard, and his weight, probably thirty pounds lighter than Richard, Henry appeared to be almost an exact copy of his co-interviewer, glasses included. If the circumstances were different, Frank would’ve thought the three of them looked almost comical, sitting from tallest to shortest, all so properly dressed and seated, but given the situation, Frank felt only a tightening in his stomach as his anxiety grew.

“Well, now that we have our introductions out of the way, let us begin with the interview.” Richard opened the folder in front of him and pulled out the top sheet, glanced at it briefly, then looked back up at Frank. “To begin, I will ask a few simple questions, more for us than an assessment of you. How did you hear about the position?”

“Saw an ad in the newspaper. Ad said no experience was necessary. If it was wrong, I doubt I have the experience you guys are lookin’ for, so I’ll be on my way.” In truth, Frank just wanted to leave, but didn’t have the guts to walk out. The fact that the door he’d entered through was located somewhere in the darkness behind him, and he was no longer quite sure where, didn’t help things.

“The ad was correct. No experience is needed for the job, so you can put your mind at ease. I would like to know in which publication did you see the ad?”

“Not sure. Saw the business section lyin’ on the floor of a subway train. I really didn’t stop to look that closely.” All of which was the truth. Frank had only seen the salary listed with the job, and that had been all the information he needed. He had assumed it was a scam, but given his current financial situation, saw no reason to pass it up. Worse case scenario, he’d waste a few hours of his time.

“That is perfectly fine. I was merely curious. Shall we move on to you then, Mr. Reynolds?” Richard took another sheet from the folder.

“I see you worked construction for three years. Hard work I take it?”

“Wasn’t too terrible. Summers got a little hot, but I managed.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Wanted to try new things. I don’t like stayin’ in one place for too long. I like to move around a lot, you know?”

“I understand completely, Mr. Reynolds. I see you not only changed jobs but locations as well. If what I am reading is accurate, you have lived in over twenty states for at least a small period of time. Any place in particular you preferred?”

“Not really, I guess. I liked the cities over the small towns though, I can tell you that.”

“Any particular reason why?”

“It’s easier to mind your own business in a city. People don’t really pay attention to you, and I like that. I hate people sayin’ ‘hi’ to me all the time when I walk by.”

Richard leaned forward in his seat and smiled broadly, the first time Frank had really seen him smile. “I understand exactly what you mean. Cities do grant a lovely degree of anonymity. I have always enjoyed this luxury myself.” He paused. “Moving on, how strong would you consider yourself to be, Mr. Reynolds?”

“Strong?” Any idea Frank had about the job he was applying for vanished at the question. Given the office building he’d entered, and the type of people interviewing him, he hadn’t the slightest idea what kind of grunt work they’d need him to do, especially the type that paid as much as they claimed.

“Yes, strong. According to this you have worked construction, warehouse work, and city work, all manual labor. These jobs must have granted you muscle. Whether you have chosen to maintain this muscle is another matter altogether, and I am afraid from my current position, I cannot ascertain your strength from appearance alone.”

“Well, it’s been awhile since the last time I went to the gym, but I could probably bench press a good two hundred and fifty pounds I’d imagine, give or take a little.”

“Good,” Richard said with a smile. “I think I know enough about your work experience to be satisfied, but for a job such as the one we are hiring for, understanding who you are as a person is just as important. After all, experience in work is not the only kind of experience that defines who a person is and their work ethic. So the following questions will be a little more personal.”

“You gonna at least tell me what the job is first?”

“In due time, Mr. Reynolds. You’ll have all the answers you want soon enough.”

Curiosity had been sparked, but it just wasn’t enough to drive away the nagging doubts in the back of Frank’s mind. He had developed a good sense of when something looked like more trouble than it was worth, and used this instinct to the best of his abilities over the years. Right now, it screamed at him to leave.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t even know what the job is, and I don’t really feel like sitting around wastin’ my time if it ain’t something I’m interested in. You understand?”

Richard smiled and nodded, then removed another sheet of paper from his folder before saying, “I understand completely, Mr. Reynolds.”

“Frank. You can call me Frank if you want, that’s what everyone calls me. Can’t recall the last time someone called me Mr. Reynolds. I ain’t a teacher or businessman or nothin’ like that, you know.”

“Your suggestion has been noted, Mr. Reynolds, and I will take it into consideration. For the moment, back to the matter at hand, I am afraid informing you of the job now might not be for the best. The job you are interviewing for is a very important one, and one you might not believe yourself capable of, but we believe otherwise. Past experience has shown that when a person is told the job right from the beginning, their natural instinct is to believe they are incapable, and because of this, fall into a negative mindset. However, by going over all of your qualifications first, you will understand why you are perfectly capable of accomplishing what we ask of you. Understand?”

The answer was no, but the curious part of Frank’s mind did gain a little footing, enough so to keep him there. “Okay, I’ll hear you out.”

Richard nodded before continuing.

“Have you ever been married, Mr. Reynolds?”

“Yeah, I’ve been married twice. Neither lasted very long.”

“And what was the reason for this?”

“We couldn’t see eye to eye, I guess. Both of them left me, so I guess I don’t really know for sure why they ended.”

“Do you consider yourself a truthful man?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you lie often?”

“I tell some little lies, yeah, but everyone does that.”

“Of course everyone does, Mr. Reynolds,” Richard said with a smile, one that quickly vanished as he continued. “But I would think the reason why your marriages did not last would be something a little more than a white lie. Would you agree?”

“What are you talking about?” Frank wanted the statement to sound angry, which he was, but all he could muster was a bewildered tone. He didn’t know what Richard was getting at, or how he could possibly know if he had lied or not, but Frank didn’t like it.

“Your marriages, Mr. Reynolds, and the way they both ended. This interview will go much more smoothly if you are honest with us.” Any hint of a smile was gone from Richard’s face as he leaned forward just a little, one finger tapping the table.

“I told you, they both left me.”

“I would hardly think that you killing them and them leaving you are one in the same, Mr. Reynolds, but that might just be a matter of personal opinion.”

Frank felt the color drain from his face. Obviously this wasn’t a job interview, but rather a trap set just for him, maybe by the FBI, or maybe the police. He wasn’t sure and really didn’t care. Given his current situation, denial seemed like the best approach.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But you do, Mr. Reynolds, and that is another lie. You have told us several lies already throughout this interview, such as the reason why you moved so often. Most I can ignore, because I would do no different were I sitting in your place, but there comes a point when honesty is needed.”

“I didn’t kill them.” Frank’s hands gripped his legs so tightly he could feel his fingernails digging into the skin. He’d managed this far without getting caught, and given how well he’d covered his tracks, he couldn’t imagine they had any real evidence to back up their claims.

“They are not the only ones, are they, Mr. Reynolds? There was the little girl during your short stay in Maine. You killed one of your bosses and a coworker in Pennsylvania. Of course, you quickly topped that when you went to Michigan and slaughtered an entire family in their home. The things you did to that family would make even the healthiest of stomachs churn with disgust.”

He could buy that the FBI would be able to connect his two wives’ disappearances with him, but there was no way they could know about all the others. If they had this much on him, they would’ve caught him already. The little girl had been over fifteen years ago at least.

“Who the fuck are you people?”

“We will get to that soon enough, but for the moment, if you would please answer the question, is it true you are to blame for the crimes I have listed as well as numerous others?”

“You’re cops or something.”

“No, Mr. Reynolds, I can assure you we are in no way associated with the law, so put your mind at ease.”

“I’m not going to jail.” Normally Frank wasn’t a man prone to panic, but the shock of the moment tore away at his defenses, left him helpless before the panel.

“And we have no intentions of sending you to jail. In jail you would be of no use to us. So if you would please stop babbling and answer my question, we might be able to get this interview over with.”

For a minute Frank said nothing, just staring at the three of them. He felt sweat trickle slowly down his face but made no motion to wipe it away. He considered his options, one of which included a dash for the door, hoping he’d find it quickly enough in the darkness, but something told him people would be waiting for him outside, ready to capture him. The game was over, and he knew it.

“Yes,” he finally answered, his voice just a whisper at first, eyes on the ground, before they rose to meet Richard’s. “Yes, I killed those people, and a whole lot more.”

“Does the number forty seven sound accurate to you, Mr. Reynolds?”

Frank wasn’t even sure. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“On some of the more specific crimes I would like you to tell me if what I am describing is accurate. Can you do that, Mr. Reynolds?”

“Sure.” Frank said.

“Did you rape then beat to death an eleven year old girl in North Carolina thirteen years ago?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you render unconscious and then drag into the middle of the woods a man who cut you off when you were driving through Michigan?”

“His name was Roger.”

“Indeed it was, Mr. Reynolds, a name you read off of his driver’s license shortly before you began cutting off his feet and hands with a hacksaw. How long did it take him to die?”

“A little over three hours.”

“Very good. I would also like to know how long it took you to kill the Morgan family.”

“Not sure exactly. I started in the evening and I know it was still dark out when I left the house, but not for very long. Maybe eight hours or so, something like that.” Some of these Frank hadn’t thought about in years, but as soon as Richard mentioned them Frank remembered down to the last detail.

“And lastly, your second wife, just two years ago. Is it true you made her watch you kill her parents before you killed her?”

“They never liked me.”

Much to Frank’s surprise, something else was coming over him. Listening to his crimes, referenced so nonchalantly, removed most of their horror. These were his greatest achievements laid out before him, and something told him these people understood that.

“I am sure they did not, Mr. Reynolds. Thank you, that is all I needed to know.”

A smile once again returned to Richard’s face and his body lost most of its tension as he rested back in his seat. “That is always the hardest part of the interview, Mr. Reynolds, and one of many reasons why we do not wish to talk about the job itself, or ourselves and the business we run, too early on. Many refuse to admit their past deeds, almost as if such things are wrong.”

Francine snorted at this and lightly shook her head. Frank wasn’t sure if she thought the comment was amusing or disgusting.

“What do you want with me?” Frank asked.

“I would think that would be obvious, Mr. Reynolds. We want to hire you for a job, why else would you be here? You saw our ad and came in for an interview. There is nothing else to it. Of course, if you wish to leave, that is your decision, and we will not do a thing to stop you. You can walk out that door right now and never hear from us again, your indiscretions forgotten.”

A light suddenly shined behind Frank, and he glanced back over his shoulder at the door illuminated in the darkness. The same voice that had been telling him to run from the beginning was suddenly silenced. He wasn’t hiding from what he was. Here was his true self, and the everyday law-abiding citizen the rest of the world saw was the lie. When given the choice, Frank looked away from the door, and decided he needed to know more.

“What’s the job?”

To this Richard smiled broadly, and behind Frank, the light turned off.

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This story and all materials on this site are © Philip M. Roberts. All Rights Reserved.