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The last time I was camping was ten years ago. I was fourteen and my family was doing our annual camping week. That year, we had chosen a state park a few hours from our home. We got there a little late because Tina, my little sister, had insisted on going to her summer school dance class before we left. It was a hot and muggy evening and everyone was sort of crabby by the time we began setting everything up at the site we had reserved.

Sweat was running down my cheeks when I finished putting up my one-person tent. I saw that Dad was struggling to set up the larger tent that my parents would share with Tina. I was on my way to help him when I noticed an old man standing in the woods at the edge of our area. He was dressed in bib overalls with a white t-shirt underneath. On his head was a grimy trucker’s hat.

“You shouldn’t stay here tonight,” said the man.

My dad, who was busy trying to feed a tent pole through a canvas tube, was startled by the stranger’s voice, almost toppling the half-erected tent. He steadied his handiwork before turning toward our visitor. 

“What?” asked my dad.

“You shouldn’t stay at this site,” repeated the old man.

I looked around campsite 23. It wasn’t the biggest site but it had quite a bit of shade. The picnic table was old and warped but the fire pit was nice. I thought it was an okay site. It wasn’t a long walk to the nearest pit toilet but it was far enough away that we weren’t inundated with noxious smells.

My dad must have felt the same way. “What’s wrong with this site?” he asked.

“Site 23 is cursed,” replied the man.

My mom, who was putting a checked tablecloth on the picnic table, looked at the man and asked, “What do you mean, cursed?”

My dad just snickered.

The man ignored my dad’s response. “There have been four deaths at this park: a heart attack, an accidental drowning, a suicide, and a young child was hit by a car. All the deaths occurred ten years apart on this date and all the people who died were staying at site 23. If you leave, maybe the curse can be broken.”

“Oh, my god,” said Mom.

Dad just shook his head and laughed. “I don’t know what your game is, mister, but I’m not going to stand here and let you scare my family with some cockamamie story.” 

The sound of an approaching vehicle drew our attention. A white pickup, the kind used by the local rangers, was coming up the road.

When we turned our attention back toward the old man, he was nowhere to be seen.
My mom waved down the ranger.

The truck stopped and a young woman, barely old enough to be out of high school stepped out.

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

“There was a man here, telling us to leave because this site is cursed,” said my dad. “We shouldn’t have to put up with that kind of garbage. Is there some way you can find him and kick him out or something?”

“Uh . . .” stuttered the ranger. “I suppose I could go look for him. What does he look like?”

“He was old and dressed like a farmer,” answered Tina from her spot under a large shade tree.

“More importantly,” interrupted my mom, “he said that four people staying at this site have died. Is that true?”

“I don’t know,” said the ranger. “I’m only a summer intern. I haven’t ever heard anything about any deaths. None of us rangers have been here very long.” She headed back toward her pick-up. “I’ll make a report and look around for the man.”

“I’m sure it’s just a story he made up to scare us,” said Dad. “It’s just a cruel joke and I’m not going to let it ruin our vacation.”

The ranger drove off and we finished readying the camp. By the time we had everything in place, it was time for dinner. Dad started a fire and we roasted some hotdogs. We were all pretty quiet, especially Dad.

Finally, my mom spoke up. “Maybe we should leave. It’s going to be humid tonight and there might be thunderstorms. We could go find a hotel for tonight and come back tomorrow.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Dad. “We’ve tented through rain before. You’re just worked up by what that old coot said. Forget about it, he was just causing trouble.”

“I don’t want to die,” said Tina.

“Nobody’s going to die,” announced Dad. “Now let’s just forget about it and enjoy the evening.”

About then, the sound of approaching thunder interrupted our conversation. We spent the next half hour staring at each other and the fire. When the first drops of rain started to fall, I got up and grabbed a flashlight. “I’m going to my tent to read,” I announced.

Within an hour, the rain had turned into a full-fledged storm. Darkness came early; the sunlight concealed by thick, black storm clouds. I sat in the middle of my tent, no longer able to focus on my book. Instead, I watched the shadows that danced on the side of the tent with each bolt of lightning.

I told myself that I wasn’t afraid. There was nothing to be scared of. It was just rain and the old man was nothing but a liar. I had almost convinced myself when an extra loud crack of thunder, accompanied by a bright flash of lightning made me jump. I could have sworn the shadow that appeared was shaped like a man hanging from a tree, a noose around his neck. A few moments later, another burst of lightning gave off the same shadow. Was there a man hanging from a tree outside my tent? I wanted to look but couldn’t bring myself to do so. Instead, I closed my eyes.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when the zipper on my tent started opening. Dad stuck his drenched head inside my tent and ordered, “Come on. We’re leaving.”

Without a word, I grabbed my backpack and followed my dad to the car. My shoes got soaked as I walked through the small river of water that ran through the middle of the site. Without a word, Dad gave Mom an icy stare and started the car. We had only driven about twenty feet when Dad slammed on the brakes, jolting us all forward.

“What was that for?” snapped Mom. 

“I thought I saw something,” said Dad. “Didn’t you see something cut in front of the car? It looked like a little girl on a tricycle.”

I thought about telling Mom and Dad about the shadow I had seen from my tent but decided it was not the time. I most certainly didn’t tell them about what I saw as we drove through the park entrance. When we passed a small country cemetery, the headlight beams barely captured a figure standing behind a large gravestone. I am certain I spotted the old man who had visited us earlier, standing in the rain, waving.
We spent the night in a hotel in a town about fifteen miles from the park. I doubt that more than twenty words were spoken the entire night.

The next morning, we went back to site 23 to pick up our stuff. To our surprise, there were two white pickup trucks and four rangers there. 

The young, female ranger came over to our car and met us. 

“It’s a good thing you decided to head into town last night,” she announced. “Things got pretty rough here. We’ve got quite a bit of cleanup to do. If you pull your car into site 25, we can help you get your things. It might take a while to get the small tent, though.”
Dad started to pull the car forward but the ranger stuck out her hand, signaling for him to stop.

“I never did find that stranger who came to your camp,” she added. “I did find some old records. There have been four deaths just like he said. I couldn’t find the dates or campsites involved but it seems like he may have been right.”

Dad just looked at her for a minute or two. A couple of times, he started to say something but stopped. Finally, he managed to say a quiet thank you and slowly drove forward. We turned our heads to look at campsite 23. The sound of Mom gasping broke the silence.
​
Two rangers had chainsaws and were cutting a fallen shade tree; the same tree Tina had been sitting under the day before. More shocking still, was where the tree had fallen. Its tire-sized trunk had landed directly on top of my small tent. 
And that’s why I don’t go camping anymore.

                                                                  💀💀💀


James Rumpel is a retired high school math teacher who has greatly enjoyed spending some of his free time turning a few of the odd ideas circling his brain into stories. He lives in Wisconsin with his wonderful wife, Mary.

​Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.





“All right, Davis. We’ve got a fix on your position and vitals. Everything looks nominal. Confirm comms.”

“Solid copy, Base. Moving to the northeast to investigate the sensor outage.”

“Keep an eye on your internal readings. Base out.”

It was an unnecessary reminder. All our personnel knew the story of Berry Cannon, the diver who had asphyxiated on his own carbon dioxide because someone had forgotten to refill his baralyme cannister aboard SEALAB III. A grim reminder that we could count human error—or even sabotage—among the many natural threats in this alien world.

I turned my gaze from the instruments panel, watching as the light rig illuminating the aquanaut faded into the murky black. All that remained after another moment was a few solitary bubbles from his propulsion pack starting their seven-hundred-meter ascent to the surface. Up to where day and night still had meaning beyond the clocks and arbitrary schedules that dictated our lives aboard SEALAB IV.

Speaking of clocks, two minutes had elapsed. All Davis’s readings had stayed in the “green zone,” but one could never be too careful in this environment where it was too easy to lose all sense of orientation. 

It’s easy to take the orienting effect of gravity for granted. Instead, imagine you’re now free floating and surrounded by darkness on all sides: no light from the surface, no ocean floor, no landmarks of any kind.

Of course, experienced divers know the bubbles from your respirator will never lie. But it’s all too easy to lose yourself and panic with the constant awareness of the thousands of pounds of frigid water pressing down.

Fortunately, the suits provided to SEALAB IV’s aquanauts had all sorts of redundancies and equipment to hold the relentless pressure at bay and ensure the operator always knew where they were. In these Antarctic waters, they even included heating coils.
Still, even specialized deep-water equipment had a proclivity for malfunctioning at these depths.

Case in point: Davis was on his way to investigate why one of the sensors we had placed at the edge of the Pacific-Antarctic Trench had gone out.

I keyed the microphone in my instrument panel. “Base to Davis. Sitrep.”

After a moment, a voice emerged from the static. “All systems green. Propulsion is good. According to my coordinates, I should have visual on the sensor site in the next 45 seconds.”

“Good copy. Report when you make visual contact and hold position.”

A just perceptible pause followed. “Roger, Base.”

It was an odd request, I knew. But so were Sensor 5J’s readouts in the seconds before it had gone dark. It hadn’t simply gone offline. It had been recording data. Significant data.

Though humanity had spread across the globe, the ocean still remained mostly uncharted. We knew the important pieces like where rocks lay beneath the surface so our commerce could move across the waves. But what happened beneath the surface, especially below two hundred meters where only the bravest ventured, was a relative blank spot. In some ways, we knew more about deep space than our own seas.

SEALAB IV was one endeavor to expand that limited understanding. Specifically, to monitor the Pacific-Antarctic Trench. We had motion sensors and cameras pointed over the lip of the trench, plumbing its black, unyielding chasm.

The motion sensor data traveled back in real time where it was cataloged in the massively powerful central terminal. But the videos, shot in multiple light spectrums beyond visible, were too large of files to transmit back to the command center.

This was part of Davis’s dive mission: to collect the video hard drives. He would also survey the extent of the damage. If it was salvageable, a two-man dive team would be sent to undertake repairs.

Before it flatlined and failed to respond to reboot signals, 5J had showed no signs of malfunction. Its readings remained consistent. Something had ascended from the trench and closed to within meters of the sensor. Its final report showed the anomaly only inches from the sensor. Then it had stopped responding.

If that was all, then I would have written it off as a fish or whale that had run into the sensor by accident. But the anomaly had circled the sensor. Twice. Then it had stopped before moving toward it at great speed. There was an intent to those actions. If it had been a human diver, I would have concluded they were reconning the sensor.

But none of our team had been diving that day, and SEALAB IV was a closely guarded secret in remote seas. Of course, another nation with deep sea capabilities—Russia, China—could be responsible. But why knock out only one sensor? Why not just fire a salvo of torpedoes at the base and kill us in one fell swoop?

This left very few explanations.

“Base, this is Davis.” The crackling voice dragged me back to the present.

“Go ahead, Davis.”

“I’ve got visual on 5J. Not seeing much physical damage. It looks like the entire sensor pod is just gone.”

“Say again, Davis. It’s gone?”

“Affirmative. Looks like it was pulled off the pedestal.”

Maybe it was a Russian or Chinese op? They stole the sensor so they could reproduce their own? But our sensors weren’t anything special.

“Solid copy. Proceed with collecting the video drives and return to base.”

Fortunately, the data drives were stored at the base of the pedestal, so they were not lost when the saboteurs made off with the array. 

Still, why would anyone go to all that trouble to steal it?

A new voice tumbled out of the speaker. Not new, I realized. It’s Davis’s voice an octave higher.

“Base, Base. Come in Base!”

“Davis, what’s up?”

“I’m not alone. There’s something moving out here.”

“What is it, Davis? A fish? A whale?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s circling the sensor base. Oh Christ, I think it sees me. Going dark.”

Going dark meant disabling all external lights. It would certainly hide him, but I could only imagine the icy terror of waiting in pitch darkness.

I keyed a new button. “Commander to bridge.”

A moment later, Grayson scrambled through the hatchway, rubbing his eyes. “Kelly, what’s up?”

“Davis is out at 5J. Says something is circling him.”

“Something?” I knew the skeptical look that crossed his face all too well.

“Something that has a seasoned deep-sea diver spooked enough to go dark.”

That got Grayson’s attention. He reached over me and keyed the internal communication system again. “Auxiliary operator to bridge.”

Grayson knew as well as I did that something that seemed remarkably organic and intelligent had circled 5J before it went offline. I could already tell where his mind was going.

“Watch the sensors,” Grayson ordered Tyrone when he appeared a moment later. “We’ve got activity out at 5J, and I want to see if any of the other sensors pick it up.”

I switched back to the dive frequency. “Davis, any updates?”

“Nothing, I think it moved on.” The relief in the diver’s voice made my shoulders relax as well. “Switching on lights.”

Then something strange came over the net. Like a gasp that caught in his throat.

A second later, there was a whoosh, like a great volume of water moving outside Davis’s helmet. Then he screamed.

“It’s got my arm. Oh Christ, it’s got me.”

“Davis, what’s happening? What’s got you?”

“Something massive,” his panicked voice spilled over the microphone. “It’s pulling me away. Away and down. Oh God, I think it’s taking me into the trench.”

A moment later, the dive net squelched and faded. The communication line linking Davis’s helmet mic to the base had severed.

In dive training, we learned that panic was our worst enemy. It provides nothing of value and causes us to freeze up at the most vital moments. Moments where action could make all the difference. Still, it was hard to imagine what exactly I—or any of us—could do in that moment.

“Commander,” I turned slowly in my chair, “what are your orders?”

Grayson and Tyrone looked back at me with pale faces. It wasn’t every day you heard a man screaming his last words over the bridge speakers.

Then Grayson shook his head. “We need to report that Davis had a hostile encounter and is presumed dead. Then we need to figure out what the hell that was and if it’s going to keep this up.”

I nodded, turning to toggle communication with USS Jedediah, the support ship on station to serve as our link to the rest of the world.

But Tyrone’s tapping on his desk drew me away. “Commander,” he gestured to his indicators, “we’ve got activity.”

One by one, the dials for the other sensors fluctuated as the motion sensors tracked disturbances in the water around them.

Then we watched as each flatlined. Red bulbs flickered on to show the connection had been lost.

Grayson would not be left speechless by shock a second time. “Kelly, get on the horn to the Jedediah. Now. Tell them what’s happening and alert them that we may need to perform an emergency evacuation.”

I spun back around, breathing deeply to try and still any shake in my voice. It only partially worked. “Topside, this is Base. Do you read?”

It took a couple seconds for the ship’s crew to respond. It was outside our daily report window. The operator sounded groggy. “Go ahead, Base.”

“One of our divers was lost investigating a sensor outage. He claimed something massive grabbed him before we lost communication. Now all sensors have been knocked out. We may need to perform an emergency evacuation.”

The operator sounded much more alert now. “Base, stand by while I relay to the commanding officer.”

My terminal had a partial view of the porthole in the bridge compartment. As I waited with Grayson peering over my shoulder, I thought I saw something flash past the viewport. A momentary disturbance of the suspended sediment.

Then the speaker crackled and whined.

“We just lost communication with Topside,” I said in a voice far too loud.

“What the hell,” Grayson spat in disbelief. “Are we under attack?”

From the next compartment, there was a crash. We all looked up. Geno, the fourth crew member, was in the mess preparing the evening meal.

Grayson turned to Tyrone. “Check it out.” He spun back. “Kelly, see what you can do about reestablishing comms.”

I nodded, toggling through the standard diagnostics checklist. All signs indicated that the comms line running between SEALAB IV and Jedediah had been cut.

Tyrone cried out, and then something hit the floor.

Grayson and I both looked at each other for a moment before springing into action. On the white deck of the mess room, Tyrone lay on his back, pointing a quivering finger at the wall. Toward the starboard-side viewport.

When I moved to get a better angle, I found Geno practically pressing his face to the glass.

“Move it, Geno.” I shouldered him aside before looking out. “Oh, God...”

A pair of golden eyes peered back from the darkness. In the ambient light from the viewport, I could see a round black head with a dark navy stripe trailing along its back. Pectoral fins jutted from either side, and its snake-like body continued into the murk. 
It was like an eel, but larger than any eel on record.

Its head bobbed as it floated beside SEALAB IV, revealing the tips of needle-like teeth as the light reflected off them. I had no doubt this thing could breach the station at any moment. Once the seal broke, water would burst through at the speed of a freight train, crushing us long before we had a chance to drown.

I tensed my shoulders, but the thing kept its distance. Watching.

In all this time, Geno hadn’t moved from the spot I had nudged him to. Then he crumpled against the bulkhead and started to weep.

Grayson grabbed his shoulders. “Hey, snap out of it. This is no time to lose our heads.”

Geno spoke through his hands. “You don’t understand, Commander. It spoke to me.”

Grayson took a step back. “What? There’s a goddamn bulkhead between us and it. How would you hear it even if it could speak?”

“No...” Geno looked up. “With its eyes.”

I looked from Geno to Tyrone to Grayson, then turned to our watcher. Its golden eyes seemed to brighten the longer I looked directly at them. There was something beautiful about this pure light surviving so deep in the dark.

The hum of the air recyclers around me faded away, and my vision narrowed—or had it expanded? Either way, only the gold remained.

At once I saw it, not as an aggressor, but as a life form. Its species’ constant struggle for survival in this cold, crushing world became my own. They had not survived without learning, and they made sure a predator could never pull the same trick twice. It had been generations since they had encountered a new life form, and it had come to see us. To know us.

We are not a threat, I tried to explain through my own thoughts.

Its own thoughts revealed a certain level of skepticism at that notion. In this world, you were either the eater or the eaten.

We don’t belong down here. We do not hunt here. We only seek knowledge.

The giant eel wriggled its head. More skepticism, and now a hint of anger at my treachery.

Then let us leave, and we shall not return.

The longer we had connected, the more its thoughts seemed to morph to words. Our words. As if it was learning.

I thought-talked to it: You wish to study. You will study us. And we will study you.
But we are not meant to stay here. We will run out of food.

You need not worry about that.

Then the eel broke eye contact and swirled away into the murk.

Only after the gold tinges had receded from my eyes did I notice the hand jostling my shoulder. “Kelly? Kelly!”

I turned to Grayson, but when I tried to speak, only visions that could not be converted to our words filled my throat. As if the watcher and I had traded languages.

Then Geno grabbed my ankle from where he crouched on the floor. “It told you, didn’t it?” he hissed, his eyes still mottled with tears.

Grayson looked between us. “Does somebody want to tell me what the hell is going on here?”

“They...” I muttered, finally remembering how to speak. “They don’t want to hurt—”

A thump came from the dive room before I could finish my sentence.

“You two stay here and get your wits back.” Grayson yanked Tyrone up from the floor. “Come on, we’re going to see what that was.”

Grayson undogged the hatch, and Tyrone moved through the opening after a moment’s hesitation.

Disobeying orders, I followed them. With each footfall, I felt more certain of what I would find. The watcher had shown me what it intended. It would start with a gift.

The first sign was the stench. Even before I knelt to move through the hatch, a copper scent tinted the air. In the dive room, I looked from the pool where the blue-black ocean began to the dive lockers where Grayson and Tyrone staggered with pale faces.
Between them and the dive pool, a crimson mass lay on the corrugated metal. Rib bones protruded from the top. Only one thing had that anatomy. Only one thing could be that fresh.

Still, I moved closer.

“Kelly, don’t.” I heard Grayson wretch behind me. “Don’t look at it,” he spluttered.

But my pulse was calm as I moved past the sternum and protruding rib cage. At the top of the mass, a scrap of cloth remained. I picked it up.

It was a name patch. Davis, Greg.

“They don’t want to hurt us.” I repeated.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Grayson regained some of his old color. “Do you see whose body that is?”

“It’s not a threat.” I let go of the blood-soaked cloth. “It’s food.”

Grayson’s face drained again, and Tyrone let loose a glob of yellow vomit.

“They want to keep us.”

#


TOP SECRET
After Action Report: USS Savannah


After contact with USS Jedediah, immediately sortied to investigate communications outage. Came within sonar range of SEALAB IV after three-day voyage. Initial scans showed the base was intact, but also returned several anomalies surrounding the station. Contacts appeared to be biological.


Closed to within visual range of the station. Station appeared undamaged. Previous contacts could no longer be picked up on sonar.


Dispatched deep-sea divers for closer inspection. Divers reported that one crewmember could be observed aboard. When individual failed to respond to hand signals, divers made entry.


Divers found the remains of five other crewmen aboard. All appear to have been killed in the previous week. One body showed signs of consumption. When surviving crewmember was located on the bridge, divers reported she would only repeat “They told me to.” 


After survivor was restrained, inserted into pressure suit, and escorted to Savannah, identification was made: Rivers, Kelly, Lieutenant, United States Navy. She is currently detained aboard. 


Initial interviews lead me to conclude Rivers suffered a psychotic break from the constant strain and pressure imbalance which led to her murdering her fellow crewmen. A full psychological evaluation by qualified personnel is recommended. 


We are proceeding to San Diego Naval Hospital. Jedediah remains on station to oversee salvage operations and recover the crew’s remains.


Benjamin J. Nolte,
Lieutenant Commander, USS Savannah

                                                                  💀💀💀


Stephen A. Roddewig is an award-winning storyteller and playwright from Virginia (USA). He won second place in the 2023 Vocal Painted Prose challenge, and his stories are featured in Abyss & Apex, Diet Milk Magazine, Struggle Magazine, and Wintermute Lit. When not writing, he enjoys collecting records and running races.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.




“Over my dead body.” That’s what Orla had said, her pale gray-green eyes boring into mine. I had been determined to match her glare, force her to blink first, but my eyes had already begun to burn, then water. She must have noticed the slight change in intensity on my end—sensed her victory—because her eyes shifted over to her son, my fiancé. “Or yours, Brendan dear.”

Those had been her precise words the first and only time I had met her, when Brendan had dropped the bomb that he intended to marry me, while simultaneously asking for the family ring. We had been sitting in the parlor adjacent to the grand foyer as Orla talked down at us, whereas now Brendan and I stood in the grand foyer, looking down at her. 

Wanting her to sense my ultimate victory, I rested my left hand on the edge of her casket. The eight-carat morganite surrounded by a diamond leaf motif—a gift from the gem’s namesake to the Donovan family matriarch, Orla’s great-grandmother—dangled from my ring finger mere inches above her waxen face. Brendan turned to greet a guest, but I remained, my hand still perched on the satin edge like a vulture. I leaned forward. “Looks like you were right, Orla.” 

If I hadn’t seen a copy of the death certificate myself, I would have sworn her blue tinged fingers tightened ever so slightly around her jade rosary beads, the same way they had that day in the parlor.  

But the morganite was mine now. And there was nothing Orla could do about it. 

As if in response, a cold breeze greeted me from behind, chilling my bare legs and forearms. I looked over my shoulder, half expecting to see her standing there, with that same intense glare, but there were just more guests clad in black, shuffling around the Christmas tree. They mumbled their admiration for the decorations (“Orla has such great taste…” they all said, in the present tense, just in case she could still hear them) while waiting to pay their respects to Brendan. Others were just curious to see the evil strumpet who had sent the great Orla Donovan, by all accounts seemingly invincible only a few days ago, to an early grave. 

Beyond the staring guests, most of whom weren’t even bothering to hide their gawking, let alone their whispering, something else caught my eye. Something out of place on a cold December afternoon. To one side of the entryway, a rather large window was cracked open several inches. 

I glanced back at Brendan, who was still caught up in conversation and likely would be for the rest of the afternoon, then started walking toward the window. I was making better time crossing the room than I had during my first visit, when I had scraped my way across the marble floor, my oversized pumps leaving black streaks behind me like a jet trail. I had bought the shoes the day before without any idea how to buy high-heel shoes or how I would learn to walk in them in less than 24 hours. 

“Don’t worry, dear,” Orla had said as her eyes followed the scuff marks from the entryway to the center of the room where I stood. “Those can be buffed out.” I had switched to an awkward shuffle the rest of the way to the parlor, silently cursing the writer of the article I had read about how the royals always buy their heels one-half size too big, for comfort. What an embarrassing crock of shit that had turned out to be.
 
If only Orla could see me now. As it turned out, I had actually needed a full size smaller than the ones I wore at our first meeting. I was no gazelle, even with the correct size heel, but the proof of my triumph was on the pristine floor in my wake. “Look, Ma’! No scuff marks!” I thought as I arrived at the window. 

With two hands on either side of the wide frame, I pushed down, but halfway to closed, I felt a hand on mine, spinning me around. It was Brendan. He leaned forward and kissed my cheek. I thought his hands were heading for my waist as I wrapped mine around his neck, but instead I felt them reach beyond me. I looked over my shoulder. The window was once again several inches from being closed. 

“It’s an old Irish superstition,” Brendan whispered in my ear. “It’s to let the soul out.” 

“Seriously?” I asked, but beyond Brendan, I noticed a woman Orla’s age whispering to herself as she clutched her rosary beads against her chest. 

“Someone will close it after everyone leaves,” Brendan said as he ushered me in the direction of the parlor. He sat me down on the couch closest to the fireplace, which happened to be the same one we had sat on mere days ago, when Orla was still alive.

As I warmed my hands by the fire, I wanted to ask Brendan why he couldn’t have waited to tell her about the engagement until after she got to know me better, after she had had an opportunity to realize that I wasn’t some gold-digging upstart. And why he couldn’t have waited until I wasn’t in the room before asking for his great-great-grandmother’s ring. And how that really hadn’t helped the situation; in fact, it may have contributed to Orla’s demise. 

Instead, all that came out was, “Do we really have to stay here tonight?”

“Darling, we’ve already been over this. It’s nearly Christmas. The hotels nearby are full of people traveling home for the holidays. We just have to make it through tonight. We’ll leave tomorrow right after we’re done at the cemetery.”

“But the thought of her, lying here, and us, just up the stairs…”

Brendan lifted my left hand to his lips and kissed the knuckle near my ring. “By Christmas day, we’ll be on our own private island in Fiji, getting married.”

I half-smiled at the thought, yet Orla’s words still hung heavy in the room, even after the last guest went home. My almost mother-in-law was still lying in state in her casket at the heart of the grand foyer, yet neither of us seemed willing to pass by one last time on our way to the double staircase just beyond. Instead, Brendan led me to a narrow, nondescript set of wooden stairs tucked away behind the parlor as an employee of the family closed the casket. By the time I turned the corner to mount the first step, the window was also being closed and the chandelier switched off. Only the soft glow from the lights on the Christmas tree illuminated our path to the guest room located at the top of the stairs, the furthest point away, Brendan assured me, from Orla.

                                                                        ***

Everything was just as I remembered it, at least at first. Brendan led me by the hand down the hall to a mahogany-walled room on the first floor of the house that looked to be an office. As Brendan crossed the room, I glanced down at the monogrammed stationery and pile of addressed, stamped envelopes on the desk. Her desk. 

“Are you sure it’s okay to be in here?” I bit at the skin on the inside of my lip. “It just feels, I don’t know, like, wrong or something?”

“Her lawyer already showed me the will, Jenna. It’s my office now.”

He pulled at the frame of a painting that bore a striking resemblance to the work of Diego Rivera. I was just about to ask, and simultaneously point out the irony of Rivera’s work hanging in Orla’s palatial estate, when the painting, frame and all, swung clear away from the wall, revealing a hidden safe.

“And it’s your ring now,” Brendan said as he pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and keyed in the combination. 

Even the soft click of the safe unlocking was just as I remembered, but when Brendan pulled the door open, instead of papers and metal boxes, which I now knew contained the literal family jewels, dirt came tumbling out onto the marble floor. A strong gust of frigid air, originating from somewhere deep within the safe, blew past the remaining soil, forming a dust cloud that temporarily obscured my view of the safe’s contents.
 
All I could see was movement. 

The mouth of the safe was teeming with thousands of tiny, individual, pitch-black movements—like a spider’s brood erupting from an egg sac—going out, up, down, left, and right until the dust cloud itself was overcome by creeping darkness.

Then the darkness consolidated, in the shape of a man. Brendan, except not Brendan anymore. Just the shadow of the man I had recently promised to stand by forever, no matter what. He opened the dark pit where his mouth had once been—to scream, I assumed—but all that came out was an icy gale.

I turned to run but instead felt myself begin to fall. My knees, then forearms hit the ground hard, and the darkness closed in. I shut my eyes…and waited.

But nothing happened. 

When I finally worked up the courage to open my eyes, I did not expect the darkness to leave me, but it had. Not completely, but I could make out some of my surroundings. The bed I had been sleeping in, which I had apparently fallen out of. Moonlight streaming in through the window. The steady rise and fall of Brendan’s blanketed chest.
I pulled myself up from the floor and climbed back into bed, burrowing deep under the covers and pressing myself against Brendan. But the chill did not leave me. If anything, I was becoming more and more aware of it penetrating the room, like a probing ice pick. 
I shook Brendan by the shoulder. “It’s freezing in here.”

“Huh?”

“Aren’t you cold?”

“There is blankets in the hall closet,” he mumbled. The bad grammar was a dead giveaway that Brendan was not fully awake and likely would not be, if history served, until it was fully light outside. I sighed and climbed out of the bed, wincing as my bare feet made contact with the stone floor. Then I grabbed my phone off the bedside table, turned on the flashlight, and made my way out into the hallway. 

It had seemed like such a simple thing: grab a blanket from the hall closet. But as I shined my phone light down the hallway, the task now seemed impossible. The hallway stretched out beyond my light, with door after door after door, and no telltale folding doors or differentiating handles in sight. So I opened one, shining my light inside, but it was only another bedroom. I shut the door and redirected my light back down the hallway. I couldn’t be quite sure, but it seemed that it was colder out here, and growing colder still the further I went. Beyond where my flashlight could reach was darkness, but past that, I could just make out the soft glow from what had to be the Christmas tree. 

I tried the next door, another bedroom, and had pretty much made up my mind to just suffer through the night when I heard a dull thud, followed by some shuffling, coming from somewhere down the hall, beyond where my light could reach. It had to be one of the employees, getting things ready for the next day. And they would know where the linen closet was located and why the house felt like an icebox, even more so now than when I had been in the guest room.

I quickened my pace down the hall and switched off my flashlight once I came within the sphere of light emanating from the tree. But once I reached the balcony that branched off into the double staircase, I stopped dead in my tracks. I hadn’t thought things through. 

I didn’t look, but I knew what lurked below. Her. 

“Hello?” I called out, hoping to draw the attention of the house staff.

No one answered. I didn’t dare drop my chin low enough to see everything in the room. Instead, I scanned the horizon. And that’s when I saw it. The damn window. Open. Again. 

My feet did not want to move, but I forced them down the staircase, my eyes locked on the window in front of me. I even lifted my hand up to the side of my face to mimic blinders, as if I were some skittish racehorse, that’s how bad I didn’t want to see her, even with the lid closed. 

At the bottom of the stairs, my feet shuffled rapidly across the floor to the window, and this time, I pushed it all the way shut, and locked it myself. 

I let my hands rest on the frame for a moment, trying to summon up the courage to turn around and face her. I’d have to at some point, I realized, whether it was her closed casket or the memory of her. And if I couldn’t face the former, how could I possibly expect to endure a lifetime of the latter? Some memories fade with time, but Orla was different. If I didn’t deal with this now, her presence would loom over every conversation Brendan and I would ever have, infect every decision we would make as a couple. I needed to show her, right now, like I should have the first time we met: She didn’t scare me away then, and she wouldn’t scare me now. 

I used the force of that thought to propel myself into action. I spun around and started marching straight for the casket. 

My steps slowed. Then came to a grinding halt.

The casket lid was open. 

I reached for my chest as if I were the one wearing rosary beads then forced myself to take a deep, cleansing breath. Maybe the staff had realized that the lid was supposed to be left open after all? I tiptoed slowly toward the casket, then stopped several feet short.

She was gone. 

That much I could be sure of. She had been wearing a black dress, and there was nothing but white satin in the box. I looked from side to side as if she might suddenly appear and say, “Just needed to stretch my legs, dear!” And for whatever nutty, stressed out, sleep-deprived reason, that thought made me laugh, hysterically, so much so that I doubled over.

This couldn’t possibly be the casket she was meant to be buried in. Orla struck me as the kind of woman who would demand a last-minute switcheroo if even a stitch of satin had been snagged during the wake or a hairline scratch had been discovered on the mother-of-pearl inlay. Surely that’s where she was now. And the funeral home had taken her back to their facility on a gurney instead of in the casket because…because?

It was while I was doubled over, with tears blurring my vision, that I first noticed it—the long black scuff mark on the floor. My eyes trailed the dark streak, then made the jump from that one to the one running parallel to it a ruler’s length ahead. Then another parallel to that. 

Without realizing what I was doing, I followed the markings, from their origin in front of the casket, across the room, behind the parlor, to the staircase Brendan had led me up just hours before. And there, at the foot of the stairs, lay the jade rosary beads. No longer in Orla’s clutches. But what was?

On the day of our first meeting, the thought had occurred to me that although Brendan loved me and I loved him, our love might not be enough to overcome the titanium grip Orla seemed to have on everyone and everything within her orbit, Brendan included. For a fleeting moment that had managed to endure for the past few days, I had tricked myself into believing she was the one who had been overcome. 

But here I stood now, at the bottom of the stairs, unable, or unwilling—which of the two, I was not sure—to rush up the steps and face them. 

“Over my dead body…” That’s what Orla had said.

Brendan screamed, a high-pitched screech, like a pig being stuck through. But I turned from the stairs. 

He shrieked, “No! Oh God, Mother, no!” But I walked in the direction of the casket. “Jenna, please!” 

But I slipped the ring off my finger and chucked it in on the satin pillow, then made a beeline for the front door. 

“Or yours, Brendan dear.” And she had meant it.

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​S.E. Will lives in the Midwest, where she writes about the things that keep her up at night. Her most recent work can be found in Black Sheep: Unique Tales of Terror and Wonder.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.



The bus drove down Wessling Street, right in front of my house, at exactly three twenty three in the morning. I had just come back from the bathroom and had glanced at the clock and was facing the window that looked out onto the street, so it was just totally random that I even saw it. It was an orange school bus, a short bus like the one Adam used to ride.

Oh, god. Adam.

And then I had to sit down on the edge of my bed because suddenly my legs couldn’t hold me up any more. He had gone missing three weeks ago and I hadn’t had a decent night's sleep since. I looked jealously at my wife, Marsha’s slumbering form under the comforter. She managed to be able to sleep thanks to copious amounts of pain pills and chardonnay. Her gentle snoring just reminded me of how much I missed sleep.

And then, I thought again about that bus, because I finally realized how weird, how anomalous it was. Why was a school bus making its rounds at this time of night... morning,... whatever? At first I thought it was Adam’s bus but then realized there had been many subtle differences. For one, this bus had no words written on the sides. It was just blank, which was also weird.

I lay back down, knowing it would be useless. I lay there staring at the ceiling and looked at the shadows of the trees on the ceiling. I told myself that I’d soon drift off, that the Ambien would kick in. Who was I kidding? I took that pill hours ago and here I lay, an exile from dreamland. Again. I just lay there in bed, a prisoner of insomnia. I let out a half forced yawn, tried to convince myself I felt sleepy. And I was, in fact I was exhausted. I closed my eyes. Yes, I felt it, sleep was on the way.

What if he was kidnapped by sex traffickers? My eyes snapped open and sweat beaded my forehead. Oh my god, my poor beautiful little boy in the hands of deviant perverts, using him for, using him for…

I jumped up out of bed and began to pace. 

Sleep was a distant stranger that night.

The next night was a replay of the one before. I lay in bed trying not to let nightmare scenarios play out in my mind. Where was my boy? What cruel fate had befallen him? What was worse?  That he had been murdered or that he was alive and being used for…for horrible things. The shadows on the curtain twisted and flexed as I stared at them. They curved and writhed and then, in my Ambien daze I thought they formed a face, fanged and gap eyed, staring at me, taunting me.

Shot through with cold adrenalin needles, I jumped out of bed and began to pace. It had been like this every night since Adam’s disappearance and I had already accepted that a good night’s sleep might be a thing of the past. I noticed the time, it was three twenty three a.m.. Why did that seem significant? it nagged at me, but I couldn’t place it. Then I heard the rumbling of a diesel engine and I walked to the window.

There it was. The school bus cruised down my street going along its route as if it were the morning before a school day. I used to wait with Adam every day for the bus. Maybe they’d find him? Maybe he was alright and the FBI would find his abductor. They would bring him back to us. I would again hold him in my arms. And I would never let go. I watched the bus cruise down the street on its ghostly late night, early morning promenade. I lay down and told myself I could fall asleep. That tonight would be different.

It wasn’t.

The following night I was ready for it. The night was pressing down on me, like a shroud, heavy and pervasive. I just lay there feeling the crush, the frustration, the helplessness. I noticed the time and jumped out of bed.

Three twenty three. Silence. There was no bus. It had been a freak occurrence. And then I heard the rumble of the approaching engine and the damned thing drove right past my house. It was dark inside the bus, I couldn’t make out any passengers or even the driver. I lay back down, my thoughts consumed by this mystery vehicle. Where was it coming from? Where was it going? What was its agenda? Who was on it? Puzzling over the bus was a welcome distraction from my thoughts about my missing son. I realized this and in so doing, my thoughts returned to Adam. I pressed the pillow to my face and groaned into it.

The bus continued to come every night at the same time. And each night I watched it pass. The reoccurrence momentarily distracting me from my morbid thoughts about my son. I looked a the slumbering form of my wife. She was gently snoozing and I felt a million miles away from her. We had hardly spoken in the last week. We were just two shadows sharing space with each other, I no longer felt the connection that had joined us so closely together. In so short of a time we had become like strangers. I watched her sleep and searched my heart for feelings for her. But my heart was a dead place. It had been ever since…

I looked at the clock and realized I had three minutes. I found my self hurrying, throwing on my robe and slippers. I walked downstairs and out the front door. I sat on the stoop where I used to wait with Adam way back in another life. 

Adam.

My boy.

My sweet boy.

I heard the approaching rumble and the bus rolled into view and I watched as it rolled to a stop in front of my house. It sat there, unmoving. And then I realized why. It was waiting. 

Waiting for me.

I walked towards it in my sleep-spectered daze, everything seeming so unreal, like I was walking through a dream. The doors of the bus slipped open in front of me. I looked up at the driver. It was dark in the bus, darker than the night outside. The driver was a bulky figure painted in shadows, I couldn’t make out his (its?) features. But I understood what he was offering me.

I stepped up the stair and into the bus. The shadowy, huddled figures sat there, quietly vibrating and chittering. There was a sound like the whisperings of locusts. The passengers were gazing at me. Welcoming me. I found an empty seat on the aisle and sat.

The bus took off, driving into the night, taking me I knew not where.

                                                                    💀💀💀


Rick Sherman (he/him) is a retired award winning Magician/Mentalist living in the manicured suburbs of Long Island, New York. Finding himself with a surfeit of free time he has turned to writing with increasing degrees of success. He lives with his wife and five children (only three of which have four legs and a tail). 
 facebook.com/RickShermanMagi