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The year was 3042, and in the coastal town of Aethelburg, the morning of the Ceremony of Bonds dawned cold and golden. Mike Ashgrove had barely slept. He'd lain awake in his narrow bed, staring at the ceiling of his family's modest clifftop home, listening to the distant crash of waves against the harbor wall. Today was the day. The day every fifteen-year-old in Aethelburg had dreamed about since they were old enough to understand words. Today, he would receive his Circlet.

The first time I heard it, I thought it was the wind. A low, mournful hum threading through the gaps in the old farmhouse windows. My wife, Sarah, was already asleep, her breathing a soft, steady rhythm beside me. We’d moved in a week ago, seeking silence from the city. The house was a steal, a crumbling Victorian relic with good bones and a bad reputation that we’d laughed off.

An account written before the silence ends If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance I’m already dead. I’m not sick, and nobody has given me some terrible diagnosis or told me I have three days left to live. Something is coming for me, and it’s outside the room right now.

Since so many of you have been trading your own run-ins with the creepy and unexplained, I figured it was time to throw my story into the mix.

I used to think the worst part of my job was the blood. The stink of it, thick and metallic, clinging to my clothes, clogging my nostrils. It soaks into everything, wood, concrete, carpet, skin. You scrub it off, bleach the scene, pretend nothing ever happened. But doesn’t lie. It leaves stains, no matter how hard you try to erase them. It tells a story, even when no one don't want to listen. Yet, it's not the worst part, the worst it 's the silence.

Every neighbourhood has a place children are warned never to cross. A tunnel, a fence, a creek, sometimes just a street or an abandoned house. A line drawn in fear, and if you dare step past it, something bad will take you. In my town, the forbidden zone was a decommissioned storm drain at the edge of town.

Ethan always arrived ten minutes early. It wasn’t something he’d planned. It had simply become part of his routine, the same way he always ordered the same coffee, chose the same table, and sat facing the front window. The café was small, tucked between a bookstore and a pharmacy. The furniture was mismatched, the windows were usually streaked with rain, and the woman behind the counter had a habit of forgetting people’s names. Ethan liked it there. Especially on Thursdays.

The light of the waning gibbous showered down through the veil of clouds onto the wheat fields below. There was a scar amongst them, where there lay the charred skeleton of a farmhouse. A cold wind blew through the autumn air. The front door stirred, which bore a strange sigil upon it, scratched into the woodwork. Ashes blew solemnly into the night. Beyond, many such sites could be seen littered amongst the fields, all reduced to teeth and cinders. Down the road for miles and miles the wheat…

This is the culmination of the first series of stories, and the one that ties them together. It mostly stands on its own, but it was written for people who've read the rest. If you've only time for a few first, read 9 West, Stock and The Roll, which it leans on hardest. The full order is: The Road Over Crockanroe, The Hearthstone, Red Jenny, The Keeper's Bowl, The Brandy Pad, 9 West, Caldragh, Stock, Each Uisce, Hungry Grass, The Roll, The Fetch, The Narrows.

Hi, I’m Zack, and I’m going to share my experiences with Carbon, a high-tech security lab. Though I’m sure you know me for my experience as a security guard watching over an abandoned Disney park that had lured children to their demise. I had never wanted to talk about any of my other experiences before, but now that I’ve said my first one, I think it’s time for me to explain.

I want you to imagine this. At 3:04 a.m. You open your eyes with a deep breath, released into the room like a coin dropped into a deep well. To your left, the window sits—a sheet of slate framed by curtains that almost meet, sealing in a night as dense and unleavened as wet soil. Moonless, starless space stretches beyond the glass. Across the room, the wardrobe doors rest slightly ajar, holding an interior that is blacker than black.

It sits. It waits. It calculates. Watching your every move. Waiting, impatiently. It fumes. It hates. It salivates. Dreaming its terrible dreams. Scheming, contentiously. It strikes. It takes. It dominates. Doing what it does best. Feasting, voraciously. It lures. It baits. It escalates. Mauling a helpless victim. Laughing, fiendishly. It hides. It shakes. It regulates. Changing into something new. Shedding, relentlessly. It sleeps. It breaks. It elevates.

At the outset, I should tell you I’m a thief. Not a classless “smash and grab” guy or a lowly pickpocket. Those require no planning or strategy beyond “move quickly and be ready to run.” I’m a fourth-generation cat burglar. I’m very good at my job. If everything goes right, you don’t notice I’ve been there for weeks. If ever.

by Tristan Mason “I swear I’m dreaming of someone else’s memories,” Samantha told her fiancé on the anniversary of their engagement. “I know I sound crazy. It’s just that—” Caleb took another bite of his burger, leaning over the stainless steel table, and smirked. “You’ve said crazier things.”

The job was simple. It paid well enough. Even if it hadn’t, I would have taken it anyway. After nine months of unemployment, choice stops being a luxury and starts feeling like arrogance. I started on a Tuesday. Odd, I know. They said they were in a rush—something about the previous guy leaving without notice. Apparently the guy just walked out mid-week and never came back. A red flag, sure. But red flags fade when rent is due.

I’ve been a Cleaner at the Association for six years now, and in that time, I’ve seen my fair share of strange and horrifying things. I still can’t decide what’s worse—the half-decayed corpses of creatures that shouldn’t exist or the Wardens, walking around freely, who can transform into absolute monsters in the blink of an eye. But the strangest, most unsettling experience of my life didn’t involve blood or gore. It involved a series of conversations I’ll never forget.

You know, I never thought I’d end up as a glorified janitor for a secret organization. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a firefighter or maybe an astronaut. Something cool. Something heroic. Instead, here I am, scrubbing ichor off walls and hauling mysterious black garbage bags to incinerators. But hey, life takes you places, right? And to all those comments asking, “How’d I got recruited by the Association?” … Well, buckle up. your prayers had been answered.

Do you remember the games you played as a child? Running around outside, making up rules, inventing magic where there was none? Maybe not. Maybe that era was already gone by the time you grew up. But I’m sure a few of you—old farts like me—still remember. Those days were magic. We’d stay out past sunset, climbing trees, chasing each other barefoot through the grass, playing whatever game we could dream up on the spot. But there was one we always came back to.

I’m a trucker. Been one for almost twenty years. I’ve seen a lot of strange things on the road—but nothing like this. It happened during my early years, when I still ran long international routes. The kind that cut through nowhere, threading across mountains and ghost towns. I was somewhere in northern Spain, driving through the Babia y Luna Natural Park, heading toward Portugal.

Halle and I had only been living in Brunswick, Georgia for a few months. We moved here from Tallahassee over the summer and honestly, we missed home. But hey, the area had grown on us. We liked the beaches and the culture. But one place we hadn’t checked out yet was Jekyll Island. Jekyll had a mystique to it to say the least. It had history given that it once served as a vacation destination for many of America’s wealthy elites during The Gilded Age. The opportunity to visit said island arose…