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Chapter 3: The One Who Understands All Requiem looked down at his right hand carrying the claymore with thorned rosary binding them together. He let his blade drop next to him to hang freely by the rosary so he may use both hands to climb the vine. He dug his fingers into the vine making it bleed, and started climbing.

They say that only the truly desperate would invite the Devil for dinner. Not because of the meal itself, but because the entire ritual is a gamble—a dangerous game where the stakes are your very soul. If you play it right, though, there’s a chance you can walk away with exactly what you desire. The trick is in the details.

In the flickering light of the torch, the old gold shimmered with a mesmerizing allure, a testament to the treasures of a bygone era. At long last, the avaricious seekers had found their prize, their hearts consumed by an insatiable hunger for wealth. "We shall be rich beyond measure," declared Sir Hampton with a triumphant laugh, his fingers greedily digging into the mounds of golden coins.

It had been a while since I had visited my cousins. Believe it or not, it had been five years since I saw any of their faces. The last I time I saw them I was eight years old and had not yet learned that the world had no consequences. I skipped gaily around their two story ramshackle house joyously, singing my favorite songs and playing with the six year old twins. This playtime, however was constantly tainted by my Aunt Clarissa.

Hello readers. I'm writing this because a few hours ago I woke up from a nightmare and there's this... Really weird coincidence, but I'll get to that in a minute. The dream was about this story I read in, I think, 2001 or maybe 2002 I can't quite remember, on a forum I used to go to called bourftforums.net, which was a forum built around this Norwegian indie band called Bourft. Their songs were okay, but I hardly ever listened to them. I only went there because my older sister did, and I stayed…

Dear Diary,

It has always been an auspicious prospect for most children. A new house means new neighbors, a new yard, new friends, and a new school. A new house, for a boy of nine, means a new adventure. Well, at least until one has settled in. My parents and I decided to move due to a few contentious issues that had arisen in our previous town. More precisely, I had begun to fight with the other children.

His face never changes. It's pale white. His eyes are grey, empty. Wide. So fucking wide. I can't take my own eyes off of them and because I can't, I feel them painfully dry up, just as his should. But they don't. He never closes them. He's always, always watching.

We all know what Hollywood is; it’s the place of dreams and wonder, of glimmer and shine. At the same time, we know that behind the glittering façade, there’s a rotten waste that must be isolated and cut out like a cancer, so the fantasy can be maintained. Those surgeons who deal with Hollywood’s malignant backstage are known as ”the behind guys.” They’re a secretive bunch, obviously, and my father was one of them.

In the United States of America, in the state of Ohio, about forty-five minutes North West of Cincinnati, there is a large, but sparsely populated farming community known as Oregonia. Some of you who have an interest in Motorcycles may have heard of it before, as the community is famous for its hills and holds the annual “Devil's Staircase Hill Climb”, where motorcyclists ride their bikes up a very steep hill. It's a lot more fun than it sounds, and it brings in a lot of money and excitement to…

They are here, banging on doors, windows, pipes, walls, vents. They have nowhere else to go, no one else to torture, their only way left to get to me is to torture me slowly, until I cannot wait for death to release me, as I am sure they will do. I have very little time to type this, so let me explain as quickly as possible.

(This is the typed version of a handwritten transcript that I was given access to. The transcript itself is from a voice recording, but I have no idea where that is, or how the person who wrote the transcript obtained it. Due to the sloppiness of the handwriting and some water marks, some of the words are indecipherable, or maybe they were unintelligible from the recording. I cannot go into detail as to how I came across this transcript.)

I don’t really remember what happened before it all went dark. I think I was in the car? All I can remember was the loud noise, some screech of metal on metal and then nothing. I woke up in this beeping place. I’m not sure where I am because I can’t seem to open my eyes. Silly, isn’t it? I can definitely feel the blanket on top of me and the beep-beep-beep beside me but I can’t open my eyes or talk or move. People come to poke at me every now and then and I always try to talk to them.

This isn't a confession. You can't prove a damn thing, so don't even try. I'll deny it to my grave. I'm on my third drink for the evening anyways. You can't trust the word of a drunken man. That's when I start to feel anything these days, the third drink. Sometimes it takes four, but usually three will do. It's the same cycle every night for weeks now, I drink, then I start to feel, then the fear comes over me, then I drink some more until I pass out.

The area around me became garbed in a bright light as I turned on my flashlight. The room was a disaster area with shelves toppled over, the books spilling on the cold wooden floor. Each piece of furniture had deep gashes in them as if something unholy had ripped into them. To make things worse, the door I had entered through was nothing but splinters, and one of the walls had a splatter of blood on it, already caking and cracking. All of this only added to the fear I was feeling.

During the summer of 1983, in a quiet town near Minneapolis, Minnesota, the charred body of a woman was found inside the kitchen stove of a small farmhouse. A video camera was also found in the kitchen, standing on a tripod and pointing at the oven. No tape was found inside the camera at the time. Although the scene was originally labeled as a homicide by police, an unmarked VHS tape was later discovered at the bottom of the farm’s well (which had apparently dried up earlier that year).

Have you ever had an experience that suggested someone else was in your house, and just thought “I don’t wanna know” and left it? Sometimes, fear of the unknown just seems like the preferable option than facing a real, concrete danger. Normally it’s nothing, though. One time, the beeper function of my wireless housephone went off, when I was the only one home. It could only be called from the living room. Another time, I swear someone took some change from my desk. They’re all probably just…

Coffins used to be built with holes in them, attached to six feet of copper tubing and a bell. The tubing would allow air for victims buried under the mistaken impression they were dead. In a certain small town Harold, the local gravedigger, upon hearing a bell one night, went to go see if it was children pretending to be spirits. Sometimes it was also the wind. This time, it wasn’t either. A voice from below begged and pleaded to be unburied. “Are you Sarah O’Bannon?” Harold asked.

It’s been nearly twenty years since I had a conversation that would change my life. Twenty years since that boy came into my office and told me perhaps the most fantastical story I would hear all my life. A story that’s stuck in my mind so clearly all of these years. Of course, I didn’t believe it then; but now, after so many years, after the life that I’ve lived since that conversation, I cannot help but think back on that day with guilt and regret, and now finally fear.

The streets, roads and dusty lanes of Colombia have been fertile territory for myths and legends since before the arrival of the Spaniards. Tales of ‘La Patasola’, a one-legged wailing banshee that forever sought her child, and of ‘El Duende’, a backwards-footed goblin that led travelers to their doom, nibbled at the corners of journeymen’s ease for centuries. Although these stories mainly troubled those living in or passing through rural areas, the growth of cities brought with it a new breed…