Library

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.

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.

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.

While I was just playing games in my room the lights turned red and these red ghost came out and slowly kill me one by one

I'm a Disney fanatic; if you were to ask me something, I'd know it. But sometimes you don't know EVERYTHING Disney does..

After they came to our door, my sibling stopped being a “problem.” That’s what my parents wanted, at least. But all I can remember is them being a normal kid. Yeah, they caused trouble sometimes–but they were young. That’s it. That’s all it was. Nothing that wouldn’t have passed on its own. And that’s exactly what those two people promised when they showed up. They didn’t look strange at first. Just calm. Polite. Like they’d done this a hundred times before. Five minutes, they said.

The wind is cold. The late autumn night wind drilled through the battered glass window of the small eatery, scraping against faces with a dull, lingering ache. The diner's old incandescent bulb flickered erratically. Its light fell upon two bowls of steaming rice on the table, and also onto the bowed head of the student. No one knew that this seemingly silent high schooler, always wearing a washed-out school uniform, was already rotten to the core.

Not by much. You would not notice it walking through. You would notice it if you were sent to fetch something and had to count the doors, and the count came out wrong, and you stood there with your hand on the light switch, doing it again. Four doors on the left. Three on the right. The hallway had been built in 1962 and there had never been a fourth door on the right. My mother said this the way you say a thing you have said a hundred times. The sound came from that wall.

The note was folded into eighths, small enough to sit in a coin pocket, and it was in the shirt I had just hung up. I found it because I do a stupid thing: I check pockets twice. My mother did it. Now I do it, and the second check has never once caught anything. That night it caught a note in my own handwriting. Do not take the 7:40. Wait for the 8:05.

The widow, Laura, walked into the garden. Cracked Stone walls surrounded her, their green vines slithering toward bushes plump with blood-red berries. At the center of the garden stood a rectangular stone basin shaped like an angel. It knelt before the pool as if to deliver water from its mouth. Yet what flowed was bleak black water, filled with sticks and the smal bodies of dying insects. When she was younger, she remembered tossing coins and watching them sink into the water's darkness.…

Amitriptyline, 25 mg. Her dose. Her name on the label, spelled the way only she spelled it, with the small accent she'd added at the DMV and never let anyone drop. I hadn't refilled anything. I hadn't opened the app since the funeral. But the receipt said the order was placed five days ago, from my account, and the pickup was authorized with a short code I did not remember choosing.

“HELP!” I yell, at least I believe I’m yelling, the feeling of my skin bubbling, is it bubbling… I don’t know. I can feel it, but I don’t know if it is what I think it is. I am or at least what I believe I am… I don’t know. It’s cold wait what does cold feel like again sigh I think I sighed. My body grows old and decayed, my flesh turning a colour I cannot perceive, my hair falling out of my grotesque scalp or what’s left of it. He… no, IT did this. My senses have been stripped away from me, I…

“Be one second smarter!” whispered Kippy-Kip to the viewers, leaning in. His face filled the entire screen. After licking the camera lens and leaving it drenched in slobber, Kippy-Kip jumped backward three times, stepping away and leaving the rest of his crew to show off and do their juggling tricks.

"What are you gazing at...? What's there outside the window...?" "Outside the window...? Nothing." "Nothing? Looking at nothing?" "It's her... my... my ghostly girl." Beloved women... They, like a sudden downpour, come, turn you into themselves, and vanish… leaving you… leaving you alone with your own shadow called sorrow.

The email from Becca arrived at 3:14 AM, blinking on the screen like a dying pulse. It contained a single, corrupted video file and a trembling plea: “My little sister Kaylee went missing after she found that tape. Please... find her. Don't let them put her to sleep.”

In shadows of October dawn Was when the sickness came Foul breath of death wanton Denizens plagued in blain . I saw from high window As death drew nigh in tow Courier sent afar Then close my door ajar . As the leaves grew redder And the days grew dire My flock grew fettered Flayed upon the pyre . Cast in glow of dying wick I, too, could feel the sick Solitude in this shadowy hour Locked away inside this tower . Rolling past autumn plains Haze of grey sinks low

"Nine-one-one. What's your emergency?" "Someone's in my house." A woman, maybe fifty, steady. "In the hallway. I can hear him breathing." I ask for the address and she gives it, slow and clear, and I type it into the field, and the field does something it has never once done: it stops me. The cursor goes red before I finish. A note unfolds under the line, the way the system writes when it's telling you something is over. PREMISES LOST. FIRE. 2019. NO SURVIVORS.