#rituals

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.

For three days after I found the rabbit, nothing else had happened. That frightened me more than the noises had. The woods had gone quiet. Not truly quiet. The birds still called in the mornings. Cicadas screamed from the trees in the afternoon. At night, the frogs took over the creek. But the other sounds stopped. No howls. Not footsteps beneath my window. No knocking against the walls. Nothing watched from the pasture either. Nothing moved in the tree line.

By the end of our first week, father had stopped talking about Boston. That was how I knew he was happy. Every morning he woke before sunrise, dressed without lighting a lamp, and went outside with an axe over one shoulder. By breakfast, he had already split enough wood to last us for several days. He repaired the barn roof. He cleared the weeds from the garden for mother. He even found an old plow beneath a pile of rotten boards and spent the better part of two days repairing it.

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…

Mr. Pike arrived shortly after noon. I knew it was him before father said anything. There was something about the way the man approached the house that made him uneasy. Most visitors, as in would imagine, would look towards the farmhouse first. Not Pike. He looked straight to the woods. He came up the road in a dark green truck that coughed smoke behind it and rattled like loose bones. The truck stopped near the barn, but Pike didn’t immediately get out of the truck.

In truth I've always known that the house I live in is haunted. The soft sounds of soft footsteps when you're home alone, the whispers when the house is empty... You know all the signs. All have been told before already after all. We were just lucky that it never got worse than that, yes sometimes small objects would have been placed elsewhere, but we never got the feeling that we were dealing with something that was dangerous or angry. So we just let it be, whatever it was.

"The last few nurses we've hired have all flaked on me," Jim said with an exhausted sigh. "Please tell me you don't plan on flaking."

Father did not sleep that night. Neither did I. After the fourth call faded into the mountains, he checked every door and window in the house twice. Then he pulled a chair beside the front door, laid the shotgun across his knees and remained there until morning. Nobody talked much. Mother took Thomas into their room. Evelyn stayed downstairs. She sat wrapped in a blanket near the stove, occasionally looking toward the windows whenever the house creaked.

A flame burst from the darkness. It was hesitant for a moment, but flashed for an instant, showing the faint glimpse of a lone figure. A second flame was made, but it sizzled low before fading away. The third, like the first, was shy for a moment. However, soon it became full of thorns and nipped at the fingers of its master, but it was held in its place. It would not go its own way, no, it must be sealed in a cage of iron and glass.

Smoke covered the midnight moon, while cheers could be heard all across a small farming village. Bonfires were lit all around the main road. Young and old folk alike celebrated as the Fire Runners, dressed in dark clothes adorned with bright red and yellow ribbons, moved among them, their faces covered with masks whose abhorrent features imitated the unholy visage of demons and monsters. They were performing what was locally known as the Devil’s Dance, an ancient pagan tradition, much older…

Did you know tens of thousands of people die in their sleep each night? Most of them succumb to natural causes like heart disease, stroke, or just plain old age. But in that vast group of the fallen, a small subset of them have perished with no explanation at all. Hell, I've heard some have outright disappeared. The funny thing is they all shared one curse that led them to such a demise.

It was just a normal day, except that’s what I thought… I was wrong. On February 24, 2024, I learned the truth, what goes on in this little town, Blue Springs, Missouri. It was about 5 days before my family and I were gonna leave to go on a trip up to Chicago, but some strange things started to happen…It's hard to explain. I mean it’s not normal what happened to me, not at all. It was almost like I got a sense someone or something was watching me from afar, but it wasn’t comforting, you know?…

Let me start off by saying that Peter Terry was addicted to heroin.

When I was in high school, my friends and I had a peculiar pastime. Like any teenage delinquent, we liked to cause trouble. We weren’t vandals, we didn’t deal drugs, and we certainly didn’t bully kids in school. No, we liked to scare the living shit out of new parents by “hacking” their baby monitors. We were insufferable little punks who thought we were too good to get caught, and that our little acts of mischief would go unpunished. One night; however, I learned my lesson, and realized that I…

I lost my wife a few years ago. Most people hear that and picture someone older–fifties or sixties. I’m twenty-one. Rose and I were born in Insurrection County, West Virginia. Rose was a southern belle, even though she always said that West Virginia wasn’t the real South. Rose’s hair was strawberry blonde, and she had deep green eyes and freckles that would pop when her face was sunburnt.

Have your ever seen something in your life that you just cannot explain? Do you feel like if you ever mentioned it to somebody else, they would look at you like a raving lunatic? I certainly do.

This is a set of instructions for how to speak with the Devil. Which, as those of you with any sort of brains at all might note, is a patently moronic proposition on the face of it; one likely to culminate in any number of thoroughly unpleasant fates. Honestly, it would probably be smarter to publish your credit card number on Facebook, or take up a career in crocodile-wrestling.

My name is Andrew Erics. I lived, once, in a city called New York. My mother is Terrie Erics. She’s in the phone book. If you know the city, and you read this, find her. Don’t show her this, but tell her I love her, and that I’m trying to come home. Please.

Starting this blog because I don't know where else to put this. I've spent the last few weeks going through case files that keep showing up in different countries, different years, no obvious connection between them. Police never cross-referenced any of it. I think I know why now. If any of this sounds familiar to you, message me. I need to know I'm not the only one who's noticed the pattern.

"Breaking news tonight. Authorities have discovered the remains of four local Yakuza members in the Port District." The news anchor’s voice crackled from the TV. Her face flickered ghostly blue against yellowed, peeling wallpaper. Bad reception. Static danced across her eyes like digital maggots.