Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

• Prologue
• Razputin Aquato - The Tale of the Cabin in the Woods
  • After a summer afternoon gone awry, Raz finds an abandoned cabin in the woods and a book within...
  • Content warnings: Possession, loss of control, clowns
• Chloe Barge - The Tale of the Disrupted Planet
  
  • Long ago, in a past far far away was the planet of Phaeton; and one day, the end of days came for them.
  • Content warnings: Death, genocide, blood, implied/referenced gore, dark themes
• Chops Sweetwind - The Tale of the Sleepwalker
  • For one woman, the world is always a blur and the time is never right, driving her further and further to make things clear.
  • Content warnings: None
• Vernon Tripe - The Tale of the Hermit's Visitor
  • Before Whispering Rock, there was the town of Shaky Claim, which was eventually abandoned - except for the one man that stayed behind.
  • Content warnings: None
• Milka Phage - The Tale of the Wings in the Woods
  • Creatures and cryptids lurk around every corner of Whispering Rock. And while taking a walk on another sleepless night, Milka happens upon one...
  • Content warnings: None
• Elton Fir - The Tale of the Drowned Levithan
  • A story passed down from his aquatic scaled friends, Elton tells the tale of a sea monster long that lived before the time of Whispering Rock.
  • Content warnings: Drowning
• Crystal Flower Snagrash - The Tale of the Genie in the Bottle
  • After an eternity of being on the bottom of the food chain, Betty has finally come across a stroke of wonderous fortune. Or has she?
  • Content warnings: Child death, bullying, body horror, squick, blood, gore, typophobia
• Razputin Aquato - The Tale of the Midnight Train Ride
  • The Aquatos are used to traveling by train. But in the dead of night, in the middle of nowhere where nothing can survive, you never know what you'll come across.
  • Content warnings: None
• Epilogue
• Credits

Chapter Text

“I want you all at the reception area at zero hours on the double, do you hear me?!”

Oleander’s voice echoed against the tight walls of the boy’s cabin. A few jumped in their bunks, banging heads and limbs against the ceilings and the bottoms of bunks. Others blinked awake, sleep still lingering in the corners of their eyes. A soft chorus of groans and the shuffle of blankets greeted Oleander’s ears.

“Do you hear me?” Oleander yelled again.

“Yes, Coach,” the boys mumbled back. Oleander marched out of the cabin, slamming the door behind him as he left.

“What’s zero hours mean?” Dogen asked as he leaned over the edge of his bunk to look down at Raz.

“It means midnight,” Raz replied.

“Why does Coach want us down at the pit at midnight?” Dogen asked.

“Probably for something stupid,” Bobby spat.

“Oh, like you?” Raz asked.

Bobby clutched his right hand into a fist. But he could barely lift himself out of bed; if he took a swing now, Raz would beat him to the floor in front of everyone. So instead, he scowled. “Shut it, goggle boy.” Raz giggled and gave Bobby a small smile. 

Once they were dressed, or at least had shoes on and jackets thrown over their pajamas, the boys stumbled out of the cabin. Across the clearing, they could see the girls also walking out of their cabin, dragging their feet behind them and shivering. The moon was high in the sky, and the tall shadows of the forest surrounded the cabins. A loose line formed as the campers made their way across the bridge and to the reception area.

Down at the reception area, a fire danced and crackled in the pit, embers sparkling and floating into the air. Oleander sat in front of it, staring into the flames as he waited. Without the children around to see him, he shuffled a bit more in his seat. A camp tradition is a camp tradition, he supposed to himself. But each year after the last, the tales that the little brains- er, campers spun made him rattle in his boots even more. 

Seeing the shadows move, he straightened up and stood. The campers emerged from the forest path and took their seats on the moss-covered logs. There were a few murmurs and hushed conversations while they waited for stragglers, but most were quiet. Once they were all seated, they fell silent.

“Alright, Psi-Cadets! Your morale-building mission for tonight is to scare the bejeebers out of each other! Do you understand?”

The campers turned their heads to look at each other, and shared glances and blinks.

“You want us to tell each other scary stories?” Lili asked flatly.

“Affirmative!” 

Across the crowd, shoulders fell slack, as if a weight had been lifted from their bodies. Some campers smiled and started kicking their legs, while a couple of the younger ones winced.

“Hey Coach, turn down the volume!” Quentin replied in a yelled whisper.

“Wait, why are we whispering?” Phoebe asked.

“It sets the vibe, man.”

From his jacket pocket, Oleander pulled out a plush turtle. The colors were faded, and it was stained with dirt and grime. He held it into the light of the fire.

“Who’s going first?!” he asked in a yelled whisper.

Chapter Text

“I'll kick things off,” Raz said.

Oleander held out the plush turtle into the air. A glow enveloped it, and Raz levitated it into his hands. With one hand he held the turtle; with his other hand, he scratched the back of his head, even though it wasn't itching. He smiled, but his smile quivered.

“Have you ever seen that abandoned cabin on the faraway cliff when going down to the lake?” Raz asked. Heads around him nodded.

“Son, there ain't nothing in that cabin but cockroaches and weeds,” Oleander replied.

“You never know what you'll come across,” Raz replied. “I learned that for myself the hard way.”

“Seriously, Dion?”

“It wasn’t my fault! The wind changed direction. And Raz was supposed to catch it!” Dion whined as he ran his hand through his perfectly teased hair and looked down at his feet to avoid Frazie’s exasperated stare.

It was sweltering that day. Our circus caravan had pulled over into a campsite along the side of the winding country road it had been traveling on for the past several days. Though there was plenty of daylight left, it was too hot to keep traveling. Engines were overheating, radiators were failing, and the circus animals needed constant watering.

My siblings and I didn’t mind, of course. It was hot, but the sun was out and the sky was clear. It was perfect weather to bask in the sun, take a break from traveling, and play a few games of frisbee. Games like frisbee are a lot more fun to play in a family of acrobats who liked to sprinkle in flips and back handsprings to show each other up.

“How was I supposed to catch that?” I piped up. “You threw it a mile into the woods!”

“I don’t know; why didn’t you just use your special mind powers to catch it, brain boy?” Dion sneered, watching me go red in the face.

“Kids, let’s all stop arguing,” called Mom in the patient but firm voice of someone with five children to corral. She sat across the campsite in the shade with my baby brother sleeping on her lap, eyeing us like a hawk ready to strike if the arguing continued.

“Why don’t you go in and get the frisbee, Raz?” Frazie asked, discreetly throwing an annoyed glance at Dion.

“Why do I have to?” I countered, my face still a bit flushed.

“Because you’re the youngest here and you can use the life experience,” said Dion, nudging me towards the edge of the campsite. I sighed and started walking into the trees, grumbling under my breath.

The forest canopy was thicker than expected. As soon as I set foot into the woods, everything was darker and duller. At least it would make the neon-colored frisbee easy to spot. Dry brush and brambles quickly gave way to damp leaf litter and moss. Gnarled tree roots poked up from the uneven ground. Twisted branches seemed to reach down for me like claws, lichen hanging off the fingertips like chunks of clothing ripped from the backs of unfortunate hikers. I kept hearing skittering noises coming from the tree canopy and underbrush. I knew it was only the squirrels, but my heightened senses made everything seem much louder and more threatening. I had only walked about two hundred yards when a log cabin loomed out of the darkness.

A shaft of light illuminated a single window. Broken glass sparkled like dewdrops in the dappled light. The cabin looked old and abandoned, rotting in the woods like the leaf litter around it. Curious, I walked closer. To my surprise, the frisbee was sitting right inside the broken pane, surrounded by more glass shards. Dion must have smashed it. At least there was no one around to be angry about it. I circled the cabin and found a back door, the screen torn to shreds long ago. I sauntered in, grabbed the frisbee, and turned to leave. That was that.

As I turned to face the back door, something tugged at the back of my mind. Something not quite tangible, but definitely there. I looked around the empty room, scanning the area for whatever the strange presence could be.

No one was there.

The feeling grew stronger and I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight as I crossed the room to a door hanging ajar. It had been partially knocked out of its frame and dangled from one remaining hinge. The feeling was strong enough that I was sure there was someone on the other side.

“Hello?” I called out.

Is anyone in there?”

There was no response, but the feeling remained. Cautiously, I pushed the door open.

“I’m sorry, I think my brother might have broken your window-”

I trailed off. The room was empty. There was no place to hide without being noticed. The only object in the room, save for a few pinecones and scattered twigs, was a wooden table. Upon the table sat a book with a thick leather cover, adorned with weird symbols, skulls, and screaming human faces drawn in dark red ink. At least, I hoped it was ink. There were three human faces carved into the cover, all contorted in agony and horror. As soon as I laid eyes on it, I knew it was the source of the strange feeling. I crossed the room and examined it more closely. The leather was clean and untouched by the weather and moisture eroding the rest of the cabin. The feeling grew stronger and stronger.

Open it... 

A voice emanated from the book. Not an audible voice, but one inside of my head. Without thinking, I took hold of the dark leather cover and opened the book to the very middle page.

Though the inside of the cabin remained calm and still, the feeling of presence exploded. It felt like the cabin was filled with people, many more than could fit inside of it. Startled, I stumbled and tripped, falling onto the rotting hardwood floor.

“Get up,” hissed a voice.

Multiple voices chimed in, some gravely and growling, other sing-song and mocking. I scrambled backward into the corner as far away as possible from the open book, still resting still on the table.

“Who’s there?” I demanded, trying to sound braver than I felt.

There was no response at first. Then, a chorus of whispers started to build inside my head, just like the voice that commanded me to open the book. The temperature plummeted. The climate in the room changed from a hot day in August to the start of October. I felt a chill rocket up my back. I watched frost start to form on the grimy window panes, and I could see my breath turn to mist as I tried to slow my heart rate. A horrible thought entered my mind along with the whispers. A strange presence, a feeling of being watched, disembodied whispers, and sudden cold—all hallmarks of paranormal activity. I’d read enough stories about spirit mediums in True Psychic Tales to recognize that whatever was talking to me might not be physical.

A thousand questions flooded my thoughts. Did spirits have thoughts? Could you still read a mind after the brain and body were gone? The whispers grew louder. Something was trying very hard to get inside of my brain. It was as if a large hand had come to rest on the back of my head and was slowly working its way into my cranial cavity.

“Who are you?” I asked the still air in the cabin, keeping my voice steady and calm.

“Many,” came a reply, ringing like a church bell in my head. I paused, unsure how to respond. I was curious, but more than anything else, I just wanted to get back to the campsite and out of the now freezing cold cabin.

“Well, my name is Raz,” I spoke tentatively as I got to my feet and edged towards the door, “I’m sorry for bothering you; I’ll just go now if you don’t mind.”

Before I could move the door slammed shut, vibrating in its frame. I rushed to the door and shoved it as hard as I could, but it was shut tight.

“STAY,” the voices said as one, so clearly that I swore I heard it aloud.

“Let me out! I’m sorry, just please let me out!” I screamed, pounding on the door. The voices crescendoed, and so too did the feeling of something trying to enter my mind, like a rabid animal digging at my skull. The door vibrated so intensely I thought it might explode. I dived back into the opposite corner, my hands over my face, bracing for the blast. As suddenly as it started, the vibrating stopped. I peeked through my fingers.

“Stay,” the voices said quietly. “Stay, stay, stay.”

I stayed still in the corner. Running for it wouldn’t work.

“Okay, okay. I’ll stay. Just stay calm.”

“Friend!” the voices chorused again.

“You just want a friend?” I asked, feeling the hand on the back of my head tighten its grip.

I don’t think you’re my friend, I thought, trying to focus on shielding myself from the voices.

I tried to probe the presence in the cabin. I couldn’t feel much of anything at all. Then again, I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel. I’d never read the mind of a ghost before.

“Friend!” “Look!” “Watch!”

The book stood up on its spine, still open to the very middle page. The middle page was an illustration of... something. It looked like a pile of meat and eyes and teeth, like if a human being had melted like an ice cube. It made me nauseous to look at. I tried to look away, but the voices shifted again.

“WATCH,” they commanded. I turned automatically back to the book, the disquieting image making my insides twist.

The book began to move again. It flopped up and down on the table as if part of some weird puppet show. It danced back and forth on its spine and cover, making the disgusting pile of flesh dance with it. The voices began to laugh. Quiet murmurs and giggling grew to hysterical cackling. I clapped my hands over my ears, but the voices only increased. Whatever was trying to get inside my head was now groping around inside my skull. Inside my brain, something clicked: I wasn’t talking to ghosts. Ghosts were just the spirits of dead people. Whatever these voices came from, they were never human.

An intense, horrible feeling of elation and hilarity suddenly flooded my mind, the head rush dulling my senses and amplifying the chaos in the room. The laughter continued to echo inside my head like a cackle of hyenas bearing down on me. I clamped a hand over my mouth, stifling a fit of giggles as the book continued flop dementedly around the tabletop. I struggled to breathe as waves of laughing fits shook my body. My thoughts began to fill with images of circus clowns with monstrous teeth, all laughing at me in the center ring of the circus. Demented, off-key calliope music threatened to deafen me. My hands failed to keep in the laughter, and the sporadic fits of giggles exploded into frenzied howling, the surge of hilarity threatening to swallow my consciousness.

“No . . . hahahaHAHA- No, please! Stop!” I pleaded with the thing enveloping my mind. The voices laughed harder, and the thing in my thoughts continued to poke and prod as if it were toying with me.

I staggered back into the wall, holding my sides as I cackled maniacally. The deranged circus clowns in my mind’s eye continued to point and jeer, showing off their razor-sharp teeth. I could see my reflection in their freakishly large, glassy eyes. My usual clothes had been exchanged for a frilly, ridiculous coat and ruff, both covered in splotches of fresh red blood. My face was a demented mess of garish greasepaint. Now I was a clown, performing for crowds of shadowy audience members.

“Circus freak!”

“Circus freak!”

“Dance for us, freak show!” they taunted, pointing at me with sharp, hooked claws.

I began to dance along to the off-kilter cadence of the book hitting the table, the cheers of the crowd egging me on. Inside my brain my last vestiges of sense and self gasped for air as fiendish hands threatened to pull them down into insanity, into the maw of the inhuman thing entering my mind. I danced closer and closer to the table. The clowns began closing in, the calliope music turning to a hellish roar.

“WE WILL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!” they shrieked in cacophonic unison.

In a desperate, involuntary attempt to save myself, I blasted the book off of the table with a bolt of psychic energy. The book flew into the back wall of the cabin and hit the floor with a heavy thud!, black smoke emanating from its leather cover. The smell of burning hair and flesh filled my nose and I fought the urge to gag through the uncontrollable laughter. I slammed the book onto the floor, holding it shut with all my strength. The blast had burned a hole clean through the center of the book. I felt the thing pawing around inside my head shudder and release its grip. I held the book there as the laughing stopped and the horrible feeling of euphoria receded. I collapsed onto the floor and laid still, wheezing and holding my stomach in pain. The book laid lifeless on the rotting floorboards as if the last several minutes had never happened. I scrambled to my feet and took off running. I sprinted half blind through the woods until I reached the campsite, where I tripped over a tree root and hit the ground hard.

Dion and Frazie, still bickering with each other, jumped as I came crashing through the brush and fell face first onto the grass. Frazie rushed over and plucked me up off the ground. Her face shifted from confused to concerned when she saw my pallor and panicked expression.

“Raz, what happened?” she asked. I slumped forward and allowed her to support my shoulders. My legs felt like warm gelatin.

“I got the frisbee,” I managed to mumble, remembering why I went into the cabin in the first place. I tossed the plastic disk to Dion, who ignored it and stared at me like I’d grown an extra head. My older siblings traded concerned glances.

“I think we’re done for today. You look like you’ve got heat exhaustion,” said Dion.

“Let’s get you out of the sun, little brother,” said Frazie, leading me gently back to the caravan. I followed, hoping to wake up later having forgotten whatever it was that was lurking in the cabin in the woods.  

Chapter Text

“Have you heard of the planet Phaeton?” Chloe abruptly asked, her eyes raising from the campfire.

Raz blinked, his shoulders jumping at her voice. “‘Phaeton?’” he repeated, cocking his head. “Uh, no, I don’t think so.”

“You wouldn’t have. If you agreed with me, then you would be lying,” she stated, tossing her stick in the fire with the gooey remains of her marshmallow. She watched it burn, its crackling filling the silence as all eyes fell on her. “Phaeton was destroyed before Earth started to populate with intelligent life. It would have been the tenth planet in this galaxy. It was once nestled between Mars and Jupiter, but while your human scientists have conjectured about what happened to it, I know the truth.” Chloe crossed her ankles and straightened her back, and Raz noticed the corners of her mouth stretch into a grin. “You see, I was recently contacted by a survivor of that planet’s extinction.”

Bobby arched an eyebrow at her. “You were? When’d that happen?”

She nodded, unable to hide her glee. “It happened before I arrived at this containment facility. She communicated with me while I slumbered using an advanced form of machinery to penetrate my REM cycle. Unfortunately, the name of that device escaped me when I woke up to write down what she said.” She smiled. “In any case, I was deemed worthy by the survivor to tell this cautionary tale to anyone who would listen.”

Benny snorted and crossed his arms. “Oh, yeah? And you’re sure you didn’t just dream it up, space cadet?”

She frowned. “I am extremely certain, earth chimp, that what I was told was the truth. She had no reason to lie to me nor do I have any reason to believe this was a mere nightmare.”

Benny opened his mouth to retort, but Bobby shot him a warning look. He immediately pressed his lips into a thin line and rubbed his neck.

“This curious situation of telling horror stories provides an excellent way for me to do exactly that,” Chloe said, and she rose from her seat. She hopped on top of the log, spun around, and gazed down at the campers observing her with stupefied expressions. “This is the final chapter in the history of the disrupted planet, Phaeton.”

There are countless galaxies in space. They are simply too numerous to label. But within those galaxies, I suppose humans can determine the number of planets within them. You people, with your limited technology, have been able to identify some planets. Regardless, there are millions that you will never know.

This extends to your Milky Way galaxy with the planet Phaeton. It was named after the son of Helios, and the moniker would eventually fit like a glove. In Greek mythology, Phaethon could not control the horses in his father’s solar chariot and nearly destroyed Earth, had Zeus not struck him down with a lightning bolt.

The similarities continue. Phaeton was not just another planet in this solar system. It was capable of sustaining intelligent life. Through evolution, millions of years ago, there lived a species called the Phaetonins. They were aliens with hard skin like molten lava. They had smooth, shiny craniums with five rows of eyes lining the tops of their skull and elongated limbs perfect for war.

They were a brutal race. Living under the rules of various monarchies, their soldiers battled tooth and nail. All for glory and supremacy, the kingdoms spilled the blood of innocents, tearing each other apart with their bare, powerful claws that could carve open an Earth tree in a matter of seconds.

They were a species not fit for the Greater Galactic Community. The rulers turned their heads to the stars after letting the corpses of their people fester all over the planet, their sights set on domination. But violence is despised among the Greater Galactic Community. The Phaetonins had no idea what would become of them.

In spite of their common brutality, some villages attempted to live peacefully. They were simplistic in their ways. They were the ones who foraged and farmed. They tended the harsh, rocky land with care and tenderness unknown by a vast majority of their brethren. If they sought intellectual pursuits, they researched and theorized to teach their fellow Phaetonins in communal classrooms. In a way, you could consider them like tight-knit communities you might find on this planet.

Within one of these villages lived a young female named Heliades. She was tall, towering over your average human, and wore dresses with fabric similar to cotton. Beloved by her community, Heliades was an astronomer known throughout her region. She studied the stars and lectured those who wished to learn. I know I would have liked to have a proper dialogue with her, and I hope she contacts me again soon, but I digress.

One evening, Heliades was in her observatory. It was a sleek, metallic dome filled with textbooks and scientific instruments that the inhabitants of Earth would have never conceived. It smelled of antiseptic ointment and a variety of smoky formulas that lined her countertops. She gazed through her telescope that pierced through the atmosphere, observing the twinkling stars dotting the black swathe of space.

But nestled among the meteors and stars, she spotted something that set her hearts racing. She adjusted two nozzles on the side of the telescope, zooming in to find a motionless, fiery red vessel. It was the average size of an earthling fighter plane with a rounded, flat exterior that reflected the distant rays of the sun. It lacked any visible weaponry, but when Heliades slowly twisted the left nozzle and focused on the emblem emblazoned on the side, she froze.

Three letters shaped like hieroglyphics stifled her breath. It confirmed an identity that should have brought joy to any planet welcomed into their coterie.

The Greater Galactic Community had sent a patrol ship to monitor Phaeton. She recognized it the moment she saw it, for it had not been the first time she witnessed it. That initial surprise came fifteen Phaetonin years ago when the kingdoms chose to ignore it in favor of their war. Over those years, Heliades had documented the starship whenever it arrived, but as this was the fifth time, a chill raced down the cartilage of her twin spines.

Heliades tore herself from the telescope. She hobbled around her lab, her mind racing with theories. Her planet had been engaged in mutual conquest for as long as she could remember. There was an indefinite tally mark on the number of corpses that became the planet’s fertilizer. Day by day, the population dwindled to a mere fraction of what had initially blossomed centuries ago.

She licked her dry, thin mouth with a forked tongue. Her hands fidgeted around her angular waist as she contemplated her next move. She didn’t have the resources or wealth to escape the planet like the royals, and she didn’t know if time was her ally.

But interjecting her thoughts like a gunshot ringing out, one of her monitors beeped. Duty called. Heliades staggered to the screen implemented into a circuit board on the wall and tapped the screen.

A message appeared for her eyes only. It ordered her to take the teleporter to the kingdom’s neutral zone within the next half hour. Refusal or lateness ensured her head on a spike decreed by her queen.

Heliades clenched her fists but released them and her tension. A summons was not a deterrent. It only granted her an audience with the queen, and suspicion from the back of her mind whispered to her of the topics to be discussed.

She approached her teleporter, a tube-like contraption with a keypad outside of it. She typed in the neutral zone’s familiar coordinates and stepped inside the teleporter. As the glass doors slid shut, Heliades closed her eyes, felt a surge of electricity coarse through her, then a spell of wind caressing her rigid skin.

Blinking her eyes open when the doors unlatched, Heliades found herself in a wooded area. Thick trees similar to redwoods rose into the amber sky. Their foliage was a deep blue singed by smoke. She smelled rust and iron but waved the scent away, the distant screaming of warriors and victims tormenting her enough.

Heliades followed a cobblestone path. The occasional soldier stood watch. None spoke to her, but they raised their automatic blasters just in case. Heliades gave them no eye contact.

Seated at a rosewood table underneath an arbor out of place with the war outside of the forest was Queen Klymene, regent of the northern planetary quadrant. She donned an elegant gown made of ruby fibers and a sapphire trim. Her eyes narrowed upon noticing Heliades, who bowed as soon as their gazes locked. Wordlessly, she cocked her head at the opposing chair, and Heliades took her seat, clasping her shaking hands on her lap.

Maps and battle plans covered the table like a fine cloth. They detailed various areas in Kylmene’s ceaseless desire for conquest. Heliades noticed villages crossed out, recognizing a few as towns in other regions where her people traded popular goods, and she bit her tongue.

“Heliades, as my region’s finest astronomer, you should understand why I’ve summoned you. I’m sure you understand the gravity of this situation,” Klymene remarked, leering at the other woman.

She nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty. I trust that you have also seen the scouting ship.”

“A grim discovery. This is the fifth time it’s circled our planet.” Klymene drummed her fingers on the table. “Troublesome. Those senators should mind their own business and keep out of our planet’s affairs.”

Heliades swallowed down her scream. She leveled her voice and said, “The Greater Galactic Community is giving us an ultimatum. After five times without any-” She paused and considered her speech. “-improvements according to their guidelines, they will begin.”

Klymene scowled. She leaned forward and dug her elbows onto the table. One of her maps tore at the intensity of her left elbow jabbing into it. “And as I’ve said, they should keep Phaeton out of their crosshairs. None of the regents have any desire to allow this world to join their soiree. Their rules, their establishments never meshed with what this world wants.”

She drew back in her seat, unable to shield her surprise. “‘What this world wants?’ My liege, you know I support you, but the Phaetonin monarchs have endlessly warred. I can’t remember a time when peace was ever an option for our world.”

Red pinpricks trained themselves on her shoulders, chest, and face from the trees. Klymene raised her hand and called off her assassins.

“I understand your frustration, which is why I will pardon your brief discourtesy,” she said in a manner that threatened Heliades into nodding her head, “but you don’t understand what the majority of Phaetonins desire. You hide in your community bubble instead of facing the truth of this world.” She laced her fingers and allowed her mouth to stretch into the corners of her sallow cheeks. “There can only be conquest on Phaeton until one regent rules them all. If all goes well, then it will be me in the coming months. Then, the bloodshed will end.”

Heliades repressed a shudder and sunk her hands into her dress. She schooled her expression into something neutral. Wails erupted in the distance, silenced again by gunfire. She wondered which armies were massacring each other outside of the neutral zone.

“What the Greater Galactic Community is doing is nothing short of harassment. They will soon know terror when I ascend with my unified army against their collective,” Klymene said, shifting through her plans. She flipped over a clean sheet of paper, revealing to Heliades several designs for spaceships and weaponry. “They will be executed in our ways. We will show them no mercy.”

Heliades found her breath. “May I ask you a question?”“Speak.”

“Has the Greater Galactic Community already given you a final decree? As that was the fifth scouting ship, they are obligated to give whoever is in control of this world that document.”

Klymene did not respond right away. She stared through Heliades with eyes that told the astronomer everything she feared.

She pushed aside a map and removed a crumpled envelope that had once been waxed shut with the Greater Galactic Community’s symbol. Inside was a slip of paper that fell out when she shook the letter. Handing it to Heliades, Klymene ordered, “Read it to yourself.”

Heliades accepted it with hands that trembled. She smoothed the folds in the paper and focused on the words written in their native language. As she read, her blood turned to ice. A gasp involuntarily escaped her. Her mind raced with options and solutions that seemed unattainable.

To the Northern Regent of Phaeton,

We, the Greater Galactic Community, have observed Phaeton for well over fifteen long Phaetonin years. We’ve allowed your people to commit carnage and atrocities against one another for that length of time. During this ceaseless war, you have failed to allow your planet and people to flourish. Through your decisions as the rulers, your people have needlessly died. In our mercy, we have extended five opportunities to fix what we all know to be broken upon your world.

But you have refused our doctrine. This, the fifth and final time, shall be our last warning. Should Phaeton continue the genocide against her own people, then we will be forced to take drastic actions. We will rescue those who wish to be rescued through their wits should they survive.

Choose wisely. We do not wish to thin a planet that still has a right to flourish.

Sincerely,

Senator Youstoh of exoplanet 51 Pegasi b.

“They are suggesting—no, but this is the fifth and final warning, which means-” Heliades breathed out, the paper threatening to slip from her grasp.

“And I’ve already refused them,” Klymene said as if remarking on the weather.

Heliades lunged from her seat. “Your Highness! This is outrageous!” she cried, dropping the decree, spit flying her mouth. The lasers reappeared on her body. “All they’ve asked for is peace after centuries of the kingdoms warring! You and the other rulers have refused again and again to adhere to the concept of peace!”

“Because that is not the will of Phaeton,” Klymene retorted, standing as well. Her chair clattered, and she swept her leg out, kicking it aside. “This conquest will not end until the other kingdoms have surrendered and joined under my family’s dynasty. Then, the Greater Galactic Community will tremble when they see what I have accomplished.”

She snatched Heliades’ throat. Dragging her forward, she squeezed until Heliades’ eyes rolled back into her skull. A wicked sneer carved itself on her face. She thrust Heliades into her seat. Heliades tumbled onto the floor, knocking over the table and discarding the queen’s documents.

“Now, you will return to your laboratory and begin the preparations to map the stars for our eventual attack on the Community.” She hardened her voice. “Do you understand? Do not be foolish and refuse my gratitude. You are aware that I do respect your aptitude, Heliades.”

Heliades wished she had the strength to topple the northern kingdom. But she was one against millions allied with their queen. Her intelligence overrode her disgust for Klymene. And she nodded, pressing her hands to the ground on top of the scattered papers and bowing her chin to her chest in the ultimate show of respect.

“Excellent, my dear astronomer. You are excused,” Klymene stated.

Heliades tucked her hands to her chest as she rose. She clasped them in fists by her neck, thanking Klymene for the glory of having an audience with her. She scurried passed the guards, their weapons still trained on her lithe body. Even when she stepped into the teleporter and the doors closed behind her, she didn’t feel safe until she was back in her lab. In that haven, she could ignore the screams of the dying pervading all around her.

She stumbled out of the teleport, gripping the doors and resisting the urge to vomit. Every thought at once infiltrated her brain, crisscrossing and twisting into a collection of disordered thinking. She grabbed her head and staggered over to her telescope, mewling.

Gripping the nozzles, she raised the telescope to eye level. She choked down a few breaths and steadied herself. Falling into a panic was not the appropriate reaction. She knew that, but when she felt a spell of weariness take her, her mind’s eye pictured her family in their home of brick and steel. 

Communicating with them was the key. Advising her life partner on the urgency of the situation needed to be her first task. She’d pen a curt message over the monitor requesting for him to bring their children to her laboratory immediately, begging him to hurry.

But when she reached for the keyboard connected to the nearest monitor, she hesitated. She still held on to a nozzle. She felt drawn to her telescope as if the need to examine the stars called her once again, even though she knew exactly what awaited her.

Heliades gulped. She decided to make it quick. She pushed her face against the hole and fidgeted with the nozzles. Turning the telescope to the left, she saw only stars and the occasional planet farther in the distance. A bead of cold sweat rolled down her face, and the corner of the mouth twitched upwards.

When she turned the telescope to the right, she cried out.

Heliades tumbled to the floor. She threw her arms over her head instinctively. Realizing she still drew breath, she scurried on her hands and feet to the farthest wall, her mouth hanging open in a silent scream.

A new starcruiser appeared in the darkness. It was dyed in the color of a human’s freshly spilled blood. The size of an earthling cruise ship, it was sharp, angular, thick, a monster of a spaceship with only one set purpose. Its exit doors had been opened, and countless pale objects soared towards Phaeton like an iridescent meteor shower.

The Greater Galactic Community’s warship had arrived. The planetary thinning would commence.

The ground quaked again and again as the drones smashed onto Phaeton. Everything rattled around her. Her monitors fizzled with static, and her telescope crashed to the ground, breaking through her glass ceiling. Flicking her head up, she stared in awe as the drones, enormous creatures made out of the most durable of metals and endowed with weaponry Earth could never conceive of creating descended on Phaeton. They tore through trees and hunks of molten rock in their wake that scoured through the air. Bits of hard flesh fell into her lab.

Her five hearts hammered in her chest. She whirled around on her three legs, her mind running laps with ideas and warnings. She hurried to the door, gripping the square knob with all the strength in her massive hand, only to pause. A chill ran down her skeletal spines, her sharp teeth sinking into her nonexistent lower lip, the truth whispering to her from her subconscious.

It’s over. You know this. There is no opposing the Greater Galactic Community when they have decided to thin a planet of its species.

The astronomer threw herself into her safe room and locked the door.

At first, she heard a siren. A wailing screech of an alarm filled her skull. She clamped her mouth shut and let her eyes adjust to the darkness, crawling over to the padded wall.

And then, the screams erupted. Countless howls roared from outside. Electrical whirring and metallic scraping silenced them. Glass shattered within her lab, beakers, and tables as well. She heard crunching and groaning, sighs and cracks as if she was being torn apart by some invisible force.

But she was not a fool. The noise was the planet’s death throes. The buzzing of saws and the revving of engines informed her that the Greater Galactic Community’s execution machines had arrived. Service drones would bloody their hands long before the senators would even consider stepping foot on the planet. 

She thought of her children and life partner and moaned. She thought of her paternal figures and ordered her tears to dry. Even if they perished, all species must abide by the will of the Greater Galactic Community after being given the proper, exhaustive warnings to change their planet’s ways.

The door pounded. She jumped in her skin, her eyes wide. A voice called out her name, only to be silenced by a blast that could have made her eardrums burst. Seconds passed, then minutes, then hours as she listened to the cacophony of planetary thinning orchestrated by the Community.

Heliades curled into a ball. She pressed her hands over her small ears, and she sang a lullaby passed down to her by one of her fathers. Right now, she would have been murmuring it to her children in their beds, had their queen made the proper choice.

And then, all of a sudden, there was silence. It stretched. Like a mist, it covered the planet. Occasionally, she heard fire crackling or the gushing of liquid. But a tranquil silence finally befell Phaeton, smothering the previous noises of war.

The door threw itself open. Light flooded inside. Heliades bowed her head and clasped her hands in front of her. Airy footsteps padded on the soft floor, and she felt a hand placed upon her head. She opened one of her eyes and gasped.

“Come,” said Senator Youstoh, wearing his long, thick robes decorated in regalia for the Greater Galactic Community, “you are among the lucky few who will repopulate another world, another Phaeton far, far away from this molten husk of a planet.”

Heliades nodded and accepted his two-pronged hand. She stumbled forward, her body unstained by the carnage outside. Youstoh ordered her to close her eyes, saying it would be better for the preserved species to keep themselves untainted by the planet's devastation. She obeyed, allowing him to guide her through her decimated observatory.

Her slippers squelched in something thick, warm, and wet. It coiled around her foot like a rope. She struggled for a moment, her eyes glued shut even as an uncomfortable heat ran up to her legs.

Youstoh tugged her free. When Heliades took another step, small fingers brushed by her ankle. Although her eyes burned, she commanded herself to keep her composure. She was still relatively young. She could always have another child.

When she was allowed to see, Heliades gazed at the few hundred survivors sequestered in a sterile, white room aboard the Greater Galactic Community’s warship. They shuddered, staring forward with wide, unblinking eyes. Some massaged their mandibles and bruises, but none wept.

Among strangers, as the warship ascended into the stars, Heliades spared her planet one final look out a window just as the drones detonated all at once.

It is said that after the explosion, Phaeton became the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. If you ask me, that planet finally became something beautiful.

So, humans, let me ask you a question. Did you learn anything?

Chapter Text

“You know, I think I’ve got a story to tell,” Chops hums, staring into the embers of the campfire with his hand propped onto his chin in thought. “It’s kinda inspired by this old nursery rhyme my mom used to sing to me.”

There was once a woman who was always sleepy. Not tired, not unable to sleep, just sleepy. Everything she did, she did with heaviness, like her arms and legs were weighed down by anchors in the ocean.

Even worse, she seemed to lose track of time, all the time. She’d be making coffee in the kitchen one moment, eh, and the next she was suddenly laying in bed hours later, with no memory of getting there. The things she did when she blanked out were always cleaned up, or put away, or taken care of when she woke back up, so she knew she had to have still been doing them.

At first, she thought it might be something really serious, like, uh...what’s the name of it when you can’t keep track of time? It’s a brain thing, right?

“Dys-chrono-metrics?” JT offers, only half-sure of his answer.

Let’s go with that. Anyway, she thought it was something like that, but there were problems with her guess. First, whatever she found online about her symptoms was always mixed with a bunch of other things, and second, she would have to get a doctor to confirm it was that thing, but she was a major recluse who almost never left her house. Think, like, Sasha Nein when he’s experimenting on a new kid who just showed up at camp. That level of recluse.

“What, she never left her house? How’d she get food and stuff?” Benny asks with a scoff.

“Food delivery exists, stupid,” Elka shoots back in a rare moment of defense for the storyteller. The kind gesture is immediately lost as she opens her mouth again. “Let him finish his dumb boring story so we can get to a better one.”

…Thanks, Elka. Okay, so, the recluse part, eh. The woman barely ever left her house and she always blanked out when she went past her front porch, so she didn’t go to a doctor. Eventually, she figured maybe it was sleepwalking. Maybe she was so sleepy that she just fell asleep in the middle of something, and then her body finished up her stuff for her and walked her back to bed. So she said to herself, “if it’s just sleepwalking, I should be able to fix it, and if it’s not that, then I’ll try something else.”

The very first thing she tried was to pinch herself whenever she felt especially worn-down. People did that to stay awake, right? But it seemed to have the opposite effect. Every time she did it, she blacked out. Always woke back up in bed no matter what. So she stopped doing that.

Next, she tried making herself foods and drinks that would keep her aware. Super spicy stuff, or gross stuff, or both. But those only made her feel sick, and they always left a mess in her kitchen. She wasn’t a very clean cook, you see, cause of how heavy her body always felt. She always spilled things or mismeasured them and got food all over herself. It didn’t make her black out more than the pinching did, but it didn’t help enough to be worth it.

Exercise, meditation, even slapping herself - nothing the woman did seemed to fix things. And she was starting to get scared, eh, because she was losing more time with every new attempt. It almost seemed as though whatever she was doing when she blacked out was working against her, trying to make her never wake back up. 

As the months went by with no progress, the woman became desperate. She was barely awake anymore and she knew she didn’t have much time left. So one rainy night, remembering something about your behavior changing when you hit your head, she poured water all over the floor of her kitchen and dashed through it.

She fell.

Chops pauses, letting the silence settle on his listeners’ shoulders as if they’re feeling the same heaviness as the woman from his story. Quentin is the first to break it with the tentative question on everyone’s mind.

“Did it work?”

The woman woke up. She was lying in a hospital bed, and she couldn’t move. No matter what she tried, she was stuck like that. Then the door opened, and some doctors came in. They said it was such a shame, what had happened to her. They said that no matter what they did, they couldn’t get her to wake up. They said they weren’t sure if she would ever wake up.

They said this to each other. They didn’t say this to her.

She tried to talk to them. She tried to get their attention, to let them know she could hear them just fine and that she had a lot of questions. But they acted like they couldn’t hear her. So they kept talking as if she wasn’t really there.

“It’s such a shame,” they said, “that no one knew she was sleepwalking. Maybe they could have woken her up before she fell in her kitchen.”

Once again, the silence lingers. This time, no one is willing to break it. Chops steeples his hands together almost casually.

The woman had gotten her wish, eh. She never lost time again or woke up in a strange place. She never woke up again.

Because she’d never been awake to begin with.

“But...surely she’d know, right?” Elton pipes up, nervous and jumpy. “That’s silly. She would have known she was sleeping that whole time.”

Chops looks him dead in the eye. When he answers, it’s completely sincere. “Do you think you’d be able to tell the difference? What makes you so sure you’re not the one dreaming right now?”

Elton goes quiet with a squeak. The rest of the campers exchange glances, stare at the fire, ignore the chilly air at their backs.

Because who could really say for sure?

Chapter Text

“That story wasn’t even scary,” Bobby announced, throwing an acorn into the flames. “-you guys are all lame. If I wanted to be bored to death I’d listen to one of Sasha’s dumb lectures.”

The campers weren’t sure that they agreed. Especially now, with the darkness beyond the wavering halo of firelight seeming to press in even denser, as if creeping closer in anticipation of the next tale. The burning logs crackled in the quiet that stretched out through the crowded trees, like probing skeletal fingers searching for a new terrible muse to make its mark on the evening.

“Maybe it’s time we head back?” Clem asked hopefully. There were a few mumbles of approval before the crack of a trampled stick returned them all to terrified silence.

Kitty grabbed Franke’s hand as the rustling of trod upon leaves drew closer.

“Oh no- it can’t be-” She breathed in horror.

“It couldn’t be-” Franke agreed, squeezing her friend’s hand tighter.

“Reckon we should douse the fire and high tail it outta here?” J.T. whispered urgently.

“Too late-” Lili groaned as the dreaded creature emerged from the shadows into the flickering light.

“Oh hi guys-” Vernon grinned dusting leaves off his shoulder, oblivious to the groans of his fellow Psi-Cadets. “- I’m glad I found you. Because when I woke up about fifteen and half minutes ago I rubbed my eyes and sat up and saw that Elton was gone, and Chops was too, and also J.T.’s bed was empty. And then I peeked in the girls cabin and saw that Milka was not in her bunk, or even Elka, and that also Franke and Kitty-”

“We know Vernon-” Lili rolled her eyes. “-we’re all here aren’t we?”

“Yeah, and it looks to me like-”

“Benny, hand me that pinecone so I can shove it in Ver-numbskull’s mouth-”  Bobby’s plan was foiled by Raz’s TK hand flicking the intended gag into the trees.

“-like you guys are just waiting for a yarn to be spun by a master storyteller.” Vernon concluded.

“Now I’m scared,” Ellka confessed as Vernon settled onto the log beside her.

Vernon smiled, they all looked so worried and he hadn’t even started the story yet! He was good.

Have you guys ever heard the chilling tale of the Hermit’s Visitor?

Back before the government bought the camp, the lake used to be a town called Shaky Claim. It was a town of prospectors who all went a little insane because of the Psitanium they were living around. Did you know there was a time when there were more people in the asylum than living in the town? I bet it was hard to get a decent baseball team together. Eventually, people were just tired of going crazy and eating bad asylum food and left. The Psitanium poisoning was still really bad though, so instead of letting the old town sit there getting weirder and creepier they just flooded it. Yep. Not a dry sock in the whole valley that day. So all the townspeople were packed up and going somewhere that hopefully had a lesser chance of making them insane but there was one guy who stayed behind.

He was never really popular with the other prospectors, because instead of hair he had centipedes! No, not really, that would be creepy though, he was just really socially awkward.  The man didn’t even live in the town because after a few years of being excluded from dances and prospector potluck dinners he built a cabin for himself on top of the valley at the edge of the woods. Over the years it has been remodeled a few times and we know it now as the Main Lodge but all those years ago it was just a hermit’s house with no tv or indoor plumbing. Yikes.

Since he was so unpopular when the town was abandoned no one told him, or even stopped by to say goodbye. He probably wouldn’t have answered the door if they did come but it would have been nice if they told him that he’d have to find a new place to find issues of True Psychic Tales because the comic book store was now out of business and also fifty feet underwater and run by some really pinchy crabs.

The Hermit was also not really observant so when the town was flooded he didn’t even notice, probably because he was in the woods hunting for the most dangerous prey of all… man. Just kidding, he was probably just trying to catch some squirrels or cougars for stew. Wherever he was when it happened doesn’t matter really because he didn’t notice anything was different. So months later when autumn rolled over the forest and the nights were starting to get darker and colder and he heard a slow  “KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-” on his door he wasn’t even terrified of it being ghosts, or Dracula, or the Sassclops. He was scared because people gave him anxiety because he was socially awkward like I mentioned earlier, so instead of calling out asking who was there he snuffed out his lantern and hid under his bed so no one would try to strike up a conversation.

“It’s probably a tax collector-” he whispered to himself, and brr did that make his teeth chatter. Hermits are notorious for tax evasion, you know. He thought if he stayed quiet and didn’t move that the tax collector would just move on, because taxmen are drawn to movement, you see? Like a T-Rex but with more calculators.

So he hid under his bed and hoped that the person knocking would leave him alone without sliding any confusing paperwork under his door. A few tense moments passed. No further knocking came. The Hermit breathed a sigh of relief. He’d successfully gone another day without making small talk.

But, you guessed it, the next night at the same time when the clouds had covered the moon and the Hermit’s cabin was in complete shadow the sound came again.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK

This time though the knocking was louder, so loud it rattled the door hinges. The Hermit blew out his lantern and was trying to sneak through the dark to get back under his bed but when the knocking started again only this time, this time it was on the window above his bed. The Hermit froze in place in a mid-tippy-toed sneak, fretting if he went near his bed the visitor would see him and probably ask for a cup of sugar or say something about the weather to chit chat. The thought sent shivers down his spine. So he hid in the broom closet. Before he closed the closet door he looked toward the window and saw the shadowy figure of the alleged tax collector.

He wondered, as he tried to keep his mops and brooms and feather dusters from falling over and making too much noise, what kind of tax collector made house calls in the middle of the night in a hooded cloak. Hermits are not very good with fashion, they like to wear socks with sandals and rub dirt on their overalls before putting them on. So he really wasn’t one to talk but he still thought it was weird and that’s saying something.

Fashion aside, he also wondered if the tax collector would give up as quickly as he did the night before because this closet was not as comfortable as under his bed. He listened as the knocking continued around the outside of the house like it was checking to see if any of the walls were hollow. The Hermit, while not being very good at paying his taxes, knowing anything about good fashion, or being good with people, was pretty decent at building sturdy walls so he wasn’t afraid of anyone finding any flaws in his construction. Still, it seemed like the visitor wasn’t going to give up trying to get an answer for a while. The Hermit hugged a mop as he dreaded the threat of pleasantries if he caved in and answered the knocking. That’s when things got really scary.

One more time the KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK came looking for him only this time it was on the door of the broom closet. He hadn’t heard the front door open, or any of the windows get broken, and he was terrified of Santa Claus and always kept the chimney damper closed so the visitor couldn’t have gotten in that way. But somehow, despite all that, they had gotten inside his house and were hammering on the door so hard it bounced off the tip of his nose with each pounding.

“I know you’re in there-” said the stranger and the voice was deep. You know how deep Sasha’s voice is when he’s mad, but like deeper than that, like if Sasha was at the bottom of a well and also his voice was filled with spiders. It was a scary deep voice is what I’m saying. “-you cannot hide from me.”

“Sugar’s in the cabinet help yourself!” The Hermit squeaked, sweat dripping down his face and soaking his beard in the effort of conversation.

“I have not come for sugar. I have come to ask you three questions-”

“I ain’t been payin’ attention to the weather!” The Hermit was trying to think of what other topics he could possibly shut down before they started. “-And I ain’t lookin’ ta’ buy inta no pyramid scheme- and I gots lots of business expenses that I use fer write-offs! I gots receipts!”

“Where have the townspeople gone?” The voice asked calmly but also rudely not responding to the Hermit’s attempts at small talk; this is why people have social anxiety.

The Hermit was confused but was also a little hopeful that this pushy person was looking for someone else to bother. He explained that Shaky Claim was at the bottom of the valley, that if he’d kept walking past his house he’d find it no problem. He also peppered in a few mentions of how people down there love to chat and also maybe one or two of them might like to hear about exciting new opportunities to make money quick and easy.

“I have searched those depths and found not a single soul to meet my quota. It seems as if they won’t be returning, yet I have an appointment with quite a lot of them tomorrow.”

Aha- thought the Hermit, so he is a salesman. When he spoke again he tried to sound really poor. Salesmen left you alone if they thought you were broke.

“Well I don’t know where they scurried off to, probably went for a joyride in their yachts drinking sparkling wine and playing ‘pass the diamond’ lookin’ for something interesting to buy slash invest in.” That should have done it but another shiver went down his spine when the visitor spoke again and it was somehow right in his ear.

“The town has been abandoned and flooded, old man.” The Hermit was mad when he said that because he was only thirty-six but mostly he was scared and didn’t want to strike up a new conversation so he was just terrified instead. “-everyone has left, all that remains in this place are the creatures of the wood and you. And me, although I am merely passing through. My second question is: Are the mines closed? Did they take their equipment? I was under the impression there would be quite a lot of dynamite within them.”

The Hermit was shaking in his boots, only he wasn’t wearing boots, but shaking in his socks is not the same thing. Either way he was still completely terrified but also starting to get annoyed. This was too much talking but also-

“Whaddya mean they left? How ya like that? Didn’t even say ‘Bye’! Where am I supposed to get my comic books now?”

The visitor didn’t seem to know how to respond to that, probably because it was a very big concern and he didn’t have a constructive answer. The visitor cleared his throat awkwardly in the dark broom closet and then it was quiet for a few minutes as someone tried to think of something to say.

“You said you had three questions?” The Hermit offered, starting to feel bad for the visitor now, he had probably taken a bus out here hoping to make some big sales of safety equipment for the miners or dynamite proof pots and pans for the townspeople and all he’d been able to do was get into a middle-aged hermit’s broom closet.

“Oh, yes well-” the visitor’s booming voice seemed to be deflated a little. “-I had thought that this was going to go differently. I don't really have a third question after all. Not one that you would be able to answer it seems. I suppose I will have to make do with the scraps of my plan. I must have gotten the date wrong. I would not suggest a trip into town tomorrow all the same. They really just LEFT you here? All alone without so much as a farewell?”

“Yep, but that’s alright I wouldn’t have let them in either.” The Hermit blinked in the darkness. “Say, how did you get in anyway?”

“I am everywhere at all times.”

“What, even in the outhouse?”

“Well I typically wait outside in that particular instance.”

“I should hope so. What business are you in anyway?”

“Death.”

“Undertaker eh? Or an assassin?”

“Perhaps a mix of the two. But I apologize for taking up what remains of your precious time, farewell. Until we meet again.”

The Hermit frowned, wondering how the knocker was going to get out of here without being let out, but then he remembered that he never let the visitor in at all. He reached out a hand into the pitch blackness of the broom closet and only felt his cleaning supplies. The Hermit waited for a few more minutes, not sure what he should do but ultimately decided that he probably couldn’t live in the broom closet forever and crept out into his house again. The sun had started to come up and he looked around to see that none of his windows were broken or even cracked. He wondered if the undertaker-assassin was also a locksmith and that was how he’d gotten in but that’s when it came again.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK

On the front door.

The Hermit thought that maybe he was good enough now at talking to people that he could continue on chatting with his new acquaintance, as he was sure it was the same knock as before. When he opened the door he saw the figure that had been in his bedroom window, a tall skinny form in a long black cloak but now as the early morning sun was shining through the leaves he saw- A SKULL. Yep. His face was a boney white skull and he’d been knocking on the door with claw-like skeletal fingers.

“I am sorry to bother you again so soon but-” Death said, his deep menacing voice sounding kind of embarrassed as he pinched two long fingers together. “-could I bother you for a little sugar after all? I remembered I am all out at home.” 

Death took two spoonfuls.

And the next day the hermit felt the mountain shake and a rockslide roll down the valley. If the town had still been down there it would have been crushed. Instead, the rocks just sank into the lake and probably annoyed some fish and a few crabs. When he went to go figure out what happened he found that the mines had all collapsed, and wondered if they had left all the dynamite behind like his guest had said.

The hermit shook his head as he walked back to his cabin, grateful that he wasn’t going to have to explain any of this to anyone.

Until Death came back for a full cup of sugar and also brought him a pie. It was nice to have a friend that only came around occasionally when terrible accidents happened nearby or when he finally died, which wasn’t until many years later.

But sometimes, if you’re in the Main Lodge in the middle of the night in late autumn, the knocking comes again … looking for sugar.

Chapter Text

“That night, I couldn’t sleep.”

The beginning words of Milka’s story fell softly on the ears of her fellow campers seated around the fire. Their wide-eyed gazes swiveled toward her, shocked. It was a rare occurrence for the timid girl to speak, much less contribute a whole sentence to a conversation! The other campers felt sure that it was a tale they didn’t want to miss, so their voices hushed in anticipation, all waiting for her next words.

Right away, Milka noticed their eyes locked on her. She blushed and glanced down at her feet, tempted to vanish and retreat back into the solace of solitude, but when she felt the warmth of Elton’s hand still interlaced with hers, she found the courage to continue.

“It was dark and quiet outside, but no matter what I did, I just couldn’t drift off...” She murmured, letting the memory of that moonlight midnight overtake her words.

It was always something when she couldn’t sleep. Either her blankets were too hot, or she couldn’t get comfortable, or her thoughts were just too loud. Whatever it was that time, it had kept her wide awake.

Now, this sort of thing wasn’t exactly uncommon for Milka. On far too many nights at home, the exact same thing would happen—every atom in her body refused to let her rest. No matter how many sheep she counted or glasses of warm milk she drank.

But it’d been happening for a while now, and so, naturally, she’d found a solution. The only thing that had ever been able to cure her insomnia was to take a long walk. It didn’t matter where. Just that she was outside, under the vast expanse of night sky. She would look up at the bright moon, or the clouds hiding it from view, or the stars flickering around its pale glow, and somehow, that never failed to relax her.

Where she lived, a midnight stroll would have normally been horribly unsafe. But when you can turn invisible at a moment’s notice… Let’s just say people are a lot less likely to attack a person if they can’t even see who to attack.

Milka hoped the same principle applied to Whispering Rock. There had been all kinds of rumors about psychic bears wandering around camp, after all…

The small insomniac shoved her too-hot blankets off to the side and dangled her legs over the edge of her bunk.

Well, as long as they didn’t have infrared vision, she would probably be fine.

Milka placed her hand on the doorframe and peered out into the deep expanse of the woods that faded from view just beyond where the trees began. The night was moonless and dark—darker than usual, that was for sure. Only dim lantern light from the cabins and soft starlight sparkled on the summer grass and evergreen branches, which bristled in a faint breeze. Across the little clearing, crickets sounded their quiet calls, but other than that, everything was absolutely silent. Pretty much exactly how she liked it, if a bit hot.

There wasn’t a soul in sight, thank goodness, but nor would there be—what with her invisibility. Milka hardly needed to focus at all before a familiar prickle of energy shimmered over her skin, and she disappeared.

The short, green blades at her feet stiffly crinkled as she stepped through the clearing, leaving only the impressions from her see-through shoes. Nearby shadows seemed so thick that they could almost press themselves through the gaps between tree trunks, which likely would have terrified most, but the invisible girl didn’t mind. When you spend most of your time alone and take frequent late-night walks, darkness seems less like a straightjacket and more like a blanket.

She ran a hand along one tree’s rough bark, then another, and another, until something in the distance caught her eye. It was a piercing, flickering light—ever-so-tiny, but surprisingly luminous, like a miniature star.

That is, if it actually glowed at all. The light flicked on and off and on again seemingly at random, from bright to dark in the blink of an eye. Quite often, it made peculiar zapping sounds, like poor some gnat had flown into a bug zapper. Maybe that’s what it was, even. A broken bug zapper, somehow out in the middle of the woods.

Of course, this odd thing had piqued the invisible insomniac’s curiosity, and Milka knew she had to find out what it was. Even if just for herself.

As she crept toward the strange source of illumination, the shadows coalesced into a sitting silhouette, its back turned to the girl. Its form stood out in stark contrast to the bright light, thanks to something long and jet-black that trailed down from its shoulders and to the ground. Milka was too far away to see the figure any better than the outline of the almost wing-like protrusions folded on its back, though the whole of it was still shrouded in its own silhouette. Could it be some kind of… giant bug, drawn to the flickering light?

Her curiosity managed to surmount fear, aided by the courage that comes from being unseen.

She stepped closer.

Its head perked up the second she moved. Some kind of… antennae jutted up from the top of its skull (or was it an exoskeleton?). Sharp and intimidating, one look at them made Milka immediately take back her step.

Her heel came down on a twig, snapping it in two with a sharp crack!

The figure’s head whipped around, and Milka had only caught sight of a single, red gleam of what very well could have been this odd insectoid creature’s eyes before she turned tail and sprinted back to the cabins.

One could say for sure that no walk would help her sleep well on that night.

Milka, quiet and solitary as she was, kept the events of the previous night’s wanderings to herself.

She tried to distract herself with whatever classes and exercises the counselors held, and when she put her mind to it (in more than one sense of the phrase), she did far better than she thought she would. Being a few weeks into camp already, the counselors all seemed tired (and the Coach even had dark circles under his eyes already!), but they still made efforts to congratulate Milka on her noticeable improvement.

At most she blushed, turned invisible and whispered “thank you” while already half out the door, but it felt good to be noticed. That really went to show what a little brainpower can do! After all, that was the whole point of the camp, wasn’t it?

Between lessons, however, she often found herself alone again. There, with nothing but her thoughts, what used to be her solace turned into a hotbed of fear creeping out from between the ever-present shadows of trees.

It’s safe to say she tried to spend more time with Elton that day. Though Milka let him do most of the talking, she didn’t need much more than his voice to ward off the sinister, crawling machinations of her mind.

But when the sun fell below the horizon and the two parted ways for the night, her thoughts began to race. As much as she’d tried to stave them off, the poor girl knew she couldn’t stop them this time. At the very least, she tried to get comfortable underneath her blanket, tossing and turning from side to side every few minutes.

Given space, the tightly coiled mass of her fearful thoughts finally unraveled into something she could make sense of.

A question.

It was one she’d considered before then, but had pushed it down, down, down into the depths of her mind, like anything else she could remember from the previous night. Now, it bubbled up to the surface.

What was that thing?

Wings… antennae… glowing eyes… it seemed like some kind of oversized bug, drawn to the odd, flickering light from the previous night. And if that were the case… then there was only one creature it could be.

Mothman.

A cold clearness settled over her mind as soon as Milka had made the connection between all the unruly details in her brain.

It could only be Mothman. That’s who all the details pointed to. And if they had a literal lake monster lurking about—not to mention the bears!—who’s to say Mothman couldn’t have popped over for a visit to quite possibly the weirdest summer camp in the USA? He’d fit right in if he weren’t so frightening, Milka supposed.

But then she realized; now that she knew what he was (at least, probably), he didn’t seem so scary anymore. In fact, she was quite curious what he was up to.

Staring at the wire holding up the mattress above her, the young psychic made her decision.

It’s not like she was going to get much sleep that night anyway.

Quiet as a mouse and as unseen as the still air, Milka crept through the same thick trunks as the night before. Again, she saw the light flickering in the distance, and when she drew near, the same fearful silhouette hunched over it, as if to hoard all the brightness for itself.

She kept her distance this time, and just watched. Not once did it stir from its sitting place or fly off into the sliver of a waxing moon, but continued to bask in the glow of whatever luminous object it clung to. Oddly enough, from where she stood, it all smelled a bit like smoke and metal. Milka wondered if that was the scent of toasted bug—where anything other than the great Mothman himself had gotten fried on what she presumed to be an electrified bug zapper.

Either way, the moon had snuck past its zenith in the sky, once more dipping down toward the horizon. Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near dawn, no. But Milka’s eyelids drooped, and her brain felt a tad fuzzy from exhaustion, so she, with a hint of pleasant feelings, thought it best to return to the safety of the cabin, and the relative coziness of her bed, and the assurance of a deep, restful sleep until morning called.

Milka repeated her late-night excursions for days and days after that. And Mothman never failed to be there, staring deep into the light he guarded in front of his scaly, lepidopteran wings. Once or twice, the invisible girl considered moving closer, trying to find out what he was doing, why he was there, how he’d gotten into the camp unnoticed. But her shyness tugged her back and kept her feet planted firmly on the ground, no less than 30 feet away.

And so, she remained content to observe.

“It was the same every night. I turned away and walked back to the cabin. I never saw him face-to-face… but I’m pretty sure it was Mothman. I could never forget the way his wings rustled, or the way he kept staring at that light.”

Milka glanced off toward the trees, watching the firelight flicker over every trunk and dissipate into darkness. Her story told, she spoke no more; only an eerie silence settled over the crowd. Milka’s story certainly failed to claim the spot for the best told, but what stole the voices from the other campers’ throats was the prospect of its veracity.

Milka’s few words were known for their candor.

When murmurs rippled around the fire, hinting at the chance of a lurking Mothman in the forests’ depths, heralding an attack in the dead of night, the counselors did their best to reassure everyone. Soothing words and promises of safety did the trick for most, and before long, everyone had returned to their normal, chatty selves. Campers prattled stories off one after another, and all found delight—or horror!—in their words.

But Milka felt a light squeeze on her hand and heard a voice whisper in her mind:

“Can I talk to you after all this is done with?”

Elton, of course, still clung to fear, as he was prone to do. Milka simply responded with a nod. Even if he wouldn’t like the truth, she would rather be honest with her boyfriend than keep him in the dark.

So, hand in hand, they waited for the festivities to draw to an end.

Elton held Milka’s hand gently, but with a subtle sort of urgency that his girlfriend knew meant he couldn’t get that fear off his mind.

She led him off to the side of the still-burning campfire, where only a couple of the counselors and a few other campers lingered after their activity for the night.

“Elton...” she whispered, “Um… I guess you want to hear the truth, right?”

When he nodded, Milka glanced around to make sure no one else was in earshot. Seeing what her “story” had done to the crowd, she certainly didn’t want the truth of the matter to get out to them once more. But when she found that most everyone had already wandered off, she continued.

“All of what I said… It’s true.”

Elton gasped, probably a bit louder than Milka would have liked.

She just glanced off to the side again and saw Agent Nein raise an eyebrow from across the campfire, perhaps intrigued. Milka’s face turned bright pink, and every fiber in her body wanted to disappear. But she stayed in sight, if just for Elton. Then, she nodded.

“Just like I said… Mothman. He sits in front of a flickering light—I think it’s a bug zapper—and I can see his wings and antenna-things, but now that I think about it more… maybe only one of them. And it was a bit spiky. But the first night, remember, I saw his big, red eyes.”

“I mean, as much as I don’t want to believe you...” Elton replied, reaching to hold her hand again. “I don’t doubt it. That he would show up at Whispering Rock… It’s not too far-fetched. Not after what all the fish tell me.”

“But there’s something else, too. Last night,” she continued, a tad apprehensively, “I saw him sitting there, the same as usual… but then, the light cut out, for longer, this time. When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw him stand up. He must have been over ten feet tall! And he just… walked away. Disappeared into the shadows.”

Her voice faded into shock and awe at the end, half at recalling the cryptid’s sheer height, and the other half at his skill in fading into the background, especially since he had done it without invisibility.

Silence.

Oddly enough, Elton wasn’t responding to her. A tense pause hung in the air, and when Milka finally looked up from the ground and into his eyes, she saw sheer terror.

She barely heard his scream. Something behind her. Some one behind her.

“MOTHMAN!”

“Moth...man?” a gruff voice sounded, echoing from behind some kind of red-glinting welding mask.

One gloved hand pulled off the mask, the other pulled back the hood of a long, billowing, wing-like cloak. There, in closer to seven-and-a-half-foot-tall glory, stood Coach Oleander, on a pair of tall, metal stilts.

“Morry, darling, let me get this straight—you put together this pair of… stilts? In the middle of the night?” Agent Vodello questioned, cracking a smile.

“So you could be just as tall—” Agent Nein started, before Oleander interrupted.

“Taller!”

“Fine, taller—than Agent Vodello and me?”

For once, the two of them had to look up at Morry to meet his eyes. Milla seemed inspired by his creativity and dedication, but Sasha was closer to wondering how long their structural integrity would hold up.

The two campers left—Elton and... Milka, were they?—stood, dumbfounded, by the smouldering remains of the campfire. It was amusing. From what little paid attention to their stories, one of them must have witnessed Oleander making them in the middle of the night, but hadn’t seen his face, and so mistook him for the famous cryptid, Mothman. (It was such a shame that they hadn’t found the real Mothman, but he wasn’t about to let that on.)

“Welding it together, yeah!” Oleander continued, “I worked on it at night, somewhere pretty deep in the woods, so none of you guys would find out. Even wore a really long, dark cloak! I used good ‘ol pyrokinesis for it, so the light was a tad bright, but I don’t think anybody saw. Wanted it to be a surprise, y’know.”

“Your ‘surprise’ fooled two campers into thinking we had not only a lake monster, but also an urban legend somewhere on camp grounds.”

Milla rested a hand on his shoulder.

“Darling, I think it’s just lovely that Morry would work so hard to reach his dream! You know he’s always wanted to be tall…”

Agent Nein sighed while the two campers’ attention bounced from adult to adult. Elton clutched Milka’s hand, still quivering from the shock and processing what exactly he’d just seen, but Milka just looked on and tried to slow her thumping heart.

Certainly, this all had been quite a surprise. That the winged figure in the woods hadn’t been the elusive Mothman, but the Coach? It was honestly the last thing she was expecting. But then again, she was only seven; Milka felt she should’ve been allowed to have an overactive imagination every once in a while.

While Agents Nein and Oleander bickered over the stupidity of the Coach’s disjointed, metal stilts, Agent Vodello walked over to the two kids, crouched down beside them, and placed a gentle, slender hand on Elton’s shoulder.

“Children, I’m sorry if Morry—er, Coach Oleander—frightened you. He tends to be quite passionate about these sorts of things, you know,” she smiled, undoubtedly reminiscing fondly on several other shenanigans that only one Morceau Oleander could possibly conceive.

Even though the counselor’s words were soft and mellow, Milka still blushed in shame, tempted to fade out of sight and run for the hills. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t gone out in the middle of the night, and look at all the trouble it had caused! Elton had nearly jumped out of his skin, and so had she!

But as if he could read her mind (could he?), Elton's iron grip loosened, and instead of a fearful squeeze, he started absentmindedly stroking a thumb over her knuckles. Maybe he was just fidgety and nervous, but it felt like a gesture of safety to Milka, more calming and reassuring than even Agent Vodello could pull off. Either way, she was grateful for it.

The sailor’s son spoke up:

“Oh, uh… I don’t think it’s much of a problem, but thank you. Weird things happen all the time around here, don’t they? This probably isn’t much different, then, hahah.”

Oleander must have heard what Elton said, because the formerly-short man came sauntering over on his too-long, metal appendages.

“Weird? Nah! Just practical! Turns out it’s a lot easier to get around when you can see what’s under your feet.”

Agent Nein rolled his eyes.

“That ‘practicality’ you speak of is bound to drop quite rapidly when those blights against good engineering collapse. Within a half hour, if I were to bet.”

“What?” the Coach asked, a bit indignant. “Hogwash, Nein! You know as well as I do that these’ll hold up fo-”

Suddenly, the stilts bent, rent, and fell forward in a cacophony of screeching metal and human grunts. Unable to sufficiently support the weight and movement of their pilot, they collapsed, just as Sasha predicted, but much sooner than he had expected. Oh, it felt good to be right, though.

Laughter broke out among those few surrounding the firepit. Not mean-spirited, but appreciating the moment for what humor it was. When he righted himself, Oleander, too, united with them to chuckle at his own folly; I mean, he’d fallen flat on his face, of course it was kinda funny.

So, while laughter echoed through the trees and up into the star-speckled night sky, the Accidental Mothman of Whispering Rock vanished into the annals of camp history. All told, not too much unlike the invisible girl incidentally behind the tale!

Chapter Text

The words to the story hung like clutches of seaweed on Elton’s mind.

Nervous, he sucked in a deep breath and glanced off to the side, hoping to find something, anything to focus on, instead of the weight on his psyche.

The reception area was the same as usual. With its fancy stage and the circle of log benches around the ignited fire pit, it made a great place for gatherings. Which is why the counselors had gathered everybody there that night—to tell stories and “bond.”  Sure, because fear is such a great way to make friends out of people who only see him as a tool to do their homework for them.

He’d known about it for a few days before, thank goodness, so he’d had a little time to prepare. But even with how much he’d practiced, Elton still didn’t feel ready.

But now it was his turn.

And everyone was waiting.

Of course, the fish had given him a story to tell… but it was the kind of story that would wind up scaring him while he was telling it. Heck, they even made him practice until he got it right! But as he went over all the points, all the words he’d rehearsed time and time again, his attention drifted back to how they pressed down on his mind. Elton shivered. He felt the heat from the campfire drift up in his face, but even those flames couldn’t stop the icy chill that dripped down his spine.

The fish were right. This fearsome tale would definitely be good enough to scare the others, just as much as it scared him! At least, Elton thought so. But maybe that was the aquaphobia talking.

“Hey, fish boy, are you gonna start, or what?!” a certain orange-haired bully jeered, his voice interrupting Elton’s thoughts. However, Chloe placed a hand on Bobby’s arm, eliciting a mumbled apology soon after.

“Of course I am!” Elton said, tugging at the hem of his sleeve, “I just… needed a second to collect myself, that’s all... It’s a bit hard to tell a story like this when you’re someone like me—afraid of water. But the fish made me promise I wouldn’t mess it up! So, um- I’m starting now! It’s gonna be scary, I promise!”

The other campers’ continued stares bored into him like drills into Arctic ice. If he didn’t start soon, he was sure he’d crack under the pressure. So he steeled his nerves, took a deep breath, and plunged down into the deep end.

“Have you… um... have you ever heard the story of the true lake monster of Lake Oblongata?” he began, but a few campers shot Elton odd glances that threw his train of thought off track. “No, no, not anything like the one that kidnapped us and stole all our brains last summer. This one came a long time before that one...”

And as Elton fell into the familiar words, practiced about a million times over at the fishes’ behest, the story flowed out from him like the ice-cold waters of a strong, clear stream.

It began with a creature.

One from ancient times, wild and free, who lived in oceans cold and wide and deep. Though it lacked gills, its powerful lungs could hold enough air to last for hours on end. Its four fins cut through the water like blades, and its long, scaly neck snaked ahead of its body while it swam through the waves. With a mouth full of rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth that could tear through prey before it even had a chance to think, this terrifying sea creature was the embodiment of death to all around it. The way its gleaming eyes would track every movement—there could be no escaping it once it set its sights on a target.

And find a target, it did. The creature slipped through the water, fast as a bullet, inhaling the tantalizing scent of its next catch. With a burst of speed, the beast chased the small, silvery fish. It darted around in the deep, around shelves of rock, over beds of sand, through clumps of kelp, but it just couldn’t seem to shake off the fierce predator hot on its trail.

Fear wafted off the poor thing. Only the urge to flee surged through its mind, devoid of any will to fight. After all, how could such a puny thing dare to combat a creature ten times its size?

In a last act of desperation, the morsel shot around a corner and down into a rocky hole, one which seemed far too small for the sea monster to follow. Even with the creature’s long neck and peering eyes, the fish was sure it could escape!

But it was wrong.

The creature felt its prey’s false safety, a brief reprieve from fear’s icy clutches, and followed it. A gleaming amber eye rose up in front of the opening to the hole, gazing at the grey stone, searching for the flashing silver it knew rested inside.

The instant the fish’s scales caught light, a psychic vise-grip seized around its fins! It wriggled and thrashed and squirmed, but no matter what it did, it could not slip free from the odd, invisible pressure holding it in place. The grip pulled it forward, bit by bit, inches closer to its doom.

The fish’s captor relished in the creeping dread descending on its little snack. Gaping jaws drew open, and myriad rows of teeth waited to clamp down on flesh. All of a sudden, the creature felt an odd, yet familiar, sensation—a pang of energy pulling it away, a deep, driving need to go, to seek out… something.

It still didn’t quite know what, but there was something out there beckoning it. It had been for some time, actually. However, the chase with that little morsel must have led it out farther than it had figured… right into the place just close enough to hear that nigh-irresistible call.

But why leave food and safety for that unknown pull? Why stray from where it sat atop the food chain, atop its throne as the ruler of the seas?

It didn’t know.

But it wanted to go.

No, no, it couldn’t! That was a stupid idea. It had everything it needed right where it was! Shelter, safety, food… wait... food! The little fish! Glee lit up on its face, toothy grin and all. See, it had a snack waiting and everything.

Only, when the creature returned from its thoughts, the tiny tidbit had finally managed to wriggle out of its grasp and dash off into the ocean. Safe for another day… unfortunately.

While the creature lamented the loss of its snack, the obnoxious tugging at the corner of its mind did not relent. Even as it swam around in circles, pacing and thinking, it would list off to one side, the far-off pull tugging on its mind like a thread.

It could have just swam off. It could have just ignored the pull again. It could have just gone on with its life.

No.

After all the hassle this force put the creature through, this monster of the deep was going to make sure that it would find the root and put a stop to whatever it was, just so the ocean-beast could get back to the exciting, regal life it had come to adore.

So, without a second thought, the sea monster set off toward the source of the pull: what would one day be known as Lake Oblongata.

Days whizzed by while it followed the tugging force on its mind, swimming almost non-stop. Sure, it caught a bite to eat here, a few hours of sleep there, but its priorities lay solely on its goal. Through miles and miles of ocean, estuary, and river it trekked, hard as the journey may have been.

But it couldn’t give in.

Though its fins dragged over dirt and rocks, it scraped through all shallows, and though its stomach growled when it found no food, it pressed forward on even the emptiest of stomachs.

In all this, the seeds of its journey sprouted vines, and, eventually, bore fruit.

By the time the sea monster arrived at the lake, branches from the trees it had crashed through had scraped its body, the ground beneath had nearly worn its scaly skin raw, and it felt just about as dry as the Sahara. Well, if the Sahara even had a name back then.

That darned pull was yanking it forward like never before, as if whatever it was looking for was no further away than arm’s… well… fin’s reach. Heaving its massive body around the last few trunks in its way yielded the best sight it had seen in a long time. Days. Weeks, maybe.

Water.

A body of water!

Not just puddles, or rain showers, but a real, rippling, refreshing pool!

Well, it wasn’t anything too impressive, in reality. Just a lake. And a pretty small one, at that. Not anything as big as what Lake Oblongata would look like nowadays—not quite yet.

But to the sea monster, it might as well have been a brand new ocean! Water-starved and bone-tired, it dragged itself into that pool faster than a lungfish could shake a fin at. The second those lakewater waves washed over its dry scales, relief flooded the creature’s mind. Finally… peace.

 It was only then that it noticed—the pull was gone.

That night, the sea—now lake—monster slept like a rock.

In fact, it slept so much like a rock that, well… it didn’t wake up. It wasn’t dead, just asleep, but that long journey had exhausted it so much more than it could have ever imagined.

It slept for days, weeks, months… eventually, eons.

And in that passing time, the earth forgot about the lake monster.

Sediment crawled over its slumbering form, layers upon layers of it all, until the creature was completely buried at the bottom of the lake. But as legendary creatures usually were, it wasn’t going to die so easily. Not yet. So, it slept on.

Even when a boom town rushed in, briefly flourished, and plummeted into ruin, it slept on.

Even when tons of water came crashing down into the crater where it rested, it slept on.

Only after a group of very odd, very strange people moved in, started building, and brought flocks of odd, strange children with them did the lake monster begin to stir. So very odd and strange they were… but in a way it knew very well. Those people… whatever they did… they were just like it.

Then, just as the asylum crumbled and brains were returned to their rightful owners, the lake monster finally, finally came to its senses once more.

The first thing it felt was not the calm lapping of water on its back, like when it had fallen asleep, no.

It was a suffocating blackness that pressed down on it from all sides. Dirt lay above it, below it, around it, no matter where it tried to move, it only found more scratching grains of sediment. Fear rushed in, as none had ever before.

When you’ve been on top of the world, only the truest of frights can scare you. Death is one of those.

No! No, things couldn’t just end here! It had come all that way; it had been so close! It could’ve had the last thing it ever needed, if only it hadn’t gotten into whatever mess this was!

The walls of its earthen prison seemed to crush inwards as it thrashed and writhed. But at this point, its demise seemed almost certain. After all, it lay trapped deep in the bowels of the planet, as if it were sealed away in a coffin, with no food, no water, and barely any air, which was running out by the second.  After that spurt of effort, it couldn’t help but pant, lungs heaving, breathing hard in what little dust-laden air lingered below the surface.

In the molasses-thick darkness, the creature lamented its predicament. Oh, if only it had never followed that stupid instinct! Then it never would’ve had to make that stupid journey over stupid land, where its fins were almost useless and its scales dried out far too fast! It was lucky it even had strong enough lungs to survive the trip in such a less-than-optimal environment.

But just look where those lungs had gotten it... Stuck under goodness-knows-how-much rock, struggling to break out in the smallest of spurts.

That was all it could manage, really. In the fullest sense of the phrase, things were do or die… with the latter being far more likely.

While dread threatened to overcome adrenaline, it flailed its fins one last time.

Cr-rr-rack!

The creature’s eyes flew open. Well, that didn’t do much good in the pitch dark… but it’s the thought that counts. And it thought it had just heard something! Unless it was just some kind of hallucination, all its struggling had done something!

More than anything, it hoped that was the case.

Through what little time it had left, the lake monster listened to the sounds of the widening crack above it, occasionally wiggling around to try and expedite the process. One hour, (hour? day? month? year? Who knew anymore…?) sleep had almost crept up on the hulking beast’s tired mind when suddenly, there came the plip! of a water drop from the ceiling.

Wouldn’t you know it, that little droplet fell right down on the lake monster’s deep-blue, scaly nose.

“Water?” it thought.

Was it really so close to the surface that rain could fall through the cracks? Even just a little?

Then, a few more drops plip-plopped down on its face and neck. Maybe it was rain. But how far could rain reach underground? For that matter, how far buried was it? Worry mingled with what faint hope it carried in its

The drops picked up in speed, but soon flowed into a spurting stream, bursting into a torrent of harsh spray only seconds later. Crumbling, slipping sediment accompanied it as the tiny cavern threatened to cave in.

As soon as the lake monster felt the spate of cold water, it knew: this couldn’t possibly come from a rainstorm. In its tiny prison of earth, a whole lake must have been trying to shove its way through that crack!

Its stomach dropped, heart leaping out of its chest. It was going to drown. For being ruler of the ocean waves, it had no gills! Even it had to surface to breathe!

In that instant, the cavern felt more like a tomb than it ever had before. The creature stared forward, seeing nothing but incumbent death. Pitch blackness squeezed its throat while icy waves crawled up its fins and sides and neck. Struggle as it may, claw as it might, nothing made a difference. It was truly, truly trapped.

Once reality finally set in, fear seized the creature’s massive, once powerful body, and there was nothing it could do but lie in silence while its watery grave drew nearer and nearer.

Elton stared blankly at whatever his eyes could latch onto. He shivered more with every word he spoke, words that called to mind his father’s death and the creeping fear that had followed him ever since. It felt like he wasn’t the one talking anymore—that the story had gained a life of its own while it slipped out from his mouth.

But when that ice-cold fear, fear as if he himself were the one drowning, felt like it would cling to him forever, his words marched past, his nerves began to thaw, and the feeling began to slip away.

Though his voice still held a smidgen of shakiness, Elton drew in a breath of air—fresh air, not water!—and continued.

“Although the hideous, hulking lake monster… um… drowned,” he said, his voice trembling more than usual on the last word, “the fish say its ghost still wanders the lake. It swims around the deepest waters, trying to imitate its former splendor and power, scaring away fish and looking for all the little children who bully lake creatures!”

As he finished, he raised his arms over his head, and his gaze singled out Bobby and Benny. Silently, he thanked Milka for their little stunt together, for at least giving him a spark of courage to stand up and speak his feelings. Just a tad.

And thus, Elton’s tale ended. The rest of the campers seated around the fire stared intently at him. Some held the glazed look of fear (especially the resident bullies), while others sat in stunned awe. And, well, Dogen seemed on the verge of tears.

All of a sudden, Elton felt someone’s hand slip into his. Milka reappeared beside him. Her smile was small, but she looked proud that Elton had actually managed to tell the whole tale. And do a darn good job of it, too!

“I didn’t know you were so good at storytelling, Elton,” she whispered.

He forced a short chuckle and glanced down at the ground.

“It must be my dad. ‘Mariner’s blood’ or something like that… I mean, people always say that sailors are better at telling stories than most other people, don’t they?”

Chloe coughed, her breath fogging up her helmet’s tinted visor.

“I hate to interrupt your moment,” she stated flatly, “but though your rhetoric was good, your Earthling anecdote is not only far-fetched, but simply false.”

The alien-ish girl detached herself from Bobby’s still-clinging hand and moved toward the campfire. It almost looked like some kind of presentation. Well, in a way, it was. Since she seemed to have some kind of incontrovertible fact to disprove just about everything the fish had told Elton.

The blue-haired boy subtly sighed in relief, then muttered, “I hope so…”

 A moment later, Chloe began to speak.

“As soon as I got here, I set up multiple seismic sensors around the camp to search for any extraterrestrial landings, and none of the days had any significant readings that can’t be attributed to the collapse of the asylum across the lake. Believe me—I’ve done the calculations.”

“Oh… um…” Elton stumbled over his words. “Okay. I mean, I’m not really a fan of having two lake monsters either, so it’s pretty much fine by me if it’s just a story… ‘Cause it’d only give me more reason to stay out of the water if it were true.”

At this, the other campers relaxed. Dogen drew back from the edge of tears, and both bullies’ tense postures eased up. Others cracked smiles, glad to be able to put that fear out of their minds.

But if the fish were as afraid as this story made them, then maybe it still had a grain of truth in it, somewhere. Whether it be in ancient sea monsters or—he hated to think—ghosts haunting their waterlogged graves.

“You know… Even if you have all those fancy sensors and data… Maybe you missed something. Maybe there wasn’t enough struggling for them to pick up!” His voice shook a little. “I know I don’t… But if anyone else wanted to go find out for themselves… it wouldn’t be out of the question.”

A murmur ran through the crowd, whispered words of an underwater adventure—a search for truth, or maybe just a swim in the lake—drifting into the night sky.

“Only, if you do get in the water, you should be careful. You never know whose ghost you might find…,” Elton finished, just as a gust of frigid wind whipped through the area and left all the campers with a chill.

Chapter Text

Rolling his shoulders back, Raz looked at his fellow campers. “So, who’s next?” he asked, a hint of a smile on his face.

No one answered. Some turned to glance at each other as if goading the other person to take the bait. Others continued roasting marshmallows, unbothered. Kitty and Franke painted their fingernails and gossiped to each other. Raz sighed, ready to tell another tale if no one offered.

“Um…”

He turned his head in the direction of the subdued voice. He was surprised to find Crystal slowly raising her hand. Compared to her exuberant self, she seemed smaller, her head bowed, her eyes focusing on the dirt.

But realizing the others were looking at her, she snapped out of it. Her grin was bright and her pupils wide. “Pick me! Pick me! I got a story that’ll knock your socks off!” she exclaimed, pumping her fists in the air.

“Oh, really?” Kitty sneered, capping her nail polish. “What, is it going to be about where you got those unfashionable dregs you call a skirt and shoes?”

“Well, even if her clothes suck, maybe her story will be creepy since she’s creepy,” Franke added, giggling with her girlfriend.

“Hey, come on, everyone’s stories so far have been real bangers,” Clem said, placing a hand on Crystal’s shoulder. “I’m sure Crystal really does have a scary story that will make you scream!”

Encouraged by her friend, Crystal nodded. “Yeah! I totally do! You guys are gonna be so sorry after you hear this story!” Raz wasn’t sure what to make of that statement, but before he could question her, Crystal took a deep breath and began.

In a small town in the middle of nowhere, there was a young girl named Betty. Her demeanor could light up a dark room. She always welcomed new students in any grade. She’d let another kid have her seat on the bus when it was overcrowded, even if it meant she had to cling to the handle on the emergency exit door on the bumpy way to school.

But although Betty greeted everyone with a smile and a wave, the other children didn’t respect her. She faced their cruelty every day. They snickered at her when she offered to share snacks. In a game of hide-and-seek during recess, no one bothered searching for her. They left her squatting in a bush until a teacher rushed out to find her an hour later. And in gym class, they always picked her last. When she tried her hardest to get someone out, her teammates pelted her with dodgeballs, and the gym teachers didn’t care. They allowed the students to play by their spur-of-the-moment rule changes and only intervened once her tears fell.

Despite that, Betty smiled. Today was a special day. There was a skip in her step and a gleam in her grin. She went about her day, ignoring the spitballs aimed at her head and the wads of gum others attempted to stick on her chair before she sat down. None of that mattered when it would have typically caused her to swallow a lump in her throat.

Carmen had invited Betty to sit with her at lunch. She was the prettiest, most popular girl in her grade. Everyone adored her, Betty included. They hung onto every word she said, basking in her presence. If she wanted something done, then it happened in a snap of her fingers.

And although Carmen’s invitation happened out of nowhere, Betty accepted it. She had never sat at the popular girl’s table before. It was the center lunch table that was shinier than the other greasy, unkempt tables. Betty held her tray close to her chest, her small carton of chocolate milk swaying with each step as she approached Carmen, who sat at the very top of the exclusive table.

“Hi, Carmen! Thanks for letting me sit with you,” she said, slipping off her backpack into the other empty seat.

The girl seated to Carmen’s right, her best friend Jessie, narrowed her eyes at Betty. She pinched a soggy burger in both hands and lowered it back on the paper plate. “Hey, wait a minute,” she remarked, “I don’t remember okay-ing-”

Carmen shot Jessie a look, her lips tightening into a grin. “Uh, Jessie? I’m pretty sure you knew that she would be sitting with us today. You even stood next to me when I slid the note in her locker,” she replied, her amber eyes slowly lifting to Betty. Nodding when Jessie quickly stuffed the burger in her mouth, she patted the seat to her left. “Sorry about that, Batty. She has such a short-term memory.”

Betty didn’t correct her; doing so would be rude. “Oh, it’s okay. Maybe she was thinking about other things,” she suggested, sitting down. She placed her tray in front of her and folded her hands on her lap. “Gosh, this table is so huge.”

“Well, we are the only three here. Not like Carmen would let anyone uncool sit here,” Jessie said through a mouthful of wet lettuce and undercooked meat.

“Exactly.” Carmen swept her arm out, her teal fingernails dazzling with silver polka dots. “Only the cream of the crop can sit here, and that’s why I picked you.”

Betty’s heart fluttered. Her cheeks ached from how hard she smiled. She couldn’t even feel the muscles in her face anymore, as if they had frozen.

Carmen cocked her head at Betty. “So, can I ask you something? Something a bit personal?”

She bobbed her head in agreement. “Absotively posilutely, Carmen!”

Jessie’s nose wrinkled, but Carmen continued grinning. “Great. Well, it’s nothing too personal but something personal all the same,” she said, brushing her hand against Betty’s forearm. A delightful chill ran through Betty as Carmen leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Why are you so gullible to think I wasn’t setting you up?”

A noise escaped Betty’s throat. It was strangled, the sound of a baby bird choking. The color drained from her face, and her stomach twisted in knots. Her lips pursed together until they vanished from her face.

Jessie snatched Betty’s milk carton. With a flick of her wrist, she dumped it over Betty’s head. Thick liquid the color of sewage splashed on the crown of her skull and streamed down the sides of her face. They soiled her clothes, making it appear as if she wet herself, the liquid pooling on her lap.

Laughter rang in her ears. She blinked the milk out of her eyes, but she could only see a blur of arms and faces meshed together. Kids pointed and hollered, their insults battering down on her.

“She looks like vomit!” an older boy shouted.

“More like diarrhea!” his friend jeered.

“Oh, man, someone call in the janitor! We got a spill!” another girl cried through a peal of laughter.

The cafeteria was in an uproar with the teachers scrambling to control the students. Betty focused her wide, bloodshot eyes at the two girls laughing at her.

Carmen and Jessie laced their fingers together and giggled. Their smiles curved into their cheeks, forcing their eyes to squint. A hot red blush crossed Jessie’s face as she gasped for breath, pounding the table with her bouncing knee. Carmen focused on Betty, slowly shaking her head, sneering something that Betty couldn’t hear with the guffawing bellowing all around them.

Snatching her backpack, Betty darted from her seat. She abandoned the laughter of the cafeteria and raced outside, where robins sang in the sky, quite in contrast to her mood. She hiccuped and wailed, her heart beating a mile a minute as she threw herself to the ground in the middle of the freshly cut grass of the soccer field.

Dirt and insects clung to her wet clothing. She clawed her fingers into the soil and gritted her teeth. Despair swelled in her chest, her breathing so rapid she feared she might have choked on air. And as she cried, she sunk her fists through the earth, tearing her brittle fingernails through pebbles, ignoring the sharp pain shooting through her hands.

Why are they so cruel? I thought they liked me, but they just made me a laughingstock, she thought as her brain began to throb.

Sniffling, Betty pushed herself up and sat on her knees. She dried her eyes with her saturated shirt, and grime clung to her face. Her hair was like lank straw as the matted strands itched her chin and neck, the rank stench of expired milk making her stink like a pig under the boiling sun.

The dull ache in her head started to spread. It filled every undulation of her mind like a sudden tidal wave crashing on the shore. She cradled her head in her hands, massaging her temples, but the onslaught refused to cease. It spread through her brainstem and shot through her veins. She convulsed from the chills, Carmen and Jessie’s laughter echoing and lapping around her skull, her mind’s eye forcing her to see their faces twisted in horrid amusement. 

Betty clenched her teeth. She hadn’t done anything wrong! And still, everyone else treated her like the dirt she wept on!

But through her tears, something caught her eye. In one of the holes, something shiny twinkled in the rich, dark loam. Curiously, Betty brushed away bits of dead grass and earth, revealing a metallic shine. She thrust her hands towards the object, marveling at the smooth exterior when she gripped it. With a grunt and a tug, Betty wrenched it free and held it close to her chest.

It reminded her of a tea pitcher. What it lacked in height, it made up in width as the object seemed to be about the length of her arm. Rubies and sapphires bejeweled the spout. Unreadable sigils were inscribed on it. Her stupefied expression gazed back at her swathed in gold, which covered the item’s entire surface,  from side to side.

When she flipped it over, she yelped. An earthworm crawled along the bottom. She swatted it away, her fingers quickly brushing the side to remove the greasy residue. 

As she rubbed, light gray smoke trailed from the spout. She hesitated and withdrew her hand, but the smog continued to float into the air. It swirled around her, pluming in thick puffs, but to her amazement, it took form. The smoke stretched and thinned itself into an outline. It filled itself in with human features from the torso up. Betty could only observe in silent bewilderment as colors appeared in the blink of an eye, giving life to the strange creature.

Her eyes reminded Betty of coals, and her thick hair was the color of iron. She had a long nose, and her thin lips pressed together. Hints of sharp teeth folded over her lower lip. On both of her temples were small, curved horns. For clothing, she only wore a sleek white vest that showed off her powerful arms crossed over her chest.

She examined Betty, taking in her shabby appearance. “Dearest child,” she said in a voice that rumbled like thunder, “are you the one who summoned me?”

Betty nodded. She worked her jaw, but she couldn’t speak.

“My name is Chenor. I am the genie of this lamp,” Chenor said, sweeping her arms out and bowing.

Betty gasped. She hurried to her feet, hugging the lamp as tightly as she could. “Really? A genie? I’m not dreaming, am I?”

Chenor chuckled. “No, no, dearest child. I can tell you that you’re awake and lively.” Her grin fell. “But it seems you’ve been through quite an ordeal. Why are you drenched and caked in filth?”

She scratched her neck. Her situation seemed unreal, and she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked about her suffering. But Chenor leaned down with a smile unlike any that Betty had seen in forever. The genie’s eyes sparkled with gentleness, and she cupped Betty’s shoulder, gently squeezing it as if to reassure her that she wouldn’t mock her, something Betty hadn’t felt in ages.

With a choked sob, Betty told Chenor the truth. Every heavy, aching word came straight from her breaking heart. She doubled over and let her knees crash into the ground. She cradled the lamp, stroking it gently as she explained the sheer humiliation she endured.

Chenor’s frown deepened. “What uncouth girls. They should rue the day they ever crossed you.” Her smile carved into her cheeks when Betty looked up at her. “But you shouldn’t weep. You seem to understand what genies are capable of, so you must know what I’m about to say next.”

Betty hesitated, but she quickly raised the lamp. A rush of glee overpowered her as she shouted, “Three wishes?”

Chenor pressed her palms together and nodded. “Correct. Now, what is your first wish? Take the time that you need to decide, but if I may suggest, perhaps something to do with those girls?”

Betty cupped her mouth. Ideas swirled in her head, but Chenor’s suggestion was like a match striking up a flame. If she could wish for Carmen and Jessie to be nicer to her, then her school life would improve. She had always wanted their friendship ever since she started attending school, having watched them from afar laugh together while painting their nails, and she imagined herself as part of a trio. A sigh escaped her.

“Chenor, you’re right. I do wanna wish for something like that,” Betty proclaimed. “My first wish is for Carmen and Jessie to be my friends.”

Chenor’s mouth twitched into a straight line. She nodded and held out her hand. Betty watched, transfixed as she placed her finger to her thumb. Tilting her head back, Chenor aimed her fist at the school and snapped her fingers.

“Consider your wish granted,” she remarked.

Betty squealed and twirled in place. She hugged the lamp, feeling like she could walk on air. “Thank you, Chenor! Thank you!”

And Chenor grinned, bowing once again. “I eagerly await your second wish,” she said, dematerializing. Her body broke down into smoke and seeped back into the lamp.

Giving the lamp a quick hug, Betty placed it into her backpack. She dashed back to school, her rank clothing now dried from the scorching sun, though she still had to ignore the smell that made her eyes water.

When the students saw her muddied clothing and matted hair, they resumed their mocking. Some pointed, others threw whatever they could, but Betty didn’t care. She made a beeline for Carmen’s locker, weaving herself through the crowd of students that leered at her with such cruelty that on any other day, she would have wanted to die.

Carmen and Jessie crowded around the former’s locker. Lunch had just finished, and they were putting away their makeup bags. Betty took a breath to greet them, but the warning bell rang out, drowning her words. Her cheeks heated to a rosy red as the girls continued giggling, focusing their attention only on each other, but when the bell puttered out, Carmen gasped.

“Oh, what is that smell?” she wondered, and she slowly brought her head over to Betty. She flinched, her elbows bumping against the lockers. “Oh, my God! Betty!”

Jessie brought the long collar of her turtleneck over her nose. “Wow. You stink, Betty,” she said, but Carmen nudged her. “In a good way,” she clarified, and Carmen rolled her eyes.

“Jessie, shush. Leave this to me,” Carmen ordered, and Jessie pursed her lips. She flashed a glaringly bright smile Betty’s way. Her long eyelashes fluttered as she said, “I am so sorry about what happened in the cafeteria. I feel terrible about what we did, but I want to make it up to you.”

“That’s okay! Don’t worry about it!” Betty exclaimed, rocking back and forth.

“No, no, really. We need to make it up to you. Carmen held out her hand. She brushed her fingertips against Betty’s forearm, and the same chill electrified her skin. “Here’s what I’m going to do. Let’s skip class and head over to the girl’s locker room. I have a spare set of clothing that will look totally cute on you.”

“Oh, wow! That sounds amazing, Carmen! I-” Betty cut herself off. She hesitated and scratched her neck. “We’d be skipping class?”

“Yeah, y’know, but it’s worth it,” Jessie interjected, “‘cause you can’t go to class in those clothes, and we wanna treat you right.”

“You are our friend, and friends make up with each other when they screw up,” Carmen said.

That single word made tears well in her eyes. Briefly, her vision blurred. She sniffled and swallowed, her heart fluttering at the insinuation. She felt the lamp’s warmth against her through the thick fabric of her backpack, and she nodded, the proof of her wish coming true in the forms of Jessie and Carmen taking her hands as they walked to the girl’s locker room.

No one was inside. Tall, metal lockers reached up to the ceiling and reflected the girls’ images like distorted mirrors. Betty’s sopping sneakers squeaked on the tiles. Carmen and Jessie guided her over to a stall with a long, white curtain. Jessie swung it open, the curtain nearly grazing Betty’s nose, and Carmen gestured for her to go inside.

“Just give us your old, gross clothes, and I’ll give you the real deal. I’m talking designer brands,” Carmen vowed, wiggling her fingers.

Betty hummed in delight. She stepped into the stall, and Jessie pulled the curtain back. Carmen asked for her soiled attire, and Betty acquiesced without a second thought. Placing her backpack on the foldable seat attached to the wall, she slipped out of her skirt, shirt, and even her shoes and socks when Carmen requested them. Jessie snatched her attire from the flap in the curtain and provided Betty with a scratchy, white towel.

Carmen giggled. “Be right back.”

“We’re just going to her locker,” Jessie supplied, and Betty heard a light smacking noise.

“Okay! I’ll be here waiting,” Betty replied to the sound of pitter-pattering feet heading away from her.

A door slammed shut and rattled the lockers. Betty winced and gnawed on her lower lip. She glanced at the perfectly white walls and examined the pen scrawlings from years past. Crude graffiti decorated the left wall. On the right side, she found wads of chewed-up bubblegum with still-embedded teeth marks interwoven with the doodles and cruel messages targeting random teachers and students. When she caught a few glimpses of her name, Betty shifted her gaze to her wiggling toes.

They must have been going to her regular locker. The lockers surrounding Betty were too thin to hold any of Carmen’s fancy clothes. They also risked being stolen by any greedy girl who knew how to pick a lock.

That must be why they left, she told herself, because Billie and Becca broke into her gym locker and stole her makeup and jeans last month. That’s right. That’s why they left me in here.

But the minutes stretched into an hour. Betty stood all alone in the locker until her legs ached. Pins and needles shot through her feet until she crumpled. She curled her knees in until they touched her chin, then wrapped her arms around them. The chill of the air conditioning blasting through the vents prickled her skin, raising goosebumps along her bare arms, legs, and shoulders.

Somewhere, they laughed. Shrill, grating laughter ran laps around her brain. Betty slapped her hands on her ears and sunk her front teeth into her lower lip. She tasted iron on her tongue, the shock and sharp pain enough for her sorrow to turn violent. Her anger boiled over, and she clenched her fists so hard they ached.

Cruel thoughts seeped into her mind. As much as she tried withholding them or sealing them away in the darkest part of her subconscious, much like a dam, it broke. They shattered her defenses and allowed the thoughts she despised enough to hide to spill out like oil on the ocean.

“How could they?” she snarled, tears dribbling down her cheeks. “I trusted them, and for what? For them to trick me again? I’ve done nothing wrong to them.” 

The stench of rancid milk wafted around her. She felt it seep into her pores and her bloodstream. Chills made her convulse, and the towel suddenly itched like crazy. She dragged her fingernails across her arms. Long, red lines marred her skin, and milky residue caught underneath her nails.

Betty was a sore sight. And somewhere in the school, Carmen and Jessie had the last laugh.

She ground her teeth together, her brain pulsing with anger. “I wish Carmen and Jessie would just cough out their hearts and leave me alone forever.”

Snap.

Betty yelped. She thought the door creaked open, but she only heard herself breathing. She pressed her palms to her puffy, red eyes and wept, mucus rounding her nostrils.

But an acidic scent rattled Betty. Smoke wafted around her, fizzling through the metal clasps on her backpack. Betty unzipped it, and Chenor’s form materialized in the blink of an eye.

“How are you faring, child?” Chenor asked, lacing her fingers by her waist.

Betty lunged to her feet, nearly slipping on the tiles. “How do you think? Jessie and Carmen said they were my friends, but they left me behind after promising to give me new clothes.” She jabbed her finger at Chenor’s chin. “You granted my wish, right?”

Her eyes crossed to stare at Betty’s finger. She bared more of her sharp teeth as she grinned. “I did. It is done,” Chenor stated. She folded her arms underneath her chest and extended a finger to press against Betty’s. “You wished for them to become your friends. I granted that wish.”

“But they aren’t really my friends!” she bellowed, stomping her foot. She clenched her jaw so hard it clicked.

“In a way, they are your friends,” Chenor informed, her eyes widening with glee. “You never specified that you wanted them to be your true friends or fake friends.”

“What?” Betty shrieked, reeling her head back. She caught the curtain to steady herself. Her heart thundered in her chest, her breathing coming in short, quick gasps.

“As for your second wish, you were much clearer,” Chenor said as if she hadn’t spoken. “I was able to grant it based on your very specific terms. You should heed that when you make your final wish.”

Betty drew back. She stared at Chenor with confusion written all over her face. She ran her fingers across her neck, peeling off coagulated milk.

When she felt her heart skip a beat, her eyes shot wide open.

Snatching her backpack, she bolted from the stall. She threw open the locker room door, letting it slam, and she darted for Mrs. Hoffman’s math class. Sweat beaded her brow and slithered down through the chocolate milk residue stained to her forehead. Her bare feet slapped against the floor, nearly catching on the tiles, and she raced like her life depended on it. She knew theirs certainly did.

She didn’t hear a teacher call her name. She didn’t hear another student chuckling at her appearance. The rows of blue metal lockers and wooden doors were a blur. She caught her breath and skidded to a stop in front of a typical door decorated in posters detailing formulas and equations.

Betty gripped the doorknob. Instead of twisting it, she froze. If Chenor had told the truth, she thought she would have heard some kind of commotion. Her classmates should have been panicking and crying. Some would have dashed from the room. Her teacher should have been dialing for help while other teachers piled in the classroom, trying to comprehend an incomprehensible situation.

“I made that wish when Chenor wasn’t in front of me. She couldn’t have granted it. She didn’t because I - because I have to be in front of her when I say it. That’s how it happened the first time,” Betty told herself. A desperate smile split across her face. “Yeah, yeah, that’s right. It’s not true. It’s not.”

But when Betty yanked open the door, their screaming started.

She stood helplessly in the doorway as other students whipped their heads over to Carmen and Jessie sitting in the back corner of the room. They gripped their chests, clawing fingernails into their bodies and bunching up their fancy shirts. Jessie gagged and doubled over, her knees hitting her desk. Carmen bounced in place, her hair accessories tumbling off her head as her hands flapped around her throat.

Something bulged in their chests. Round, beating hearts pulsed outwards against their stretched skin. They gagged, their tongues lolling over their lower lips. Jessie tried pushing on her chest, but a shriek escaped her as her heart slithered upwards. It bulged in her throat, rapidly beating. Her neck bent at an awkward angle, tilting her head forward. She choked, her eyes bulging in her skull, rivulets of blood slithering down her chin until it happened.

With a violent cough, Jessie vomited out her heart. Crisscrossing red veins and arteries pumped with blood as they progressed up her throat with each subsequent hack. As her heart dangled in front of her chest, clumps of tangled blood vessels filled her mouth and smothered her teeth. Groaning, Jessie’s eyes rolled into the back of her head. She collapsed, the impact severing the vessels tethered to her heart. As blood seeped out of Jessie’s mouth, her heart rolled into the sneaker of a shell-shocked student.

Carmen shrieked until she, too, began to gag. Her heart shot into her throat, quite literally. She clutched her neck and squeezed, trying to shove it back down. Her eyes flashed to every student in the room, to the teacher, and then connected with Betty.

The other students roared, sobbing and shouting. They ran for their lives. They abandoned Carmen and shoved Betty aside to protect their own skins. A dull thud hit Betty’s ears when she landed on the floor. When she looked up, she realized it was the unconscious, twitching body of Mrs. Hoffman.

Carmen stumbled forward, losing her balance. Her heel caught on Jessie’s arm, and she came crashing down to the ground, a strangled cry in her throat. Her lips parted wide enough for Betty to see her pristine, porcelain teeth stained with stomach acid and blood.

When her chin slammed into the ground, she spat out her heart. Thick, rope-like arteries and veins shuddered in her mouth, the valves flexing as if gasping for air. Carmen shuddered and writhed, blood spurting out her nose, her death throes muffled. She reached for Betty, spasmed, and then pressed her brow to her still heart, blood streaming from all orifices in her face.

Betty sat on her knees. Words failed her. Everyone and everything did as well. Her backpack drooped to the side, and the smell of smoke overpowered the rich stench of iron and bodily fluids.

Chenor examined their corpses with a fixed grin etched in her angular face. She sighed and threaded her fingers through Betty’s stringy hair. She didn’t speak, choosing to massage Betty’s scalp with fingernails that dug into her skin like pins.

“It has been done according to your exact wish,” Chenor murmured, hunching forward. She patted Betty’s neck. “The misery you’ve endured has been paid in blood.”

Carmen’s head suddenly fell to the side. Her jaw twitched, her teeth cleaving through veins and freeing her heart. It slipped forward and skidded to a stop when it touched Betty’s knees. A splash of blood warmed her skin and stained her towel. Betty dipped her chin to her chest, her eyes unable to perceive the organ that once pulsated with life.

“Dear child,” Chenor crooned in a voice like a chime, “what will your last wish be?”

Betty cupped Carmen’s heart in both hands. She ran her thumbs across the smooth, slick exterior. Despite Carmen being dead, it still felt warm. She pressed her thumbs inwards, and blood gushed out of the valves, spraying her face as if someone had flicked a wet paintbrush at her. It painted her lips and cheeks like a fresh coat of makeup, reminding her of how Jessie would have dolled herself up for Carmen first thing in the morning.

Betty whimpered and clutched Carmen’s heart to her chest. She doubled over and screamed until no air remained in her lungs. She hadn’t meant to do that, but she couldn’t take it back. Her wish had been true when she said it, but regrets clawed at her back.

She had wanted to be their friend for years. That was all she wanted. Friendship, kindness, it was what any little girl wanted. But they were dead, and inside, so was Betty.

Voices broke in the hallway. Panicked footsteps dashed towards the classroom, coming closer and closer, shaking the building. The clamor blended the tones of the young and old in an endless cacophony.

And she heard her name shouted from the mouths of children she only wanted to befriend. She slowly turned her head to the door, stricken with silence. They blamed her with all the fire in their souls. Their outrage at the deaths of their classmates boiled over into a feeding frenzy, screaming that she was to blame, that she hadn’t run, so she must’ve been the culprit.

“They’re seconds away from breaching this room, child,” Chenor sneered, kneading Betty’s scalp. Her fingernails set into Betty’s skull, feeling like real nails hammering into her brain. “State your last wish.”

“And you’ll do what I want exactly how I want it this time?” Betty murmured, staring at Chenor with hollow eyes.

Chenor grinned. “As long as you properly state your wish.”

“I wish,” she breathed out, “all the bad people in this world would just go away.”

Snap.

The footsteps came to a screeching halt. Betty stood up and tossed aside Carmen’s heart. Tightening her towel and grabbing the lamp, she strolled outside the classroom.

Screams erupted all around her. She walked with featherlight footsteps and kept her eyes straight ahead. She only saw the carnage through the corners of her eyes.

Everyone twisted and writhed as if puppeteered by an invisible force. They clawed at their skin and faces. Agony disfigured their expressions, and the screams of billions pierced the world at the same time.

Like chalk particles, humanity disintegrated. Holes as small as freckles formed in their bodies before enlarging to show their filthy insides. They all tried desperately to smooth their skin over, but their bodies withered down to the bone. Their hair split from their scalps, and their teeth tumbled from their receding gums, crashing into a fine dust when they hit the ground.

And bit by bit, their flesh faded like dust in the wind, with the only sign that they had once lived being the clothes that fell to the ground like a long carpet extending out behind Betty. 

They screamed for as long as they had lungs. They stood for as long as they had a skeleton.

Then, it was silent.

When she left the school, she stared at the nothingness. Car alarms blared, and automobiles smashed into nearby trees and houses. Only clothing remained scattered, blown by the breeze. Betty bent over and snatched a white blouse and blue shorts off the grass, slipping them on with a blank expression. 

She breathed in deeply through her nose. It was so quiet that she could hear the electricity in the telephone polls. An eerie calm spread across the globe without a human sound.

At the familiar, pleasant smell of smoke, Betty giggled. Her shoulders quaked as she laughed. With a slow shake of her head, she looked up to Chenor with eyes that stared into the sun and asked, “What have I done?”

Chenor smiled, pressed her hand to Betty’s brow, and she whispered, “You made a wish, and I interpreted your words, dear child. That’s all.”

The wind blew through her hair. Betty fixed a lank lock behind her hair before noticing it vanished from her hand. Blinking, Betty pulled her hand away from her face. She couldn’t be bothered to let out a scream.

From her fingertips, holes spread along her upper arm. Her skin prickled and popped, evaporating like bubbles. She stared at Chenor as her body vanished, stomach acid pooling out from holes in her abdomen and collapsing when the joints in her knees ceased to exist. She couldn’t even feel any pain, her body and heart having gone numb a long, long time ago, and as her brain was picked apart like a crow digging into a worm, Betty smiled until the muscles in her face atrophied.

Betty was gone, just a pair of leftover clothes in the wind. Chenor remained, however, and collected her clothing. Chuckling, she ran her forked tongue over her fangs and tossed the blouse over her arm.

She disconnected herself from the lamp, her true legs hitting the ground. They curved inwards with her hooves clicking against the pavement. Arching her back, she marveled at the sigils of her summoning lamp and cackled in a voice that boomed around the earth.

The demon renowned for granting wishes smiled. She roamed, freed from her prison just as she freed Betty from hers.

Chapter Text

“I think we have time for one last tale,” Oleander said.

The campfire was starting to dim, and the campers’ eyelids and limbs were becoming heavy. The only one to raise their hand for the talking turtle was Raz. But even as Crystal handed him the plush toy, he moved slower than usual. He hung his head and closed his eyes.

But instead of nodding off, he started to speak.

On a cold winter night, when we were traveling through the mountains on the circus train, the train suddenly stopped. As I jostled awake in bed, a wailing screech ripped through the air. The engine of the train sputtered, then fell silent. Light filled the tiny cabin as one of my siblings turned on a bedside lamp. A collective yawn rose from us and we turned to one another with half-open eyes.

“Why did we stop?” Mirtala asked as she rubbed her eyes. “I was having such a nice dream...”

“Does it look like we know?” Dion replied. Though he hissed his words, his voice was sluggish and slow. He shifted in his bed, turning his back to Mirtala before nestling back into position and returning to sleep.

“We could ask,” I said.

“Who? The conductor?” Frazie replied. She gave me a slow, catlike blink. “I’m sure he has time right now.”

“It’ll only take a second.”

Frazie gave me a frown, but got out of bed and put on a long sleeping robe. I hopped out of bed after her and threw on my jacket and slippers. Together, we left our cabin and began to make our way towards the front of the train.

Even with my pajamas and jacket on, the air pierced through my clothes like a knife. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered, feeling my legs shake and teeth chatter. Frazie tied her sleeping robe together tighter, and her hands disappeared inside the sleeves.

Above us, soft orange light illuminated the corridor. Outside, the wind roared like a lion. It rattled the windows, scratching and clawing at the glass with ice and snow. The windows were pitch-black; only the closest snowflakes could be seen fluttering outside.

As we approached the front of the train, we came upon two men: the conductor and another train worker, speaking in front of an open door leading outside. Not noticing us coming first, we overheard grumblings from the two men.

“You know how I feel about coming through this pass, especially at this time of year,” said the train worker. He crossed his arms and shook his head.

“Can’t be helped,” the conductor replied.

The conductor flicked his vision upwards, and spotted us. He sighed, and looked down at us from behind a pair of spectacles and adjusted them with one hand. As he sighed, his breath turned into a cloud of steam.

“The train will start back up in a bit, kids.”

“Do you know what happened?” I asked.

“Dunno. ‘Ngineer’s just as confused as the rest of us.”

Frazie gave me a look and rolled her eyes. I don’t know what you expected, she whispered to me in my thoughts.

The conductor shrugged. “I can get you two something to drink while we wait.”

“Coffee, please!” I replied.

“You are not giving him coffee,” Frazie snapped. “You don’t want to see what he’s like when he’s snuck coffee in the morning, let alone now.”

“Aw, come on!” I snapped back at Frazie.

The conductor laughed. “Relax, even I don’t have coffee this time of night. Tea or chocolate?”

“Hot chocolate, please!” I answered.

“I’m good. I’m going back to bed and not getting a cold,” Frazie replied.

Once the conductor walked through the door behind him and disappeared, Frazie sighed, turned on her heel, and started to walk back towards our bedroom. When she was out of earshot, I huffed. Hot chocolate staves off colds; everyone knows that!

A few moments later, the conductor returned. In his hands was a large, round mug. Wisps of steam danced on the surface of the hot chocolate. Warmth surged through my skin as I took the mug into my hands. I inhaled, savoring the sweet scent.

“Thank you.”

Instead of heading back to my cabin, I sat down in the doorway leading outside. As I sipped my hot chocolate, the wind bit at my ankles and snow slashed at my face. But it sure beat going back to my bedroom to listen to a half-awake Frazie.

In the corner of my eye, I saw something besides me. I put down my hot chocolate and turned my head. Beside me on the step was one of the engineers’ flashlights. A thought flickered through my  head: I wonder if I could see anything.

I grabbed the flashlight, flicked the switch, and pointed it into the night. The beam of the flashlight only cut fifteen feet into the distance, maybe twenty. After that, the ground blended together with the snow whirling in the howling wind. However, despite the light not going that far, I could make something out further in the blizzard.

In the distance was a figure, vaguely the shape of a human, obscured by shadows. It trudged through the snow silently, making a trail like a garden snail as it dragged its feet. It kept its head—or what looked like its head—bowed as it walked, either not noticing or ignoring the train.

How can someone be out here? I thought to myself. For miles and miles and miles in every direction, there was nothing. Nothing but rolling pine trees, the dark, and the cold.

“Hello?” I called out into the fog. When it didn't reply, I stood up and raised my voice. “Hey!”

The figure stopped in its tracks. It raised its head and swung around to look at me. Although I couldn’t see its eyes, I could feel its gaze cutting into me all the same.

“Are you okay?”

There was a pause. Then, the figure started to walk towards me. As they approached, a bell rang inside my head; I’ve seen them before. I racked my brain, trying to figure out where I had seen this person before. Where? Who was this?

The figure stopped at the side of the train and raised its head to look at me. It was a person about my height, bundled up in layers upon layers of mismatched jackets and parkas, with its head buried under a hood. Each of the jackets bore stains, tears, and frayed fabric. A dirt-encrusted scarf with fading colors and a thick pair of goggles hid its face.

“Are you lost?” I picked up my mug of hot chocolate and held it out towards the figure. “Here, it’s warm.”

The figure shook its head. Then, with a single gloved hand, it pushed the mug back towards me. With both of its hands, it lifted its goggles onto its forehead. A pair of large, green eyes stared back at me; they were my eyes. When I blinked at it, it blinked at the exact same time. I flinched away. A feeling of vertigo, as if I was standing at the edge of an abyss, grappled me.

“Who…” A lump formed at the bottom of my stomach. “Who are you?”

The figure pulled down its scarf to speak. “Three guesses, and the first two don’t count,” it replied.

It spoke with my voice and looked at me with my eyes. But whatever this was, it wasn’t… me. There was a gleam in its eyes, but it was faded and dull. Its voice was low, a barely-human murmur. Even when I snooped around in its mind with telepathy, all that I heard was a quiet hiss of static.

I tried to stand up, slam the door behind me, and run as far as I could into the train. But my legs were frozen in place—and not from the blizzard. The more I tried to move my legs, the more they refused to move. The lump in my stomach turned into a pit.

As I struggled, I made the mistake of locking eyes with the figure. The moment I made eye contact, the world around me slowly lost form, and the inside of my head began to spin. A smile crossed the figure's face as it watched. It was a hungry smile, the smile of a crocodile about to lunge and tear its prey from limb to limb. The figure's smile grew wider as the world vanished.

“Raz boy, who the hell are you talking to?” the conductor asked.

The world returned as I slammed back into my body. I blinked, and in the same instant, the figure vanished. All that remained of it was a shape in the air before the snowflakes fluttered away in the wind. When I closed my eyes, I could still see its smile, ready to dig its teeth into my throat.

“I… I don’t know.”

Chapter Text

“A-alright soldiers, that’s enough!” Oleander said.

Having dwindled over the course of the night, the campfire was nothing more than ash and a tiny bundle of flickering flames now. With the dying fire and the moon fallen beneath the trees, the shadows of the forest around the campers grew darker and taller and pressed in on them. Maybe. Their wide eyes darted back and forth as they slowly stood up from their seats on trembling legs.

“Your next assignment: get some rest! Goodnight soldiers!”

“Goodnight Coach,” a few campers mumbled back.

The campers shuffled out of the reception area and started up the path back to the sleeping cabins. Once they were gone, Oleander summoned a blast of cold air, putting out the last of the campfire. Alone in the dark, with no one around to see him, he shivered. He was not looking forward to his dreams once he got to his own bed.

Chapter Text

• Pinky G. Rocket - Project Lead, Editor, Logo, Graphic Design, Web Design, Video, Author (Prologue, Epilogue, The Tale of the Midnight Train Ride)
• kibasniper - Author (The Tale of the Genie in the Bottle, The Tale of the Disrupted Planet)
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• SailorSpellcheck - Author (The Tale of the Drowned Levithan, The Tale of the Wings in the Woods)
• Dr. Beat - Author (The Tale of the Cabin in the Woods)
• Whisker Biscuit - Author (The Tale of the Sleepwalker)
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• Icequeenkitty - Author, Illustrator (The Tale of the Hermit's Visit)
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• Board - Illustrator (The Tale of the Genie in the Bottle)
• Victor Bell - Illustrator (The Tale of the Midnight Train Ride)
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• Fuzbrain Nicole - Illustrator (The Tale of the Drowned Levithan)
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• Marshy/Smore - Illustrator (The Tale of the Wings in the Woods)
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• Trinity “Itty” Rodriguez - Cover Art
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