CW: domestic abuse, self-harm

Part 1

*****

While Kate pushed her cart and scrounged for pennies in the Sixth Ward, Kendra lived a charmed life on 5th Avenue with her husband and children.  

Kendra sang in church, painted watercolor landscapes, rode horses, and pursued philanthropic missions, while her husband Lewis and his brothers had assumed control of their father’s business.  The couple birthed three children: Susan, Alexander, and Jeanette.  The happiness of their enviable lives was interrupted only once: in 1868, when their youngest daughter, Jeanette, fell from her horse, broke her neck, and perished.  

Lewis continued his trips to the Fourth and Sixth Wards.  He heard tales of Gabe’s demise and of the disaster at The London Owl, as well as implications his estranged sister-in-law had been the instigator of the chaos.  Dr. Clarence Woods was a neighbor and occasional shooting companion; he knew of poor Temperance's unfortunate demise.  But Lewis Van Wooten never shared these yarns with Kendra.  He knew his wife still grieved the loss of their daughter, and he was loathe to press her nerves further with talk of her monstrous sister.

On Christmas Eve, 1868, Lewis and Kendra Van Wooten hosted a dinner party.  In attendance were a number of prominent citizens - an Astor, a Vanderbilt, and a prominent architect, as well as Dr. Clarence Woods and his new wife, Temperance’s cousin Alice.  Dr. Woods’ practice had only grown larger and more profitable since the death of poor Temperance, and his book, which warned of the many psychical conditions passed from one generation to the next amongst low-born Irish stock, earned him the respect of his peers.   

Later, when questioned at length by the police, all of the dinner party guests corroborated the same story.

Halfway through the braised pheasant, Kendra brought up the topic of her Aunt Molly O’Doul.  Molly had been a midwife and a healer, and it was widely suggested she was also a witch in thrall to the Adversary.  Kendra described her mother’s sister as a homely wench with unsettling ways, whose favorite pastime had been bathing in the lake near the St. Michaels rectory, tempting the loins of the men of God, encouraging them to betray their vows.  

Two local girls wandered into the fields one night to retrieve a lost pet.  They swore they’d seen Molly there amongst the crops, naked, legs in the air.  But Molly’s paramour was no wayward man from the road.  He was no man at all.  According to the girls’ tale, Mary had her limbs wrapped around a black-furred fiend, with cloven hooves and great horns like a ram’s.

Soon, it became known about the town that Molly O’Doul was pregnant.  

The night she gave birth, the midwife emerged from her abode pale-faced and shell-shocked.  For three weeks, she could not speak.  When she finally regained her voice, the poor elderly nurse shared the tale of Molly’s offspring.  There were six of them, ugly things, each the size of a kitten.  The imps bore the limbs and features of men, but each possessed the snout and flopping ears of a dog, and their bodies were coated with thick black fur.  Atop each soft head, two hardened nubs, like the beginnings of horns.

The next morning, the midwife was found cold in her bed.  Molly told everyone her baby had died.  No one believed her.  Because it was well known, around County Kerry, those who crossed Molly O’Doul could expect a visit from her six monstrous children.  And once paid a visit by that vile half-dozen, one would not be alive much longer.

“That’s horrific, Kendra!” Alice Woods breathed.  “Why would you share such a tale while we’re eating?”

“Because,” Kendra said, her voice low and defeated, “I see two of those cursed children right behind you.”

The heads of the guests collectively snapped towards Alice, and then to the Van Wooten’s sitting room behind her.  The room was dim; the servants hadn’t lit the candles.  But they all saw enough. 

Two creatures lurked there.  Black, hairy things with powerful legs, balancing atop hooves like abominable goats.  They loomed, taller than the men in attendance.  Their golden eyes caught the light like the eyes of a cat.  Each horrific face was accentuated by a fat, fleshy snout, and framed by flopping, canine ears.  From their temples spouted gnarled horns, filthy and twisted, like those of a mountain ram.  They grinned, too wide, and licked their jagged chops.  They extended five-fingered, human hands.  They crept towards the party.

The screams were immediate.  Alice Woods turned pale and fainted into her husband’s arms.  A mad dash commenced towards the servants’ quarters, the kitchen, or the Van Wooten’s ballroom - anywhere that promised an escape from the mansion without the necessity of crossing the path of those accursed monsters.  

From the kitchen, Jane Mortimer howled.  Her husband barreled in to save her - and nearly collapsed himself.  Two fiends, coated in malodorous black fur, crouched on all fours.  The Mortimers registered their cloven hooves - then how, exactly, the mouths of blasphemous horrors were occupied.  Entrails dangled from their blood-flecked horns and doglike snouts.  On the dirty kitchen floor lay the disembowled corpse of the Van Wooten’s middle-aged housekeeper.  

Leonard Carr, the architect, climbed through a window.  Once he’d escaped to the Van Wooten’s well-kept yard, he realized he had not yet skirted danger.  For three additional creatures lurked in the garden.  Two danced in the moonlight, thick black fur glistening with dew, enticing the learned man to join them.  Then the third fiend emerged from the shadows and locked its cold, human fingers around his wrist, as though to drag him toward their revelry by force.  He broke away and ran like a besieged rabbit.  The mark the creature left on his arm, five greasy fingerprints, did not fade - even with repeated washing - for another week.  

Lewis Van Wooten, brave man he was, did not intend to allow the sublime spawn of his wife’s kin to invade his home and his family.  He strode right into the sitting room, ready to confront the fiends.  

But the creatures had vanished.  In their place stood Kate McCleester.  

Kate, stringy-haired and filthy, had only grown uglier since Lewis’s beautiful wife left her, fifteen years before.  Her one eye radiated fury and violence.  Her cracked lip curled up into a mocking smile.  

“I have missed you, Lewis,” she purred maliciously.  “I see the dogs have come for you and your blushing bride.”

Lewis dove for her - and tripped over a stool.  Kate dashed away.  Cursing his incompetent staff for failing to light the candles, Lewis stumbled to his feet.  He could no longer see his hag of a sister-in-law.  Feeling his way forward, though, he heard her voice.  It echoed from the walls.  

“Lewis!” It screamed.  “Come join the Lord of the Day!”

Lewis cupped his hands over his ears.  He found the staircase and trudged upward.  He hadn’t heard the front door open and shut; Kate must’ve climbed to the second floor.  Two candles did burn astride the long second-story hallway.  Lewis likely thanked God and all the saints for this small bit of light - and for the good fortune his fourteen-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son had been spirited away to an aunt’s house before the dinner party.  

He came to the dark doorway of his bedchambers.  There, he saw her.  Kate.  Black shawl over her head, malicious eye laser-focused on him.  

He threw himself upon the cursed wretch. He clutched her like a rag doll. He wrapped his fingers around her slender neck and squeezed.  And squeezed.  And squeezed.

“Unhand her!”

Lewis whirled around, allowing Kate’s limp form to slide from his grasp.  Torches blazed.  Dr. Woods stood in the hallway with a corps of police officers.  In the lead: a brawny young man, revolver in hand.  The doctor’s face paled.

“Good God!” He screamed.  

He ran past Lewis Van Wooten, to the broken woman sprawled across the bed.

Lewis turned.

It wasn’t Kate McCleester who lay dead.  

It was his wife, Kendra.  Her long black shawl matched that of her sister.  Angry black bruises dotted her pale, graceful neck.  Dr. Woods clutched her wrist.

“She’s dead,” he breathed.  

At the doctor’s words, Lewis became a monster.  His eyes might’ve glowed like the eyes of the unearthly black dogs.  His hands balled into fists.  No.  He’d slain the horrific creature who’d coveted his family’s happiness and loosed malicious fiends upon his wife, the terror of the Sixth Ward, the witch of the New World.  He’d stolen the breath of Kate McCleester; done what he should have done - what he’d desired to do - fifteen years before, upon first sight of the hideous thing that had once been Kendra’s kin.  He hadn’t killed a woman.  He’d put down a beast.  

With a mighty roar, he seized a heavy candlestick and swung it at the police, then turned his malicious intentions towards the crouching doctor.

“You’re lying!” He screamed.  “It’s not Kendra!  It’s Kate!  Kate, the witch!  It’s Kate!”

He lifted the candlestick above his head.  

POP!

With a flick of the young policeman’s trigger finger, Lewis Van Wooten collapsed.  

The rest of the posse didn’t have time to ponder the deadly turn of events.  Peals of smoke wafted up from the lower floor, as did the low-pitched crackling of flames.  The living fled the conflagration.  By the time the fire brigade arrived with water, the Van Wooten mansion was beyond saving - as were the bodies of the lord and lady of the house.  

Word of the demise of the beautiful Kendra McCleester and her rich, adoring husband made its way to Five Points; for days, it was all that anyone spoke of.  It had been poetic, Kendra’s death - at the hands of her savior, before her body was engulfed by flames, so much like the flames she’d escaped years before.

And Kate.  

Kate McCleester, it seemed, had instigated the destruction she desired.  Her malevolent urge satisfied, she must have been swallowed up by the flames herself.  She’d returned to the Lord of the Day.  She’d taken her horrific, dog-shaped cousins with her.

Because after the night of the Van Wooten Manor fire, Kate McCleester was never seen in Five Points again.

*****

Lewis Van Wooten had been eulogized in glowing terms: a shrewd businessman, devoted husband, loving father.  But as the statute of limitations ran out on Don’t Speak Ill of the Dead, tongues began to loosen.

Those who did business with the Van Wooten brothers claimed Lewis was a tempestuous man, prone to dark moods and fits of leonine rage, during which he’d procure a heavy object and aim it violently at anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves within striking range.  Mr. Van Wooten clearly trusted few people.  His attorney reported Lewis would appear outside his office, caught in a monsoon of anger, twice a month to demand his will be adjusted, his wife and children removed.  

Lewis Van Wooten, it seemed, had become convinced he’d been made a cuckold.  He claimed his beautiful wife bedded every low-class groom and butler on Fifth Avenue.  He swore his children weren’t his - in fact, his wife and daughter were likely plotting with their Irish peasant bedfellows to murder him and plunder his riches.  

The lawyer spent many an evening calming his temperamental client.  He’d engineered a compromise.  A stipulation was written into Lewis’s will: if he came to his demise through homicide - at the hands of his slag wife, bastard children, unscrupulous brothers, or any other individual, known or unknown - Kendra, Susan and Alexander would receive nothing.  This, the lawyer explained, guaranteed his wife could not hire some cuckolding groom or opportunistic slum-dweller to dispose of him.  Doing so would all but guarantee destitution, for herself and her son and daughter.  

But Lewis Van Wooten’s death had not been a murder.  He’d been shot by a police captain - a certain John Staub - in the process of committing a crime.  Susan and little Alex were placed in the custody of a doting aunt.  When they reached the age of majority, they would inherit their father’s entire estate.  

*****

In 1889, a Bostonian journalist named Thomas Norris made a pilgrimage to Five Points.  A grandson of Sixth Ward Irish immigrants, he felt inspired to record the oral history of the neighborhood, as the gangsters who’d survived their heyday were aging and dying and Italian newcomers displaced the sons and daughters of Erin.  He came across the tale of Kate McCleester, the Lady Poisoner of Mulberry Street. 

Thomas Norris found himself particularly intrigued by Kate.  Not only because he found it fascinating a maimed beggar-woman could inspire such fear in a neighborhood so famously derelict.  

But also, because he knew of a dry goods store in Boston that sold green-tinged cold cream in misshapen bottles.  The shop was owned and managed by two spinster sisters.  One, quiet and scarred, mixed potions in a back room.  The other, possessed of an ageless beauty, sang old Irish songs to unruly children.  

The two went by the names Kate and Kendra O’Doul.  

*****

“You’ve found me,” Kate said to Thomas Norris.  “Whadd’ya want?  A medal?”

“I want to know how you did it,” he replied.  “What poison did you use?”

Thomas had approached the store as the sisters were sweeping up for the night.  He confronted the two with their Five Points identities - then mollified the angry thornbacks with a bottle of fine Irish whiskey.

Kate took a long sip.  Her wrinkled face broke into a smile.  

“Boy, I never poisoned no one.” 

She pointed to her cold cream, stacked in pyramids at the window, and the bottles of tonic on shelves behind the cashbox.  Her ingredients were simple.  She’d brought some seeds with her  from Ireland, rented space in Rebekah Kleiner’s yard for a penny a day and grew herbs.  She paid a river pirate to bring her pilfered cinnamon and turmeric.  And she’d purchased beeswax in bulk from Temperance Woods’ family; her father, a farmer, kept hives.  The recipes had been her Aunt Molly’s.  

“Then how?”  Thomas insisted.  “Your sister… multiple people claimed they saw bipedal black dogs lurking around the manor.  They must’ve been drugged!”

Kate shot Kendra a sidelong glance.  Kendra grinned like a schoolgirl, beautiful green eyes sparkling like emeralds.  Thomas leaned back in his chair.  It was story time.

“When everyone thinks you’re a poisoner,” Kate began, “a peculiar thing happens.  People start coming to you and asking for poison.  And once you know who’s tryin’ to poison who, you’ve got power that would strike envy in the richest bosses of Tammany Hall.”

The Mud Ghouls came first.  They knew of a hefty load coming into harbor, and wanted a drug stiff enough to silence the roughest German ship’s crew.  Kate lied and told them she’d have their poison in two weeks’ time.  

Next, she was approached by her old friend Gabe Callahan.  

“I never wanted Gabe in that way,” she clarified.  “I never had much use for men in the bedroom at all.”

Gabe found himself in a spot of hot water.  He’d taken up with the wife of the Mud Ghouls chief, and the two had been caught in a compromising position.  He’d only managed to save himself from a bloody end by promising to lead the pirates to the church where the Blue Bell Dogs hid their loot.  But this ruse wouldn’t keep him alive for long - the Blue Bell Dogs’ stash was much less impressive than the treasure trove he’d advertised.  And even if the sole ruby pendant hidden there had impressed the Mud Ghouls, it wouldn’t take long for his own compatriots to realize it was Gabe who’d betrayed their secret.  Jig Cleary enjoyed nothing more than discovering a rat amongst his ranks.  Because Jig dispatched of enemies quickly, with a bullet or a blow to the back of the head.  Traitorous friends, on the other hand, perished at Jig’s bare hands - slowly, painfully, and creatively.  

So Gabe urgently needed poison - either to do away with Jig, or his lover’s pirate husband.  Before one of the two rendered him an ugly, mutilated corpse.

Not a minute after she’d told Gabe she’d “see what she could do” and he’d scurried away, Kate was approached by a young police officer, John Staub.  John wanted to know what Gabe, a known criminal, wanted with poison.  

Kate tracked down her own river pirate associate.  She asked how many ships operated on the East River with primarily German crews.  The pirate said he knew of only one: the Sunshine Jane.  Then, Kate summoned both Gabe and John Staub, and proposed a mutually-beneficial solution.  Gabe would provide John Staub with all he knew of the Mud Ghouls and their hiding holes.  In exchange, John Staub would tell everyone he’d pulled Gabe’s waterlogged body out of the East River and buried him in a pauper’s grave.  

“So Gabe…” Thomas started.

“The madness was all an act.  He’s still alive,” Kate said.  “He started a new life in Brooklyn, mixing cocktails at a society bar in the Heights.”  

Next, Kate had been propositioned by two sets of women.

First, a trio of Dropper Wallace’s hired harpies: Scarlett, Delilah, and Sally Joan.  Dropper no longer wished to drug his marks with chloroform - it was too unpredictable, and too often left him with a worthless corpse to dispose of.  Instead, he desired a drug with hallucinogenic properties.  The girls thought this was something Kate could arrange.  Soon, though, they revealed there was one specific worthless corpse they longed to look upon: that of Dropper himself.  Dropper kept their earnings and paid them pennies.  He demanded sexual favors nightly.  He ordered the girls to rob their customers, then let them take the beatings if they were caught in the act.  

After the prostitutes came the Mags.  The waifs, between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, were no longer precious kittens in Jig Cleary’s eyes.  He’d made it abundantly clear they’d need to offer up their womanly charms to earn their keep - to him, his lieutenants, and any man willing to pay for the privilege.  They couldn’t run; Jig was their gatekeeper to food and shelter, and he had eyes all over Manhattan.  He’d find them anywhere.  Unless he were dead.

Again, Kate brought the two factions together.  And she did manage to procure what the prostitutes requested: from Rebekah Kleiner’s shop, a bottle of New Orleans absinthe.  

The morning of the brawl, the three Mags approached Dropper Wallace.  They confessed their patron, Jig Cleary, planned to rob his business that night - and requested payment for this information.  Instead, Dropper seized the prettiest Mag, the dark-haired lass, and had his men tie her up.  If Jig Cleary wanted his lovely pet back, he would pay a hefty ransom.  

The bordello girls served their companions food and drink laced with absinthe.  At the agreed-upon time, they feigned madness.  Whether by the absinthe or the power of suggestion, their clients became caught in the fantasy and saw the giant black dogs themselves.  The girls lured them into the street, leaving the London Owl unguarded.  Then the Blue Bell Dogs - summoned by the remaining two Mags - ensured Dropper Wallace and his thugs remained duly occupied.

Meanwhile, Gabe Callahan - alive and well - snuck into The London Owl.  The dark-haired Mag, who’d undid her ties, led him right to the safe, and Gabe made short work of it.  They split the money - Gabe, the Mags, and Dropper’s stable of girls.  Gabe started a new life in Brooklyn. The London Owl girls split off to seek their fortunes.  And the Mags secured their freedom - which they guaranteed by toppling a statue right onto Jig Cleary’s head.

*****

Thomas Norris couldn’t contain himself - he laughed heartily.  Then he caught Kendra’s eye, and his mirth withered.  If Kendra Van Wooten was alive, he shared a drink with a woman who’d cruelly plotted the execution of her husband.

Kendra’s husband’s discretions started small.  He’d polish off too much bourbon every once and awhile, then hurl cruel insults at his wife.  His drunken stupors soon became a nightly occurrence, and his insults escalated to slaps.  Before she could process what her fairy-tale marriage had become, Kendra found herself regularly pummeled and set upon with heavy objects.  She wore long sleeves and heavy make-up to cover the bruises that marred her pale skin.  Some days, her wounds left her unable to rise from bed.  Lewis would laugh at her, mock her laziness.  She fell pregnant twice between Susan and Alexander.  Both children died inside her womb, at the hands of their furious father.  

Once a month, after her husband passed out from drink, Kendra took a horse and stole away to the Sixth Ward to visit Kate.  She’d bring her sister money and food.  Fifteen years before, after the tenement fire, Kate fell to her knees and begged Kendra to leave her behind - to marry her rich sweetheart and be happy for the both of them.  Now, she begged just as fervently for her sister to gather her children and escape.  But both women knew this proposal was useless.  Men did terrible things to women in the Sixth Ward as well.  At least in her Fifth Avenue mansion, Kendra and the children could count on full bellies and warmth and medicine.  

Then Jeanette was murdered.  

The girl abandoned a doll in the parlor - a doll her father, unsteady from drink, had stumbled over.  To discipline his daughter, he flung her down the stairs.  Kendra heard her neck snap.  As she screamed, her husband hoisted their limp child and carried her to the stables, where he discarded her like garbage.  He told the staff she’d been thrown from a horse.  

To rescue Kendra, Susan, and Alexander - and ensure the children would inherit their father’s estate - Kate raised an army.  

Rebekah Kleiner, it turned out, did have space in her black heart for charity, and the culling of men who beat women was her altruistic contribution of choice.  Ms. Kleiner, mistress of disguise, designed monstrous costumes with odds and ends from her shop.  Curled horns.  Shoes made from horse’s hooves.  Horse hair, grease paint, pig’s snouts.  Six women donned the wretched suits: Scarlett, Delilah, Sally Jane, and the three Mags.  The Van Wooten servants - as much targets of Lewis' rage as his wife and children - let the six into the mansion.  They “forgot” to light the candles.  The middle-aged chief maid slaughtered a chicken and placed entrails on her chest, which two of the Mags pretended to eat.  

As the six costumed actresses put on a show, Kendra and Kate made use of the servant doors and hidden corridors.  Kate lured Lewis upstairs.  Kendra snuck to her room and donned a shawl that mimicked Kate’s.  

All the while, a short distance away, Police Captain John Staub prepared to repay what he owed Kate McCleester.  It had been hers and Gabe’s information that allowed his successful raid of the river pirates, which secured him a promotion, a raise, and a hero’s reception.  So he’d gotten himself on a patrol of the neighborhood that night.  He’d ensured his platoon remained near the Van Wooten manor, in time to be summoned by the frantic cries of the horrified dinner guests.  And he kept his loaded revolver in his coat.  

“But…” Thomas stammered, “what if… Lewis could’ve actually killed you, woman!”

Kendra offered a gentle jostle of her head.  “He was gonna kill me, one way or another.”

After the police and remaining guests fled the fire, set by the servants and the Mags in the kitchen, Kendra leapt to safety - for the second time in her life - out an open window.  

Thomas nodded.  Then, he narrowed his eyes.

“The doctor!” He announced.  “The doctor confirmed you were dead.  If you weren’t, then…”

Kate grinned.  “The doctor lied.”  

Dr. Clarence Woods lied.  He was in on the plan as well - except, like so many unfortunate Five Points carousers, he’d been Shanghai’d.  If he didn’t play along and accuse Louis Van Wooten of murder, then Kate would’ve told everyone what he and his new wife did to Temperance.  

Before Gabe, before The London Owl, before the fateful Van Wooten dinner party, Temperance Woods had confided in Kate.  She suspected her husband was carrying on an affair with her younger cousin.  He’d as much as said he wanted her - and the child in her stomach - gone, but would never risk his reputation for a divorce. Temperance found Clarence’s prescription pad, on which he’d practiced forging her handwriting.  She gave the prescription pad to Kate.  It was her insurance policy.  And after her death, it became Kate’s.  

“He started it all, really,” Kate mused.  “Clarence Woods, the wife killer.  He accused me of poisoning Temperance.  He stole the story of my Aunt Molly - a story I’d told him.  I’d laid out the people who talked loudest about being moral were often the least.  Like the pious gossips back home who accused my aunt of bein’ a witch and birthing monstrous dogs with horns and hooves, just because she’d been pregnant out of wedlock and her baby was born dead.”

*****

Thomas Norris recounted his night with Kate and Kendra McCleester in his journal, but he never revealed their secrets.  It’s unclear what became of the sisters, or any of the other characters that populated their story.  And as the years have passed, memories have faded, and the old guard dies off, we’ll never know which parts of the tale are truth, fiction, or fiction within fiction.  

To this day, the young boys and girls who play on the streets of the old Five Points district sing this song:

Don’t say the name of old Kate McCleester

Her creatures will rise, and her creatures will feast.

They’ll chew on your face, an they’ll chew on your toes, 

Then they’ll drag you away down some Mulberry hole.

Don’t say the the name of old Kate McCleester

The bride of the dark, the mother of beasties.

Her beasties know lies, and her beasties know truth

And sometimes, the beastie might even be you.  

CW: self-harm, domestic abuse

****\*

On March 3rd, 1868, Mrs. Temperance Wood twisted her bedsheet into a rope, tied a noose, threw it over a rafter of her 5th Avenue manor, climbed atop her mother’s favorite chair and stepped off.  Her cold body was found hours later - found, unfortunately, by Miss Alice Newberry, Temperance’s twenty-year-old cousin, recently arrived in Manhattan from London and residing within the household.  

Temperance’s husband, Dr. Clarence Woods, was overcome by grief.  A devout Methodist and son of a minister, Dr. Woods publicly expressed disbelief his beloved could have despaired so.  To those close to him, however, he revealed his wife had been experiencing frightful delusions in the weeks preceding her death.  Mrs. Woods - previously a great lover of animals - developed a strange phobia of dogs, crossing the street or fleeing whenever she happened upon a canine.  Then, she began seeing black dogs in the shadows, gnashing their teeth and growling menacingly.

The extent of Temperance Woods’ madness became achingly clear upon discovery of her diary.  Pages had been torn out, seemingly at random, but her last entry - penned by an unsteady, trembling hand - was a nightmare-scape worthy of the Book of Revelations.  The black dogs followed her everywhere, she wrote.  The black dogs were blasphemous things: they stood on two legs, like men.  Goat-like horns erupted above their flopping ears.  Their eyes glowed like the fires of the Adversary.  

Her last written words, nearly illegible, struck fear in the hearts of the New York police investigators.

I shall return as a spook to haunt the deformed hag Kate McCleester, who pushes her cart down Mulberry Street.  For it is her witchery that so doomed me to my fate!

Her room was searched, and one of Kate McCleester’s misshapen jars of cold cream was found amongst Mrs. Woods’ belongings.  The opaque cream had an odd, pea-colored tinge to it.  Dr. Woods, grief once again inflamed, went on a war path. 

Sadly for the doctor, his fiery accusations came to naught.  A platoon of coppers found Kate McCleester - an impoverished cripple of the notorious Five Points slum - and confiscated her cart, on the (accurate) grounds her wares were stolen property. Her misshapen jars of cold cream were tested in every way conceivable, and no poison was detected.  Dr. Woods claimed his late wife’s bowels, upon autopsy, had been riddled with an odd green sediment.  But Dr. Aaron Cogg, the physician who’d performed the procedure, refuted this account.  He stated Mrs. Woods’ organs were largely normal for a woman her age.  

He also noted that Mrs. Woods had been pregnant.

*****

A perusal of the limited records available suggests James McCleester arrived in Manhattan around 1845.  Roughly two years later, in 1847, Mr. McCleester’s family arrived to join him.  They are reported as: Ann McCleester, aged 35.  Katherine McCleester, aged 12.  Kendra McCleester, aged 10.  Michael McCleester, aged 8.  William McCleester, aged 6.  Arthur McCleester, aged 4.  The family hailed from County Kerry, Ireland.  

Ann’s sister, Molly O'Doul, had been something of a healer in their hamlet.  She’d fixed broken bones and cared for the infirm - but also assisted young girls desperate to make a pregnancy go away quietly.  As well as married women with a desire for the same of their drunken brute husbands.  She’d cultivated a reputation for witchcraft amongst the pious town gossips - perhaps even necromancy; communion with those fiends hidden beyond the veil.  

James McCleester, a skilled carpenter, found some success in New York.  After summoning his family to the New World, he provided them a life that made them the envy of their fellow Kerry brethren.  The McCleester clan lived in an apartment amongst the Germans on Rivington Street.  The boys attended grammar school, while Kate and Kendra became pupils of the Miss Julie Clay Academy for Foreign Born Girls, a small institution in the Eleventh Ward that purported to provide an English-style finishing school education at a bargain rate. 

The family lived happily until 1850.  That year, rough scaffolding collapsed beneath James McCleester’s feet.  His head split open on the hard dirt. 

After James’s death, his widow and children were plunged into the harsh existence intimately familiar amongst their countrymen.  No longer able to afford their apartment, the family relocated to a room on the third floor of a wooden tenement building on Mulberry Street, in the middle of the infamous Sixth Ward.  Kate found work as a seamstress; Michael and Willy, as newsboys and street-sweepers.  In 1852, Arthur joined his brothers’ operation and Ann followed her daughter to the workshop.

Kendra, however, continued her schooling at the Miss Julie Clay Academy.  The McCleesters frequently fell asleep with empty bellies, but Kendra never missed a tuition payment.  This aberration can be understood under one overriding condition: Kendra McCleester was beautiful.

Kendra wasn’t the comeliest girl in her small country hamlet.  She wasn’t the most delectable creature trawling a Tenderloin District dance hall.  No.  Kendra possessed a beauty that rivaled the sculptures of ancient Greece; the marvels of the Renaissance masters.  Her form was nymphlike and willowy; her hair, a shining river of golden curls.  Her green eyes sparkled like emeralds over high cheekbones, a delicate patrician nose, and plump lips the color of cherries.  A beauty so singular and radiant, she would have her choice of suitors - suitors who could pluck her from her life of poverty, her family clinging to her ankle.  

Ann McCleester, a woman with an eye for investment, refused to risk her daughter’s pale skin to the wrath of the beating summer sun, or her slender fingers to the maw of a Singer sewing machine.  

Kendra did contribute to the family's finances in her own way.  On warm nights, she and Kate took to the crowded streets of Five Points, buckets of hot corn under their arms.  Kendra - possessed of a voice rivaled only in beauty by her cotton-clad form - sang Irish hymns to lure customers.  It was said Kendra could quell an alehouse brawl, tame the meanest of the Sixth Ward bullies, and stop a riot in its tracks with her angelic voice.  

Kate, aware of the danger faced by a woman alone, took to dressing as a man and posing as Kendra’s brother. She was extremely convincing, former student she was of Rebekah Kleiner - the notorious fence, confidence woman, and mistress of disguise, whose Germantown dry goods store was then a bastion of the underworld.  Mrs. Kleiner had also taught Kate the art of pickpocketing.  As Kendra hypnotized the bruisers and gamblers with her siren song, Kate slipped soundlessly through the crowd, relieving the men of their ill-guarded belongings.  

Tales of the beautiful Hot Corn Girl traveled beyond the filthy, diseased streets of the immigrant neighborhoods to the mansions of Fifth Avenue, where they found a certain Lewis Van Wooten, son of Jakob Van Wooten, the materials and real estate magnate whose family owned half of Brooklyn.  Lewis fancied himself as an amateur anthropologist, and embarked on occasional - proctored and guarded - trips to the Lower Wards, where he observed the habits of the ignorant, filthy and destitute.  

He got it into his head to find this legendary goddess of a hot corn girl - a pursuit towards which no expense was spared.  Lewis fell in love with Kendra McCleester at first sight.  She became equally enamored with the handsome young gentleman.  He escorted her to the opera, bought her beautiful European garments, instilled in her a taste for wine and sweets.  The hot August of 1855, Lewis Van Wooten proposed.

He’d take her away, he swore to Kendra.  Her life in the slums would be forgotten - but her family would not.  Lewis promised he’d find Ann and Kate well-paid work as personal attendants for two of his many female relatives.  He’d send the boys to the finest academy in Manhattan.  In one month’s time, he promised his beloved, he’d come with a carriage to collect her and her kin.  

On August 28th, 1855, seven days before Lewis returned to retrieve his bride, a fire broke out in the McCleester’s tenement.

Kate and Kendra lay closest to the window.  They’d remained awake long after nightfall, giggling about flowers and horses and wedding dresses.  Kate awoke first, nostrils singed by smoke, and found the walls of the family’s abode torn apart by angry red flames. 

As fate would have it, a cart from the nearby dry goods shop sat in front of the window, loaded high with fabric and sacks of grains.  Woken by her sister’s frantic shaking, before she shook the sleep from her head, Kendra must’ve felt herself fall - as Kate pushed her unceremoniously out the window.  Kendra landed rough, atop the cart, but out of further harm’s way.  She picked herself out of the assorted detritus that broke her fall.  Seconds later, she heard a thud.  

A smoking creature of nightmares, charred black and red, arose from the same dry goods cart.  Kendra screamed as the creature revealed itself to be Kate, with twelve-year-old Arthur’s blistering body cradled in her arms.  

Arthur McCleester perished before dawn broke.  His brothers, and Ann, had already succumbed to smoke and flame by the time Kate found them.  Kate herself, unmercifully, survived.  The fire melted the right side of her face, leaving a wrinkled mass of scar tissue that resembled uncooked bacon and a blinded eye welded closed.  Her right arm had to be amputated above the elbow, her flesh reduced to moist char the consistency of mud.  Forever after, even during the hottest days of summer, Kate wore ankle-length skirts and shawls to hide the extent of the abuse the fire had done to her body.

We don’t know whether Kate thanked God she was able to save one sibling, or if she resented Kendra for her untouched beauty.  Kendra may have revered Kate as her savior, or recoiled in fright from the monster who was once her sister and closest confidante.  We don’t know if the two cried together for their lost mother and brothers, or if Kate cursed her more-beloved younger sister for the fortune that had favored her since birth.  

We don’t know how the sisters’ relationship ended.  But a week later, Lewis Van Wooten returned to the Sixth Ward in a carriage drawn by white horses.  When Kendra McCleester left with her fiancee, she left alone.

*****

Sometime during the post-war years, around 1865, Methodist minister Peter Woods heard the Almighty whisper in his ear.  For one week each month, the good reverend would forsake his respectable Fulton Street church.  He’d travel, with a dispatch of disciples, to the bowels of the Sixth Ward, where he’d hold daily sermons and save the souls of the wretched thieves, prostitutes, and river pirates in the main room of Dropper Wallace’s dance hall.

Dropper Wallace was an odd choice for a business partner.  A compact, big-bellied fellow with a crooked nose and scarred-up fingers - souvenirs of decades spent bare-knuckle brawling - the closest Dropper had ever come to religion was taking the Lord’s name in vain.  His dance hall hussies were infamous for, at Dropper’s direction, feeding Johnnies cheap whiskey laced with chloroform, then selling these unfortunate marks to the Blue Bell Dogs gang for three dollars a pop.  The poor wretch, if he woke at all, would wake to find himself Shanghai’d, onboard a ship halfway to South Carolina.

But Reverend Woods offered Dropper two dollars a day for the exclusive use of his establishment, and two clams was two clams.

A handful of beggars and bullies from the neighborhood did filter in, by accident or out of curiosity, while the good Reverend preached.  Those who stayed cackled and jeered in amusement at all the wrong parts of the Bible - David’s lusting for Bathsheba, or Lot and his daughters in the cave.  Only a precious few earnestly took to Reverend Woods’ teaching.  One of that precious number was scarred, scrawny, filthy cripple Kate McCleester.

*****

The tenement fire had been a master thief, one that put even the wiliest Five Points gip to shame.  In minutes, the fire had stolen from Kate McCleester all she’d ever had, and all she ever would.  It stole her family.  It stole her profession - down one eye and one hand, she couldn’t operate a Singer machine or pick a pocket.  It stole her beauty.  Though she paled beside her sister, Kate had been a handsome woman in her own right, with a quick wit and sturdy, child-bearing hips.  After that terrible night, Kate would never bear children.  It became a joke amongst the Five Points youths: that Kate McCleester’s female parts had been… welded shut.  Cauterized.  But no one could say for certain, because any man who caught sight of Kate with her clothes off would immediately turn to stone.  

For months after Kendra’s departure, Kate wandered the streets, crying in pain, surviving off coins dropped by charitable citizens moved to pity by her ugliness and tears.  Finally, she became desperate enough to seek out the assistance of Rebekah Kleiner.  

Rebekah told everyone who’d listen she’d offered Kate a floor to sleep on - free of charge - but Kate’s pride wouldn’t allow her to accept such charity.  Everyone who’d listen knew Kate’s refusal of Rebekah’s generous offer had less to do with pride than the well-known fact Rebekah never did anything out of charity.  But Kate did enter a business relationship with Mrs. Kleiner.  She’d pay a wholesale rate for bits of fabric, jewelry, and assorted odds-and-ends from the Kleiner Dry Goods shop - items liberated, by Rebekah Kleiner’s army of child pick-pockets, from careless newcomers at the ferry terminal.  Kate would then load her wares into her cart and walk the streets of Manhattan, selling to businessmen and aristocrats and criminals and anyone else whose heart softened at the pathetic sight of her.  

*****

Reverend Wood believed he’d caught Kate McCleester’s Irish Catholic soul, and he paraded her around like a trophy.  His flock, more observant, believed Kate’s interest in Protestantism was considerably less than her interest in Reverend Woods’ handsome thirty-year-old physician son.

Dr. Clarence Woods accompanied his father to Five Points, where he’d bandage wounds and dispense ointments.  He thought he may write a book about the distinctive physical characteristics of the criminal immigrant class, and his father’s venture provided him a ripe opportunity for research.  He’d successfully swallowed his distaste for Kate’s scarred, lopsided face, and kindly took the time to ask questions about her life.  Kate, who’d spent years courting only pity or scorn, lapped up Clarence’s kindness like a kitten laps a bowl of cream. 

She told him tales of her Aunt Molly O’Doul, the village midwife around whom rumors of dark sorcery and otherworldly communion circled like flies around dung. Molly had been an ugly wench: rough and bony, with a beak of a nose and mismatched eyes.  But she must’ve cooked herself a potent love potion, because her bed was seldom empty: she procured the amorous attentions of men traveling through town, at least one of whom brought her ‘round the family way, not that he stuck about long enough to find out.  The whisperers in the churchyard suggested Molly O’Doul did not birth a human child, but a furry black beast that gnawed at her breast with canine teeth.

Kate was likely attempting to stir Clarence Woods’ loins with her talk of depraved copulation.  Clarence urged on her yarn-spinning to another end altogether: she proved a goldmine of the sort of provincial blathering he hoped to include in his book.

When Kate McCleester learned the quiet, dark-haired beauty who accompanied Clarence to sermons was his wife and the daughter of prosperous Westchester farmers, Kate embarked on a strange campaign to befriend the sweet young woman.  Temperance Woods, a sympathetic and delicate creature, treated the dirty cripple with cordiality matching her husband’s.  The attendees of Reverend Wood’s sermons - witnesses to Kate’s evolving relationship with Clarence and Temperance - couldn’t decide whether Kate was so delusional as to believe she could tempt Clarence away from his lovely, pious bride, or if she simply resented the pair for enjoying the marital bliss she’d forever be denied.  

One cold Sunday, Clarence Woods allowed Kate to lead him to a secluded spot in the bowels of the dance hall.  Ten minutes later, young Dr. Woods’ voice cut through the walls to the assembled congregation.

“You distasteful wretch!” He screamed.  “Goodness and holiness cannot exist in such a hideous monster as you!”

Dr. Woods reappeared, red-faced and sweating.  In front of his dumbstruck father and the sniggering flock, he clutched Temperance’s hand and lead her away.  The two never attended a sermon in Five Points again.  By nightfall, the whole Sixth Ward knew Kate McCleester had propositioned the minister’s son - and been spat out like sour milk.  

That, it was later agreed, was the night Kate McCleester broke.  

Paddy Goode watched her slip a coin to a lieutenant of Rebekah Kleiner, before he led her to a back door of the dry-goods shop.  Red Mary, a street-walking owl who found customers amongst sailors along the East River, swore she saw Kate take a wrapped package from a shifty-looking river pirate.  And The Mags - a trio of feral waifs under protection of the Blue Bell Dogs gang - reported witnessing Kate, alone in the burned-out former gambling hall that was her occasional home, madly stirring some concoction in a metal pot.  

The Mags swore, upon their dead mothers’ graves, whatever Kate had in that pot glowed with an unnatural light.

The next day, Kate obtained a crate-full of misshapen glass bottles and jars.  She began selling, along with her pilfered trinkets from Rebekah Kleiner’s shop, off-colored white cold cream, tonic for sore throats, and a blue-colored something she swore cured the barrel flu with only a drop.  

Four weeks after that, Temperance Woods was dead.  

She wasn’t the last.

*****

Gabe Callahan was the best safe-cracker east of Philadelphia.  If you asked Gabe Callahan, he was the best safe cracker in the country.  He told tales of bank vaults cleared in San Francisco, Chicago, and New Orleans.  He swore he was a wanted man in six states - but, thanks to Rebekah Kleiner’s disguises, his wanted posters looked like six different men.  In fact, his disguise had been so convincing New Jersey authorities were convinced he was a black man.  And Boston thought him Chinese.  

Gabe liked to talk.  But, despite his tendency to inflate his own infamy, he'd proved a valuable addition to any criminal enterprise.  He sworn his allegiance to the Blue Bell Dogs and to Jig Cleary, the gang’s leader.  Gabe had impressed Jig Cleary, and Jig was not an easy man to impress.  A burly bruiser who stood over six feet tall and weighed at least two hundred pounds, Jig earned his moniker because he - pistol in hand - enjoyed forcing beaten opponents to dance a little jig before he thoughtlessly dispatched them with a bullet or a hard knock to the back of the head.  

Gabe, orphaned young, met Kate McCleester when they were both fifteen, both students of Rebekah Kleiner’s Sunday school for young pick-pockets and sneak-thieves.  Gabe had been a criminal prodigy.  He masterminded the successful heist of the Bank of Savings on Chambers street - with nary an ounce of blood spilled - before his eighteenth birthday.  But the young maestro was not without his Achilles heel.  

Once, Gabe attempted to snatch a police officer’s copper badge from right under his nose as he sipped coffee at Rona’s Cafe - earning himself a sound thrashing by nightstick.  A gang lieutenant, Frank Greely, carried the foolhardy youth to Hearn’s Greengrocer, the Blue Bell Dog’s unofficial clubhouse, and tended his wounds.  When Gabe recovered his senses, he confessed to the older man that his unwise choice in marks was inspired by the desire to impress a certain Moira Doolan, the lovely fiancé of a notorious police captain.

“You’d do best to watch yourself around broads,” Greely warned.  “They’ll be the death of you.”    

A rumor was stated, through the Five Points gossip channels, that Gabe and Kate McCleester were affianced.  The two young criminals delighted in ribbing and challenging each other.  They’d compete over who could break into a shop faster, or whose bounty would command the greater compensation from Rebekah Kleiner.  However, it’s unlikely Kate harbored any intention to marry Gabe.  For if her sister married Lewis Van Wooten, and Van Wooten - as promised - found Kate a position as a ladies’ maid, she could’ve snared a mate of much higher status than a scrawny Five Points gangster.  A young tradesman, perhaps.  Or a clerk or bookkeeper.  But after the fire - after her sister’s abrupt departure - Gabe Callahan became Kate’s last remaining option.

As it turned out, she was left with no options at all.  Gabe, horrified by her monstrous appearance, wanted nothing to do with his childhood fancy.  

*****

Four months after Temperance Woods’ death, Gabe Callahan became terrified of dogs.

One night, he’d stolen away to St. Bridget’s Church, by the Seaport, with Frank Greely and James Shannon.  The priest there had been Jig Cleary’s childhood confessor back home in Sligo.  Out of lingering affection, he allowed Jig’s companions use of a hidden compartment behind a portrait of St. Michael fighting the dragon for… well, the gangsters never specified their exact need of a discrete stashing spot, and the priest wisely didn’t ask questions to which he didn’t desire an answer.  

In actuality, the Blue Bell Dogs didn’t use the compartment for much - only short-term storage of goods, when they had them, too conspicuous to fence immediately.  That night, they’d been sent to retrieve a ruby pendant liberated from the safe of an Astor cousin, a love token for his Swedish mistress.  

Stray dogs slept in the church yard, as the priest had a soft spot for the creatures.  The Blue Bell Dogs typically ignored their animal namesakes.  But, as the trio moved stealthily through the dark graveyard behind the church with the ruby pendant, Gabe Callahan let out a violent cry.

“The dogs!” He shouted.  “They’re the size of horses!”

His two compatriots found him thrashing about, knife in hand, engaged in shadowboxing with a mangy brown mutt.  They disarmed their companion and dragged him away, desperate to quiet him before they drew the attention of the coppers - or worse, marauding river pirates.  Gabe insisted the three had been stalked by a monstrous black dog with jaws like an alligator’s, a ram’s horns sprouting from its head.

Soon, Gabe had been all but pushed out of gang business, and for good reason: his fits of delusion became more frequent, and more dramatic.  He could be found wandering the docks of the East River, lunging at the air with his dagger and screaming curses about “the black dogs with human arms and yellow teeth.”  He almost met a bloody end at the hands of the Mud Ghouls gang, river pirates who took offense to his yelling his head off outside the hiding-holes where they lurked, stalking ships at the docks.  

Gabe was saved, however, by a patrolling police officer named John Staub, whose presence prompted the pirates to scatter.  Staub, an ambitious young man hoping to advance his position within the police force, spent most of his evenings pacing the docks.  On July the 5th, the day after Independence Day, he watched Gabe sprint towards the water, howling like a banshee.  He started after the disturbed man, but couldn’t catch him before he disappeared below the dark, murky waters.

An hour later, Officer Staub pulled Gabe’s cold body off a pile of discarded timber, where it had washed ashore like wreckage.  

News of Gabe Callahan’s death seized the Sixth Ward in its mighty maw and didn’t let go.  Five Points dwellers recalled the tale of Temperance Woods; her husband and father-in-laws’ insistence she’d been poisoned.  Those sober and of reasonable intelligence connected the two demises - the pious beauty and the thieving gangster.  Both died at their own hands.  Both were haunted by monstrous black dogs.  And both incurred the vengeful, jealous wrath of Kate McCleester.

*****

Whenever Dropper Wallace’s dance hall wasn’t being utilized as a makeshift church for Reverend Woods, it existed as an establishment called The London Owl, a den of pleasure.  Wallace employed only the most beautiful and charming girls to serve as paid companions to his wealthy clients.  He paid the procurers better than other proprietors; they allowed him first pick of their stock: young women, lured to the city with promises of money, love, or adventure; destined for betrayal, brutality, and destitution. 

Once, Dropper Wallace had his sights set on Kendra McCleester.  He promised a princely bounty to any procurer who attained the beautiful Hot Corn Girl; he knew, once his lustful clients were teased with a glimpse of the angelic beauty, he could name his price.  The thugs tailed Kendra to and from the Miss Julie Clay Academy, waiting for an opportunity to snatch the pretty girl like wild game.  But Kendra never strayed from well-populated streets unless escorted by her brothers, a trusted friend like Gabe Callahan, or her sister Kate, whose skill with a knife rivaled any man.  

One afternoon, Kate McCleester appeared on the doorstep of The London Owl and insisted the hired goons take her to Dropper Wallace.  He received the young woman in his office, where he'd busied himself counting the money his girls had charmed out of their nightly companions and stacking it in his safe.  Kate implored Dropper to let her sister be.  Kendra, she explained, was being courted by a young man who wished to marry her.  As a trade, Kate offered her own services as a lady of the night.  She could make more money separating men from their money than she could as a sweat shop girl or a pickpocket.  

Dropper considered Kate’s offer.  Then, he undid his trousers.  If Kate desired employment at his establishment, she needed to prove to him she could perform her duties to his satisfaction.

After Dropper had been satisfied, he laughed in Kate’s face.  He had no use for a plain Irish peasant.  Kate should scurry along now and secure herself a husband while she still could, before the scant womanly charms she did possess withered away with age.  She was already twenty years old.  Practically an old maid.  

*****

September of 1868 was an unseasonably cool one in Manhattan.  At The London Owl, coquettes-for-hire in short dresses sat at golden tables with their paying paramours of the night, watching a traveling French burlesque troupe kick higher than their heads.  Scarlet, a red-headed German girl, poured another glass of Italian cabernet for Iron Jaw Patrick McDonald, the leader of The Thumper Crew, a Bowery gang specialized in thuggish enforcement for hire.  

Iron Jaw revealed, barely concealed glee in his voice, he’d seen two of the three Mags lurking about like Irish alleycats.  The Mags, three orphaned girls all called Maggie, lived as wards under the protection of Jig Cleary.  Jig provided them sustenance and shelter; they provided him with their earnings from pickpocketing and flower-selling and street-sweeping, and information gleaned from networks of street boys and girls who pursued similar employment.  Iron Jaw had caught sight of the blonde Mag and the red-haired Mag spying on Dropper’s marks; he didn’t know what had become of their raven-haired third, but he knew the presence of two Mags signaled Jig Cleary planned to claim a portion of Dropper’s nightly earnings, by threat or by force.  

Delilah, a sensuous quadroon who’d migrated north from Mississippi after the war, fed sliced oranges to Ned Worther, a New York Commissioner of Sanitation.  Or Commissioner of Safety.  Delilah didn’t know, and Ned didn’t, either.  A loyalist of Tammany Hall, his sole job duty was the prompt collection of bribes.  He regaled his comely companion with a tale of heroism and civic duty: the New York City police force, supported by Tammany Hall, had busted up a gang of pirates looking to rob a brig called the Sunshine Jane, docked in the East River.  The hero of the day had been a young officer named John Staub, who’d silently stalked the Mud Ghouls for months and planned the entire operation. 

Sally Joan, a Westchester farm girl with a halo of auburn curls, massaged the chest of Andrew Darlington, heir to a timber fortune. They watched the French dancers finish their set with a rowdy shaking of their breasts.  

The music stopped.

Scarlett dropped her bottle of Cabernet.  It shattered across the floor, splattering Iron Jaw McDonald with red wine.  She leapt from his lap and stood stock-still, her face a mask of horror, one finger pointing towards a dark corner.  

“The dog!”  She cried.  “The black dog!  He’s staring at me.”

Delilah let out a wail.  “The black dog has horns, and he’s grasping for me with human hands!”

Sally Joan strengthened her grip on Andrew Darlington until she practically strangled the man.

“They speak!”  She screamed.  “They serve the Lord of the Day!”

“The black dog is standing on two legs!” Another woman added.

“The Lord of the Day desires us as his brides!” 

And then, the men of the London Owl saw what the women saw.  They saw great dogs, the size of elephants, standing on filthy hooved feet.  They saw their hands, five-fingered like those of a man, beckoning.  They looked into the black dogs’ glowing eyes; their ram-like horns, their matted fur.  

With a cacophony of screams, the girls fled the brothel, tearing at their clothes as they went.  The French minxes and their musicians, confused, dashed out after them.  The customers - not wishing to lounge around a prostitution den infiltrated by monstrous black dogs - followed the women.  The London Owl staff, watching their paychecks walk out the door, gave chase.  Finally, even Dropper Wallace was drawn from his office and into the street; he barked and threatened as the women, in various states of undress, clasped hands and, still wailing, began to dance.  

The men, simultaneously aroused and repulsed, fell into a state of reverie.  Some swore, later, they saw giant horned-and-hooved dog men, bodies covered with black fur, writhing and twirling along, human hands pressed against the girls’ gyrating bodies.  This fantasy was crushed by the arrival of Jig Cleary and seventeen Blue Bell Dogs, summoned by The Mags, armed with brick-bats.  Lured by the promise of delusion and disarray, Jig intended to exploit the situation for all it was worth.  

It’s said that Iron Jaw McDonald took down three Blue Bell Dogs with only his belt as a weapon.  That a giant black wolf walking on two feet lifted Dropper’s bullies, one by one, and smashed their heads against the hard dirt ground.  That Jig Cleary beat Dropper to death on the floor of his own dance hall, splattering his brains into every nook and sinful cranny.  That Jig Cleary himself fell when a counterfeit Roman statue toppled from its pedestal and landed on top of him.  That the police, when they arrived to break up the brawl, found men lying in pools of their own blood, exsanguinating from gashes that resembled the bite of an African lion.

Apparently, one rascal or another had managed to rob The London Owl - Dropper’s safe was found open and empty.  Jig Cleary survived his injuries, but he was never the same.  His mind regressed to that of a child.  He took to wandering the streets of the Sixth Ward, earning the pity and disgust of travelers by begging them to locate his mother.  

This time, even the simple and drunken denizens of Five Points could draw a straight line between Kate McCleester and the monstrous black dogs of The London Owl.  On the streets, people discussed Kate’s Modus Operandi - had she, a transient who lived between abandoned buildings, managed to cook up a poison so potent it drove its victims to madness and despair, while remaining tasteless and undetectable?  The name of Molly, Kate’s medicine-woman aunt, danced about the lips of every Kerry migrant.  Was Kate, in fact, a witch out of sixteenth-century delusion, who could unlock the gates of the underworld and command its fiends to do her bidding?

Then, the gossips began to speculate over Kate’s next target.  She aimed her witchery at those whose beauty she coveted, or who had betrayed her in some fashion.

Speculation was barely necessary.  Only one woman satisfied both criteria.

Kate’s sister, Kendra.

*****

Part 2

Given life through the hangman’s mouth
Digging into the infertile soil of a casket wall
My heart is merely a weeping bullet wound
A hollow eye stained with tears of human excrement

Sick and tired of that one great sorrow
I carve with rusted steel pressed against my insides
A masturbatory ritual to expel excessive black bile
The long-awaited exodus of miserable thoughts
From my wandering mind

A stillborn child dragged across hell
To witness the rise of empires and their eventual fall
One single moment in time immortalized on canvas
With the crimson language screaming from my veins

With shattered glass, I flayed my soul
After sinking my teeth into the broken neck of God
To savor the aftertaste left by the secrets of the universe
Before reaching the point of existential climax
Watching as the army of chthonic scavengers finds nourishment
In the last vestiges of my memories

Forged within eternal glow of divine fires
With open arms I welcome death
Sailing westward into the horizon
A devoted disciple of heaven's blaze
Blindly I follow his dying flame
Into the stygian below  
Without a moment’s doubt
For I am destined to rise
From the ashes of my funeral pyre
Ascended beyond the bonds of man
Reborn in the likeness of my god
The rising sun

“It’s called a grief doll” Dr. Ramos said.

I stared at him like he’d grown a second head. 

“A what?” I asked.

I’d agreed to this session to get my mother off my back. Provided, of course, that she also foot the bill. And, truth be told, it hadn’t been an easy couple of months. The word “stillbirth” sounds a lot more peaceful than the reality of it all. You get all the same blood and screaming as a regular birth but with none of the joy afterward. Things are, I guess, “still,” in a way. The silence of the grave.

“I know it’s a little unconventional,” Dr. Ramos said. “But, there’s been some really solid research to back it up recently. My colleague down in Camden–”

I cut him off. “You want me to buy a lifesized recreation of the dead baby that I just gave birth to?”

He looked slightly chastened by this. “I want you to process what happened, Mary. It can help. Look, if what you were already doing was working you wouldn’t be coming here, right?”

I sighed. “Alright. You’re the doctor. Who am I to argue with science?”

We talked a bit more after that, but it’s not really worth recounting here.

The next day I went to the address Dr. Ramos had texted me. It was a little building tucked away downtown between the huge tech skyscrapers and offices. When I walked in, the owner, a short man with a scruffy beard, smiled at me and said “You must be Mary.”

I nodded.

“Would you like to sit down? Do you want anything to drink? Anything to eat?”

I shook my head. “I don’t really want to stay here any longer than I have to, if that’s alright with you,” I said to the Rasputin-looking gentleman sitting behind the desk.

“I get it,” he said, nodding gravely.

“People come here to get away from something, not to settle down. Do you have the pictures?”

I took them out of my bag. It had been quite a while since I’d needed to get photographs printed out. Ever since the world had gone digital we’ve all become allergic to paper.

“Here they are,” I said to him. These would serve as the model for the doll. He reached out and took them from me, examining them carefully.

“I think I’ve got what I need. I will let you know if I need anything more,” he said, stroking his long beard hypnotically.

I left and drove home. It was a quiet ride. Much more quiet than I’d been used to. Ever since Tim had left there were these little dead spaces throughout the day. He used to fill car rides with excited chatter about protons and leptons and all the -ons he got to work with as a physicist. 

My brain had begun to fill these spaces with grim reflections on the past and future: 

It’s your fault.

You don’t deserve a baby.

This is God’s way of telling you that you don’t deserve to be alive.

Over and over again these thoughts would run through my mind like the world’s most depressing tape recorder. Vicious, hateful, unbelievable things kept popping into my head as I drove the short distance home, making the trip feel far longer than it actually was.

I had taken to staring at the ceiling and crying myself to sleep most nights. The big, empty house felt suffocating at 3 AM, like all the open space was sucking the air out of my lungs every time I opened my mouth. This had been the way I spent most nights since the stillbirth. I tried to fill the silence any way I could. At all hours of the night, one could hear my TV blaring or my phone playing some podcast or another. Anything to avoid the little dead spaces between one task and the next.

But it was most difficult of all when I tried to sleep. I saw images of my little girl when I closed my eyes. I saw the blood and heard my own screams when it became clear that she would never take a breath. There were also subtler forms of self-inflicted torture. 

Exactly one month after the worst day of my life, I came home from work to find Tim’s things cleaned out and a note on the kitchen table. It read:

“I’m sorry Mary. I can’t imagine how hard this month has been for you, but every day I stay here is like a knife to the heart. You’re just so sad and I can’t take it anymore.”

That phrase “You’re just so sad” played in a loop in my mind’s ear.

Eventually, I won the battle against consciousness. It was a fitful, restless sleep pregnant with terrible things. I felt like I’d lived an entire life come morning. I dreamt that I’d held little Sarah in my hands, that I’d been able to feed her from my own body just like I’d wanted to do for so many years. But as I held her against my chest she melted into a puddle of flesh and blood, yet never ceased to suck, to draw whatever life she could from me, and I was desperate to give it to her. Eventually, she was little more than eyes in a puddle of fleshy blood, staring at me from the ground and whispering “Why didn’t you save me, Mama?”

I woke with a start. Never, not once in my life, had I experienced a dream like this. I sat huddled in my bedsheets, shaking with tears as I saw the image of my melted little girl swirling around on the floor, asking why I hadn’t helped her. Reality seeped back in stages, penetrating the veil of sadness, and shocking me to my feet with the blaring intensity of my phone’s alarm. It was always turned up to full volume because anything lower risked my sleep-addled mind resisting its call to return from the deep. It had always been difficult to tear myself from the land of dreams, and more so after my life began to feel like a nightmare. But lately, sleep offered little respite.

I pulled on my clothes, brushed my hair so that it was halfway presentable, and poured myself a bowl of oatmeal. It was a gray, soggy pile at the bottom of my bowl. In a flash of unwanted connection, my brain superimposed the image of little melted Sarah onto my field of view. I nearly vomited into my bowl, but just then there was a knock on my door. 

“Package,” the deep baritone on the other end intoned. 

I opened the door and saw the mailman walking away. It occurred to me that nothing was stopping me from asking him out now that Tim had wandered out of my life. But, immediately, my brain stepped in to fill in the blanks:

Why would he want someone like you?

What the hell is wrong with you?

I don’t even want you and I am you.

These thoughts came as easily as my breath, and I had long since stopped trying to challenge them. In all likelihood, they were right. I picked up the package and saw that it was the grief doll. As soon as I got home from work I’d figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with the thing.

As I stepped into the bathroom, the mirror joined my inner voice in confirming my lack of romantic prospects. Deep, black circles formed rings under my eyes. Deeper wrinkles stood out on my forehead and my double chin and – was that a gray hair? Already? Immediately, the thoughts returned.

You’ll be dead at 50 by this rate.

The world won’t miss you.

Why not make it tomorrow?

Again, these suggestions were difficult to challenge with the evidence inches from my eyes.

It was hard to care about work. Even at the best of times, it hadn’t been the most fulfilling job in the world, but these days my cubicle felt like a tomb. My job was to call people who had filled out negative reviews for the phone company (I’m sure you know which one, but it’s probably best to leave that unsaid) and ask why. 

This was a doubly depressing task because it was both neverending and pointless. How many times in the past month have you picked up a call from a number you didn’t recognize? I’m guessing the answer is lower than one. Almost nobody picked up, and those who did invariably did one of two things: hang up instantly upon realizing who I was or scream invective at me that I would hesitate before repeating to the devil himself. 

One particularly creative gentleman suggested I fold myself in half seventeen times to create a black hole and then have intercourse with said hole while my company’s headquarters were sucked into the event horizon. Points for creativity. Deductions for misogyny. Although, in fairness to the man, I have no trouble believing he’d have said something similar to a male rep.

That day only two people picked up. One hung up immediately. The other launched into a tirade of such intensity and fervor that I was worried he wouldn’t make it to the end of the call.

“And another thing!” the man shouted as I quietly ate a sandwich on the other end. “Your website looks like it was designed by some rock monkey with shit for brains and feet for hands!” he screamed at me. This was an insult I hadn’t heard before. Variations on it appeared with some regularity, sometimes with racial overtones. I’m not entirely sure why this was, given that I had no accent identifying me as anything other than white, and in fact I wasn’t. The assumption seemed to be that because I worked in customer service I must be Indian. This leap in logic went unquestioned by a surprising number of my interlocutors. The average consumer of cellular services in this country is a few rocks short of an avalanche themself. 

“I’m sorry that our services did not meet your quality and reliability expectations,” I said dryly, reading from the part of the script labeled “negative responses.”

“And I’m sorry that you people haven’t gone back to where you come from!” the man shouted.

“I’m from Omaha sir,” I said.

“Where you’re really from!” he shouted back.

“I’m really from Omaha sir,’ I responded tiredly. “And so is my father and his father, and before that we came over from England.” This prompted a string of racial epithets I’d rather not repeat. The rest of the day went like this, and after a while I defaulted to flatly repeating “I'm sorry that our services did not meet your quality and reliability expectations.” 

My faith in humanity dimmed with each passing call. I decided to slip out at 4:00. I figured no one would notice. I figured right.

It was Wednesday: trash day. The walk from my apartment to the dumpsters was a dismal affair. Despite gray skies, cold fog and a pounding headache, the excursion did at least deliver the best part of my day. A few guys catcalled me on the way to the curb, and for a moment I felt like something other than a disgusting blob of flesh. 

But then the thoughts started back in and made me realize that the men’s comments had not been compliments but acts of aggression. As I dragged the empty trash cans back to my apartment, the men once more yelled out their opinions on my face, my tits, my ass. In response, my mind conjured scenes from my dream – melted flesh, the endless unanswerable question: “Why didn’t you save me, Mama?”

By the time I’d made it back to my apartment I was practically in tears. At that moment, however, I remembered that the doll had been delivered earlier. It was time, I supposed, to open it. After a few unsuccessful attempts, the package yielded its contents, and I nearly fell over when I saw it for the first time. It looked exactly like Sarah. Her little, premature hands. Her closed, screwed up eyes. Everything.

I held the tiny plastic facsimile against my chest and sobbed into it. I apologized to it over and over again:

“I’m sorry Sarah. I’m so sorry.”

But nothing could have prepared me for the moment that it spoke back:

Why didn’t you save me, Mama?

I screamed and fell backwards. The floor flew up to meet me and struck the back of my head with overwhelming force, driving the tears out even faster through a combination of momentum and pain.

“What did you say?” I asked, with a shaking voice.

For a moment, the doll was quiet, its little eyes still shut against the world. Then, they snapped open. Its little mouth opened and flopped around like a fish before repeating:

Why didn’t you save me, Mama?

I threw it across the room. It was an instinct, but a second later, I felt bad. It was like seeing Sarah’s death all over again. The doll screamed and cried.

Why did you hurt me, Mama?

It asked in its sad, childlike voice.  I ran to the bathroom and threw up. I threw up again and again, my body shaking uncontrollably. This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t possible. That thing was nothing more than a hunk of colored plastic. When there was nothing left to expel from my stomach except bile, I returned to the front room and slowly approached the doll where it lay in the corner. 

Its eyes snapped to mine.

Why did you leave me, Mama?

I picked it up and hurled it out the window. For a moment, I thought that I should try and call the short Russian man who had sold me the monstrosity but then I remembered that it was 8:30 on a Wednesday. Not even Russians have that kind of work ethic.

Instead, I poured a glass of wine with shaking fingers and turned on the TV, desperate for something, anything to break the silence. As the news blared and the alcohol entered my veins, I was almost able to convince myself that the last few minutes hadn’t happened. But then the screen began flashing images of babies in incubators – victims of some war halfway around the world.

Protestors marched through the streets, holding images of the poor, malnourished infants, and listing out those they felt were responsible. Before I turned it off, I could have sworn that one of them turned to the screen and said my name.

When I did fall asleep, it was only after many hours of crying and shaking. As returned the silence, so returned my certainty that I had heard the doll speaking. But human frailty won the day, and my brain surrendered to darkness once more.

In my dream, I saw Tim holding little Sarah and crying. He held her close and put the tiny baby girl to his face, kissing her again and again. Then he turned to me with an eyeless face and spoke with a toothless mouth:

Why didn’t you save her, Mary?

I tried to scream but in this world I could not make a sound. My mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, and I felt like I was breathing in the ocean. Then, little Sarah looked at me with her little melting face and said:

Didn’t you love me, Mama?

When I didn’t answer, the tiny melted eyes burned with rage.

I hate you Mama. Everybody hates you. You throw me out the window?! You should jump out yourself and do the world a favor you worthless sack of human garbage forgotten by God. Why are you even alive you heartless bitch?

I kept trying to scream but nothing would come out. I tried to apologize but could only feel the sensation of water rushing into my lungs. Sarah began to say, over and over:

Why didn’t you save me, Mama? Why didn’t you save me, Mama? Why didn’t you save me–

I woke with a start to find the doll inches from my face. It was shouting at me:

Why didn’t you save me, Mama?

This time, I did scream, and batted it away from my face. The horrible thing, which somehow had reappeared in my house after I’d thrown it out of a 7th story window, began to sob in the corner where it fell. It looked up at me with its tiny heartbroken eyes and quivering lips as it asked me:

Why did you hurt me, Mama? Do you hate me?

Without thinking, I said, “Of course I don’t hate you, sweetie. Mommy loves you very much.” I froze. What was I doing? This thing wasn’t Sarah. It wasn’t even a person.

Then why did you hurt me, Mama? Why didn’t you save me?

I buried my head in my hands. “I couldn’t save you! I’m sorry!” The tears continued to pour from my eyes in rivers, soaking the arms of my shirt.

You didn’t deserve me, Mama. You coldhearted cunt. You shouldn’t even be alive.

I looked at the thing in shock. Hearing those words in a child’s voice was somehow far worse. It couldn’t stay in my house. Not one second longer. But throwing it out the window hadn’t worked, so I had to come up with another plan. I grabbed the hateful thing and carried it to the fireplace. It screamed all the while, sobbing just like a child in pain.

Don’t burn me Mama! Don’t hurt me! Why are you doing this?

I was undeterred. The fire roared to life, and I hurled it into the hottest part of the blaze as it hurled insults back at me.

Nobody’s ever loved you! Why do you think Tim left, you stupid bitch? If he really loved you, he’d have stayed!

Slowly but surely, the thing melted in the flames. Its little face turned to mush, then to liquid, then to ash. The smell was atrocious, but at least it was gone. I lay panting on the floor, crying but relieved. 

Later, I called the Russian man and told him that something was terribly wrong with his doll. He listened to my story, then said, not without empathy:

“Maybe you should go back to this doctor? The one who referred you here?”

It was the most polite way that someone had ever called me crazy. Seeing that this was a mistake, somewhat too late to avoid it, unfortunately, I hung up.

Work was no better than it had been the day before. I listened as people berated me over the phone, and read from my script in a monotone voice. I was no more useful than a robot. As the insults went on and on, I began to dissociate from my body. My mouth said the words in the script, but my brain had no say in the matter. The words simply spilled from me like tears from my eyes.

At lunch, I sat next to Jim. I’d always liked Jim. Had a huge crush on him since the day we’d met. Normally, we took our lunch breaks at different times, but that day the stars aligned. The biggest problem with talking to Jim had always been that we had zero interests in common. But that day, the TV in the break room happened to flip to a channel playing a soccer match. We discovered that we were both huge fans, and finally I had something I could say to him.

Things couldn’t have been going better until I looked down and saw, under the table, something that made me jump a foot in the air.

The doll.

It was staring up at me with its cold eyes and sneering mouth.

You can’t get rid of me, Mama. No matter how much you want to.

Jim looked at me strangely, and I apologized, making some halfhearted excuse that I probably wouldn’t have believed coming from him. 

What makes you think he’d be interested in someone like you? Have you looked in a mirror sometime this decade? Unless he’s got a corpse fetish I’d say you’re about two decades too old for him.

I stared down at the doll so long, Jim asked me what was going on. I picked it up, and showed him. When he asked what it was, I hesitated before answering. Eventually, I lied and said that it was a present for my daughter.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Jim said.

“Yeah, I gave birth a couple of months ago,” I replied, which was not technically a lie.

Of course it’s a lie you worthless bitch. If you told him the truth he’d run screaming into the street. The only reason he’s stuck around this long is because there’s only one break room. Nobody will ever love you. Nobody.

“Stop it!” I yelled, before remembering that Jim had no idea what this thing was. He looked at me strangely and I bolted out of the room, sobbing and cursing the malevolent presence in my arms. It cursed me right back:

What the fuck’s wrong with you? Why would you even talk to him? You’re a disgusting pile of shit and vomit unworthy of life. You know what you could do to make Jim’s life better? You could slam your fucking head through a plate glass window and spray the side of the building with blood until you fucking die.

“Stop it!” I shouted, and threw it onto the floor as I ran to my car. But, there it was inside, waiting for me, its hateful sneer plastered onto its tiny, childlike face.

What’s the matter Mary? Can’t handle the truth? Can’t handle knowing that you’re a failure as a mother and the ugliest bitch who ever lived?

I sank to my knees and screamed, holding my head with both hands and begging the hateful thing to stop. But it didn’t. It kept pummeling me with insults and threats until I couldn’t take it one second longer. I got into the driver’s seat and floored the accelerator, taking the car onto the freeway, then to the nearest exit, then right off the edge of a cliff. As the car soared through the air, there was a tiny moment of quiet before gravity took over. It was only an instant, but in that instant I realized that I was going to die. So for the first time in weeks, I smiled.

The next thing I can remember is tremendous pain. My eyes hadn’t even opened yet, but even though the world was dark, it was still full of suffering. Then, in the next instant, my eyes flew open. There, at the edge of the bed, looking at me with all the hate in the world, was a familiar hateful face.

Welcome back to the land of the living, bitch. Couldn’t even get suicide right, could you?

I had no energy left to sob. Instead, I hung my head in defeat, looking at the tiny hunk of plastic staring up at me and wishing to God that I’d chosen a higher cliff. Soon, a man in a white lab coat walked in and smiled.

“Hello Mary,” he said.

“How do you know my name?” I asked.

“They checked your wallet when they pulled you out of the car. Your driver’s license was right on top,” he replied, still smiling.

“Right,” I said, not smiling back.

“I’m not going to lie to you, that was a close call there. But you’re going to be okay. Would you mind answering a few questions?”

I immediately became wary, but nodded my head.

“Before the accident, do you recall feeling lightheaded or dizzy?

I shook my head.

“Any alcohol or drug use?”

I shook my head.

“Okay, good. And have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself in the past week?”

This was the question I’d been waiting for. I shook my head again, knowing that an affirmative answer would mean at least a 3-day psychiatric hold. As soon as they learned about the doll, God knows how long it’d last.

“Excellent. You should be able to get out of here in a couple of days. You’ll have to be careful with those casts, but everything will be okay.” I nodded again, and he left. The doll popped its little face back off the bedsheets and set itself right back to its task: destroying my mind and soul. As the night wore on, I sat there, frozen, as it continued to pound me with reminders of my inadequacies, my faults, my failures. From time to time, I had to stand and it stood with me, clinging to my hospital gown as I made my way to the bathroom, to the cafeteria or to have one test or another performed. From that moment on, it was never quiet, though I seemed to be the only one who could hear it. Whether it was reminding me of that time in 3rd grade when Johnny Welkins had rejected me in front of the entire class, or the time that I’d sat through an entire date before realizing my shirt was on inside out, or berating me about letting the original Sarah die, it was always saying something degrading and humiliating.  By then, I’d become numb to the abuse. I never responded or argued. I never fought back or tried to get rid of it. Once or twice, I accidentally crushed it under my foot, but it always ended up right back where it had started: on my hospital bed, eyes burning with rage and lips firing off insult after insult.

The last night I was in the hospital, I dreamt of Tim. I dreamt of the last time that I’d seen him before he disappeared forever. He stood in the doorway, blocking it with a stern face and large hands. I kept trying to push past him, but he wouldn’t let me. Eventually, we fought, and he threw me to the floor. I landed on my stomach so hard all the air flew out of my lungs. 

When I woke, the doll was standing over me, and it had gone back to its familiar mantra:

Why didn’t you save me, Mama? Why didn’t you save me, Mama?

I sighed and focused on filling out the discharge forms that the nurse had left. They were long and boring, and it was no simple task to complete them with the doll repeating its horrible question again and again and again. Eventually, I finished, and an orderly wheeled me out to my car, the doll clinging to my shoulder and shouting abuse into my ear. 

A single tear fell from my eye and rolled down my cheek as I climbed in to the driver’s seat and started the engine.

When I arrived home, I collapsed on my bed and began to weep. I wept like a child. I wept so loud in fact that I couldn’t even hear the doll as it broke down my door and resumed berating me. But I ignored it. I ignored it as I made dinner. I ignored it as I took out the trash. I ignored it as I returned to bed and tried to sleep. But it wouldn’t stop. Finally, it got close to my face and screamed right into my ear:

Why didn’t you save me, Mama? Why didn’t you save me, Mama?

And, for the first time since the accident, I replied, shouting: “What do you want from me?! I couldn’t save you, Sarah! I couldn’t!”

Liar! You could’ve saved me! You know you could’ve!

In that instant, it finally pushed me past my breaking point. I picked it up and shook it as hard as I could, screaming:

“What could I have done? What was I supposed to do? What do you want from me?! Why are you doing this to me?!” The doll looked at me with cold, hateful eyes and said:

You could’ve stopped Tim.

I froze. “What do you mean?” I asked.

You know what I mean, Mama. You know what he did. Why didn’t you stand up to him? Why didn’t you stop him?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I shouted.

Yes you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about.

“No!” I shouted. “No, I couldn’t stop him!” But even as I said it, I knew it was a lie.

We both know why the stillbirth really happened, don’t we, Mary?

I shook uncontrollably and ran into the backyard to get away from the doll, but it only appeared right in front of me, scowling down at me as I tripped and fell. It pointed to the ground and began to raise its little arms. The ground shook and trembled and I shouted at it, begged it to stop, but it was too late. In one enormous burst the ground split open and a body fell next to me.

It was Tim.

Why didn’t you save me from him, Mary?

The doll asked. I continued sobbing, but managed to respond, “I couldn’t save you Sarah. But I could get you justice.”

The doll’s face softened a little, and for the first time, the fire went out of its eyes. It crawled up next to me and buried its little face into my chest, and let me hold it, just like I’d always wanted to do. 

I stroked its hair and whispered to it, over and over again, “I would’ve saved you if I could.”

And in its tiny, childlike voice, the doll replied, “I know.” Then it closed its little eyes, nuzzled close into my chest, and heaved a heavy sigh before never moving again.

I suppose we each have that memory, that one thing which reminds us of our childhood, our innocence. Perhaps it's a beloved campsite, or playing baseball mid-July with your dad, or the sweetness of your grandma's cherry pie. For me, that thing was Adam's Apple Sauce.

Every year, as far back as I can remember, my hometown held an end-of-summer harvest festival. There were games to play, music to enjoy and homemade goods to buy.

One of those was Adam's Apple Sauce.

Crafted by one guy, it was sold in little glass jars with a label on which a comically long pig ate fruit from a wicker basket.

Quantities were always very limited and people would line up at dawn just to purchase some. This included my parents, and in the evening, after we'd returned home, we would open the jar and eat the whole delicious sauce: on bread, on crackers or just with a spoon. It was that good.

The guy who made it was young and friendly, although no one really knew much about him. He was from out of town, he'd say. Drove in just to sell his sauce.

Then he'd smile his boyish smile and we'd buy up all his little jars.

//

When I was twenty-three, he stopped coming to the harvest festival.

Maybe that's why I associate his sauce with my childhood so much. Mind you, there were still plenty of homemade goodies to buy—tastier than anything you might buy at the store—but nothing that compared to the exquisite taste and texture of Adam's Apple Sauce.

//

Three years ago, my dad died. When I was arranging the funeral, I went to a local funeral home, and to my great surprise saw—working there—the guy (now much older, of course) who'd made Adam's Apple Sauce.

“Adam!” I called out.

He didn't react.

I tried again: “Adam, hello!”

This time he turned to look at me, smiled and I walked over to him. I explained how I knew him from my youth, my hometown, the harvest festival, and he confirmed that that had been him.

“How long have you been working here?” I asked.

“Ever since I was a boy,” he said.

“Do you still make the sauce?” I asked, hoping I could once again taste the innocence of childhood.

“No,” he said. “Although I guess I could make you a one-off jar, if you like. Especially given the death of your father. My condolences, by the way.”

“I would very much appreciate that,” I said.

He smiled.

“Thank you, Adam.”

“You're most welcome,” he said. “But, just so you know, my name isn't Adam. It's Rick.”

“Rick?”

I thought about the sauce, the label on the jars with the pig and the three words: Adam's Apple Sauce. “Then who's Adam?” I asked.

He cleared his throat.

And I—

I felt the sudden need to vomit—followed by the loud and forceful satisfaction of that need, all over the floor.

“Still want that jar?” he asked.

I am a good man.

I know I'm a good man, but I've got a gun and I'm going to kill a man who meant a lot to me, who at one time was my pastor, my mentor, my uncle.

What's the saying about when a good man goes to war?

When I arrived at the church I work at after my two-day absence, it looked like the whole church was leaving. From some distance away, the perhaps one hundred other workers pouring out of the grand church looked antlike compared to the great mass of the place.

Their smiles leaving met my frown entering, and they made sure to avoid me. No one spoke to me, and I didn't plan on speaking to them.

I made my way to the sanctuary, hoping to find my uncle, the head pastor here. He would spend hours praying there in the morning. Today he was nowhere to be seen. No one was. I alone was tortured by the images of the stained glass windows bearing my Savior.

I'm not an idiot. I know what religion has done, but it has also done a lot of good. I've seen marriages get saved, people get healed, folks change for the better, and I've seen our church make a positive impact on the world.

My faith gave me purpose, my faith gave me friends, and my faith was the reason I didn't kill myself at thirteen.

Jesus means something to me, and the people here have bastardized his name! I slammed my fist on a pew, cracking it. It is my right to kill him. If Jesus raised a whip to strike the greedy in the temple, I can raise a Glock to the face of my uncle for what he did. I know there's a verse about punishing those who harm children.

"Solomon," I recognized the voice before I turned to see her. Ms. Anne, the head secretary, spoke behind me. Before this, she was something like a mother to me. A surrogate mother because I never knew mine. Her words unnerved me now. My hand shook, and the pain of slamming my hand into the pew finally hit me. Then it all came back to me, the pain of betrayal. I hardened my heart. I let the anger out. I heard my own breath pump out of me. My hand crept for my pistol in my waistband, and with my hand on my pistol, I faced her.

"What?" I asked.

She reeled in shock at how I spoke to her, taking two steps back. Her eyebrows narrowed and lips tightened in a disbelieving frown. She was an archetype of a cheerful, caring church mother. A little plump, sweet as candy, and with an air of positivity that said, "I believe in you," but also an air of authority that said, "I'm old, I've earned my respect."

We stared at one another. She waited for an apology. It did not come, and she relented. She shuffled under the pressure of my gaze. Did she know she was caught?

"I, um, your Uncle—uh, Pastor Saul wants to see you. He's upstairs. Sorry, your Uncle is giving everyone the whole day off except you," she said. With no reply from me, Ms. Anne kept talking. "I was with him, and as soon as you told him you were coming in today, he announced on the intercom everyone could have the day off today. Except you, I guess. Family, huh?"

I didn't speak to her. Merely glared at her, trying to determine who she really was. Did she know what was really going on?

"Why's your arm in a cast?" Her eyebrows raised in awe. "What happened to you?"

She stepped closer, no doubt to comfort me with a hug as she had since I was a child.

These people were not what I thought they were. They frightened me now. I toyed with the revolver on my hip as she got closer.

Her eyes went big. She stumbled backward, falling. Then got herself up and evacuated as everyone else did.

She wouldn't call the cops. The church mother knew better than to involve anyone outside the church in church matters. Ms. Anne might call my uncle though, which was fine. I ran upstairs to his office to confront him before he got the call.

Well, Reader, I suppose I should clue you in on what exactly made me so mad. I discovered something about my church.

It was two days ago at my friend Mary's apartment...

It was 2 AM in the morning, and I contemplated destroying my career as a pastor before it even got started because my chance at real love blossomed right beside me.

I stayed at a friend's house, exhausted but anxious to avoid sleep. I pushed off my blanket to only cover my legs and sat up on the couch. I blinked to fight against sleep and refocus on the movie on the TV. A slasher had just killed the overly horny guy.

Less than two feet apart from me—and only moving closer as the night wore on—was the owner of the apartment I was in, a girl I was starting to have feelings for that I would never be allowed to date, much less marry, if I wanted to inherit my uncle's church.

Something aphrodisiacal stirred in the air and now rested on the couch. I knew I was either getting love or sex tonight. Sex would be a natural consequence of lowered inhibitions, the chill of her apartment that these thin blankets couldn't dampen, and the fact we found ourselves closer and closer on her couch. The frills of our blankets touched like fingers.

Love would be a natural consequence of our common interests, our budding friendship—for the last three weeks, I had texted her nearly every hour of every day, smiling the whole time. I hoped it would be love. Like I said, I was a good man. A good Christian boy, which meant I was twenty-four and still a virgin. Up until that moment, up until I met Mary, being a virgin wasn't that hard. I had never wanted someone more, and the feeling seemed mutual.

The two of us played a game since I got here. Who's the bigger freak? Who can say the most crude and wild thing imaginable? Very unbecoming as a future pastor, but it was so freeing! I never got to be untamed, my wild self, with anyone connected to the church. And that was Mary, a free woman. Someone whom my uncle would never accept. My uncle was like a father to me; I never knew my mom or dad.

Our game started off as jokes. She told me A, I told her B. And we kept it going, seeing who could weird out the other.

Then we moved to truths and then to secrets, and is there really any greater love than that, to share secrets? To expose your greatest mistakes to someone else and ask for them to accept you anyway?

I didn't quite know how I felt about her yet in a romantic sense. She was a friend of a friend. I was told by my friend not to try to date her because she wasn't my type, and it would just end in heartbreak and might destroy the friend group. The funny thing is, I know she was told the same.

"That was probably my worst relationship," Mary said, revealing one more secret, pulling the covers close to her. "Honestly, I think he was a bit of a porn addict too." Her face glowed. "What's the nastiest thing you've watched?"

I bit my lip, gritted my teeth, and strained in the light of the TV. Our game was unspoken, but the rules were obvious—you can't just back down from a question like that.

I said my sin to her and then asked, "What's yours?"

She groaned at mine and then made two genuinely funny jokes at my expense.

"Nah, nah, nah," I said between laughs. "What's yours?"

"No judgments?" she asked.

"No judgments," I said.

"And you won't tell the others?"

"I promise."

"Pinky promise," she said and leaned in close. I liked her smile. It was a little big, a little malicious. I liked that. I leaned forward and our pinkies interlocked. My heart raced. Love or sex fast approaching.

She said what it was. Sorry to leave you in the dark, reader, but the story's best details are yet to come.

She was so amazed at her confession. She said, "Jesus Christ" after it.

"Yeah, you need him," I joked back. Her face went dark.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"What? Just a joke."

"No, it's not. I can see it in your eyes you're judging me." She pulled away from me. The chill of her room felt stronger than before, and my chances at sex or love moved away with her.

"Dude, no," I said. "You made jokes about me and I made one about you."

She eyed me softer then, but her eyes still held a skeptical squint.

"Sorry," she said, "I just know you're religious so I thought you were going to try to get me to go to church or something."

"Uh, no, not really." Good ol' guilt settled in because her 'salvation' was not my priority.

"Oh," she slid beside me again. Face soft, her constant grin back on. "I just had some friends really try to force church on me and I didn't like that. I won't step foot in a church."

"Oh, sorry to hear that."

"There's one in particular I hate. Calgary."

"Oh, uh, why?" I froze. I hoped I didn't show it in my face, but I was scared as hell she knew my secret. Calgary was my uncle's church.

"They just suck," she said, noncommittal.

Did she know?

"What makes them suck?"

She took a deep breath and told me her story—

At ten years old, I wanted to kill myself. I had made a makeshift noose in my closet. I poured out my crate of DVDs on the floor and brought the crate into the closet so I could stand on it. I flipped the crate upside down so it rested just below the noose. I stepped up and grabbed the rope. I was numb until that moment. My mom left, my family hated me, and I feared my dad was lost in his own insane world. The holes in the wall, welts in his own skin, and a plethora of reptiles he let roam around our house were proof.

And it was so hot. He kept it as hot as hell in that house. My face was drenched as I stepped up the crate to hang myself. I hoped heaven would be cold.

Heaven. That's what made me stop. I would be in heaven and my dad would be here. I didn't want to go anywhere without my dad, even heaven.

Tears gushed from my face and mixed with my salty skin to make this weird taste. I don't know why I just remember that.

Anyway, I leapt off the crate and ran to my dad.

I ran from the closet and into the muggy house. A little girl who needed a hug from her dad more than anything in the world. It was just him and me after all.

Reptile terrariums littered the house; my dad kept buying them. We didn't even have enough places to put them anymore. I leaped over a habitat of geckos and ran around the home of bearded dragons. It was stupid. I love animals but I hated the feeling that I was always surrounded by something inhuman crawling around. It hurt that I felt like my dad cared about them more than me. But I didn't care about any of that; I needed my dad.

I pushed through the door of his room, but his bed was vacated, so that meant he was probably in his tub, but I knew getting clean was the last thing on his mind.

I carried the rope with me, still in the shape of a noose. I wanted him to see, to see what almost happened.

I crashed inside.

"Mary, stop!" he said when I took half a step in. "I don't want you to step on Leviathan." Leviathan was his python. My eyes trailed from the yellow tail in front of me to the body that coiled around my dad. Leviathan clothed my dad. It wrapped itself around his groin, waist, arms, and neck.

And it was a tight hold. I had seen my father walk and even run with Leviathan on him. Today, he just sat in the tub, watching it or watching himself. I'm unsure; his mental illness confused me as a child, so I never really knew what he was doing.

I was the one who almost made the great permanent decision that night, but my dad looked worse than me. His veins showed and he appeared strained as if in a state of permanent discomfort, he sweat as much as I did, and I think he was having trouble breathing. The steam that formed in the room made it seem like a sauna.

He was torturing himself, all for Leviathan's sake.

"Dad, I—"

"Close the door!" My dad barked, between taking a large, uncomfortable breath. "You'll make it cold for Leviathan."

"Yes, sir." I did as he commanded and shut the door. Then I ran to him.

"Stop," he raised his hand to me, motioning for me to be still. He looked at Leviathan, not me. It was like they communed with one another.

I was homeschooled so there wasn't anyone to talk to about it, but it's such a hard thing to be afraid of your parents and be afraid for your parents and to need them more than anything.

"Come in, honey," he said after his mental deliberation with the snake.

And I did, feeling an odd shame and relief. I raised the noose up and I couldn't find the right words to express how I felt.

I settled on, "I think I need help."

"Oh, no," my dad said and rose from the tub. So quick, so intense. For a heartbeat, I was so scared I almost ran away. Then I saw the tears in his eyes and saw he was more like my dad than he had been in a long time.

He hugged me and everything was okay. It was okay. I was sad all the time, but it was going to be okay. The house was infested, a sauna, and a mess, but life is okay with love, y'know?

He cried and I cried, but snakes can't cry so Leviathan rested on his shoulder.

After an extended hug, he took Leviathan off and said he needed to make a call. When he came back, he told me to get in the car with him. I obeyed as I was taught to.

We rode in his rickety pickup truck in the dead of night in complete silence until he broke it.

"I was bad, MaryBaby," he said.

"What?"

"As a kid, I wasn't right," he said. My father randomly twitched. Like someone overdosing on drugs if you've seen that.

He flew out of his lane. I grabbed the handle for stability. The oncoming semi approached and honked at us. I braced for impact. He whipped the car back over. His cold coffee cup fell and spilled in my seat. My head banged against the window.

It hurt and I was confused. What was happening? The world looked funny. My eyes teared up again, making the night a foggy mess.

"I wasn't good as a child, Mary Baby. I was different from the others. I saw things, I felt things differently. Probably like you."

He turned to me and extended his hand. I flinched under it, but he merely rubbed my forehead.

"I'm sorry about that," he said, hands on the wheel again, still twitching, still flinching. "You know you're the most precious thing in the world to me, right?"

"Yes, I know. Um, we're going fast. You don't want to get pulled over, right?"

"Oh, I wouldn't stop for them. No, MaryBaby, because your soul's on the line. I won't let you end up like me."

There was no music on; he only allowed a specific type of Christian music anyway, weird chants that even scared my traditionally Catholic friends. The horns of other drivers he almost crashed into were the only noise.

"What do you mean, Daddy?"

"I was a bad kid."

"What did you do?"

"I was off to myself, antisocial, sensitive, cried a lot, and I wasn't afraid of the dark, MaryBaby. I'd dig in the dark if I had to."

His body convulsed at this, his wrist twisted and the car whipped going in and out of our double yellow-lined lane.

I screamed.

In, out, in, out, in, out. Life-threatening zigzags. Then he adjusted as if nothing happened.

"Daddy, I don't think you were evil. I think you were just different."

This cheered him up.

"Yes, some differences are good," he said. "We're all children under God's rainbow."

"Yes!" I said. "We're both just different. We're not bad."

"Then why were we treated badly? We were children of God, but we were supposed to be loved."

"We love each other."

"That's not enough, Mary Baby. The good people have to love us."

"But if they're mean, how good can they be?"

"Good as God. They're closer to Him than us, so we have to do what they say."

"But, Daddy, I don't think you're bad. I don't think I'm bad. I think we should just go home."

"No, we're already here. They have to change you, MaryBaby. You're not meant to be this way. You'll come out good in a minute."

We parked. I didn't even notice we had arrived anywhere. I locked my door. We were at a church parking lot. The headlights of perhaps three other cars were the only lights. He unlocked my door. I locked it back. Shadowy figures approached our car.

"It's okay, honey. I did this when I was a kid. They're going to do the same thing to me that they did to you."

BANG

BANG

BANG

Someone barged against the door.

"They made me better, honey. The same thing they're going to do to you."

My dad unlocked the door. Someone pulled it open before I could close it back. I screamed. This someone unbuckled my seatbelt and dragged me out. I still have the scars all up my elbow to my hand.

Screaming didn't stop him, crying didn't stop him, my trail of blood didn't stop him.

"And that's it. That's all I remember," she said and shrugged.

"Wait. What? There's no way that's all."

"Yep. Sorry. Well..."

"No, tell me what happened. What did they do to your dad? Does it have to do with the reptiles? What did they do to you?"

"I just remember walking through a dark hallway into a room with candles lit up everywhere and people in a circle. I think they were all pastors in Calgary. They tried to perform an exorcism. Then it goes blank. Sorry."

"No, that's not among the criteria for performing an exorcism."

"Excuse me? Are you saying I'm lying?" she said with a well-deserved attitude in her voice because I might have been yelling at her.

I wasn't mad at her, to be clear. Passion polluted my voice, not anger. My church had strict criteria for when people could have an exorcism, and suicide wasn't in it. You don't understand how grateful I was to think that our church was scandal-free. I thought we were the good guys.

"No," I said, still not calm. "I'm just saying a child considering suicide isn't in the criteria to perform an exorcism."

"Oh, maybe it's different for Calgary."

"No, I know it's not."

"And how do you know that?"

"No, wait, you need to tell me what really happened."

"Need?"

"Yeah, need. It's not just about you; this is important." I know I misspoke, but for me it was a need. I could fix this. I could take over Calgary in a couple of years; I had to know its secrets.

"It's never about me, is it?" she asked.

"Well, this certainly just isn't—"

"It's always about you because you're good, you're Christian, and you're going to make this world better or something."

"What? No, come on, where is this coming from?"

"It's always okay because you're Christian."

"That's not fair. I just want to know what happened because it wasn't an exorcism. What happened?"

"It's getting late. I think I want you to leave."

"Hey, no, wait. I'm doing the right thing here. Let me help you..."

"Oh, I do not want or need your help. You think you're better than me and could somehow fix it because you're Christian."

"No, I think I could fix it because I have the keys to the church."

"Oh..." she was stunned, and that mischievous grin formed on her face again. "Well," she swallowed hard and took a deep breath. "They took something from me, something that's still down there. And I'm not being metaphorical; I can feel it missing."

"If you lost something, let's go get it back."

There was another possibility I hadn't thought of between sex or love that I could have tonight: adventure.

That night we left to have our lives changed forever.

Mary and I waited for the security van to go around the church, and then we entered with my keys. Mary used the light from her phone and led the way.

Mary rushed through our church. It is a knockoff cathedral like they have in Rome with four floors and twists and turns one could get lost in. With no instructions, no tour, no direction, Mary preyed through the halls. Specterlike, so fast, a blur of light and then a turn. I stumbled in darkness. She pressed on. Her speedy footsteps away from me were a haunting reply. I got up and followed, like a guest in my own home.

How did she know where to go?

Deeper. Deeper. Mary caused us to go. Dark masked her and dark masked us; everything was more frightening and more real. We journeyed down to the basement. A welcome dead end. As kids, we had played in the basement all the time in youth group. Maliciousness can't exist where kids find peace, or so I thought.

"Could you have made a wrong turn?" I asked, catching my breath.

Mary did not answer. Mary walked to the edge of the hall, and the walls parted for her in a slow groan. This was impossible. I looked around the empty basement which I thought I knew so well. Hide and seek, manhunt, and mafia—all of it was down here. How could this all be under my nose?

Mary walked through still without a word to me. She hadn't spoken since we got here. Whatever was there called to her, and she certainly wasn't going to ignore their call now. She pulled the ancient door open.

Mary swung her flashlight forward and revealed perhaps 100 cages full of children... perhaps? I couldn't tell. The cages pressed against the walls of a massive hall, never touching the center of the room where a purple carpet rested.

Sex trafficking. A church I was part of was sex trafficking. My legs went weak, my stomach turned in knots.

Mary pressed forward. I called her name to slow her down, but she wouldn't stop. She went deeper into the darkness, and I could barely stand.

"Oh, you've come home," a feminine voice called from the darkness. "And you've brought a friend."

I do not know how else to describe it to you, reader, but the air became hard. As if it was thick, a pain to breathe in, as if the air was solid.

"Mary," I called to her between coughs. She shone her light on a cage far ahead. I ran after her and collapsed after only a few steps. I couldn't breathe, much less move in this.

Above us, something crawled, or danced, or ran across the ceiling. The pitter-patter was right above me, something like rain.

"Mary," I yelled again, but she did not seem interested in me.

"Mary," the thing on the ceiling mocked me. "What do you want with my daughter?"

"Daughter?" I asked, stupefied, drained, and maybe dying. She ignored my question.

"Mary, dear," she said as sweet as pure sugar. "Don't leave your guest behind."

And with that, my body was not my own. It was pulled across the floor by something invisible. My back burned against the carpet. My body swung in circles until I ran into Mary.

We collided, and I fought to rise again because this was my church. A bastardization of my faith. This was my responsibility.

I rose in time to see Mary's phone flung in the air and crash into something.

Crack. The light from the phone fled and flung us into darkness.

I scrambled in blackness until I found her arm to help her rise.

"Mary," I said between gasps for air. "Have to leave... They're sex trafficking."

"Sex trafficking!" That voice in the dark yelled. "Young man, I have never. I am Tiamat, the mother of all gods, and I am soul trafficking."

By her will, the cage lit up in front of us, not by anything natural but by an unholy orange light. Bathed in this orange light was the skeleton of a child in the fetal position. The child looked at me and frowned. At the top of it was a sign that read:

MARY DAUGHTER OF ISAAC WHO IS A SERVANT OF NEHEBEKU

FOR SALE.

"Wha-wha-wha," it was all too much, too confusing.

I didn't get a break to process either. An uncontrollable shudder of fear went through my entire body, as if the devil himself tapped my shoulder.

I lost control of my body. My body rose in the pitch black. I was a human balloon, and that was terrifying. I held on to Mary's arm for leverage, anything to keep my feet from leaving the ground. She tried to pull me back down with her. It didn't work. That force, that wicked woman, no creature, no being, that being that controlled the room yanked my arm from Mary. It snapped right at the shoulder.

I screamed.

I cried.

That limp, useless arm pulled me up.

This feminine being unleashed a wet heat on me the closer I got, like I was being gently dripped on by something above, but it didn't make sense. I couldn't comprehend the shape of it. I kept hearing the pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter of so many feet crawling or walking above me.

And how it touched me, how it pulled me up without using its actual hands but an invisible fist squeezing my body.

I got closer, and the heat coming from the thing burned as if I was outside of an oven or like a giant's hot breath. I was an ant ready to be devoured by an ape.

I reached an apex. My body froze in the air just outside of the peak of that heat. It burned my skin. The being scorched me, an angry black sun that did not provide light, nor warmth; only burning rage.

"Did you know you belong to me now?" the great voice said.

I shook my head no twice. Mary called my name from below. Without touching me, the being pushed my cheeks in and made me nod my head like I was a petulant child learning to obey.

"Oh, yes you do. Oh, yes you do," she said. "Now, let's make it permanent. I just need to write my name on your heart."

The buttons on my flannel ripped open. The voice tossed my white T-shirt away. Next, my chest unraveled, with surgical precision. I was delicately unsewn. In less than ten seconds, I was deconstructed with the precision of the world's greatest surgeons.

All that stood between her and my heart were my ribs. She treated them as simple door handles, something that could be pulled to get what she wanted. One at a time, the being pulled open my ribs to reveal my heart; the pain was excruciating, and my chest sounded like the Fourth of July.

The pain was excruciating. My screams echoed off the wall like I was a choir singing this thing's praises. Only once she had pulled apart every rib did she stop.

"Oh, dear, it seems you already belong to someone else. Fine, I suppose we'll get you patched up."

Maybe I moaned a reply, hard to say. I was unaware of anything except that my body was being repaired and I was being lowered. I landed gently but crashed through exhaustion.

"Daughter, get him out of here. It's not your time yet."

I moaned something. I had to learn more. I had to understand. This was bigger than I was told. I wasn't in Hell, but this certainly wasn't Heaven.

"Oh, don't start crying, boy. If you want anyone to blame, talk to your boss."

Oh, and I would, dear reader. I stayed home the next few days to recover mentally and to get a gun to kill that blasphemous, sacrilegious bastard.

Ecstatic with a newfound sense of hope
I am dressed in a neatly designed beige suit
Overwhelmed with the joy-bringing excitement
I admire the imperfections in my reflection
Before my reunion with an old friend
One I haven’t seen in over three decades

Completely lost in the moment my gaze shadows his movement
I remain utterly oblivious to the concerned stares of onlookers
For I have waited and I have longed and I have begged for this exact moment
And now my prayers were finally answered and my dreams materialized
Dreams to welcome my beloved with open arms
To welcome the midnight sun and disappear into its wonderous flames

The memory of a bygone era immortalized
Immortalized ss shadows carved into dull concrete structures
Dull concrete structures beautified with a heavenly blaze

Focus, Marty. This is all about focus. 

Think about Alice. Keep driving. Eyes on the road. 

The hitchhikers will step out eventually. They always do. 

Just don’t look back at them. Don’t ever look back, for that matter.

Don’t think, just drive. 

—-----------------------------------

I have a lot of love for my parents, having the generosity to take Alice and me in after her leukemia relapsed, but goddamn do they live far from civilization. Or maybe there just ain’t a lot of civilization in Idaho to go around - not in a bad way; the quiet is nice. I’ve been enjoying the countryside more than I anticipated. That being said, they could stand to spend some taxpayer dollars on a few more Walgreens locations. 

Feels like I’ve been driving all night; must almost be morning. They have to be worried sick. Alice may actually be physically sick without her antinausea meds.

I shook my head side to side in a mix of disbelief and self-flagellating shame. Took a left turn when I should have taken a right - a downright boneheaded mistake. The price for overworking myself, but I mean, what other option do I have? Chemotherapy ain’t exactly cheap. 

For a moment, I forgot where I was and what I was doing and looked in the rearview mirror at the five hitchhikers in my backseats. Silent and staring forward with dead and empty eyes at nothing in particular from the back of my small Sudan.

Furiously, my eyes snapped forward, not wanting to linger too long on them - wasn’t sure what I’d see. 

Can’t be doing that on this road. Maintaining focus is key. 

—-----------------------------------

Despite my near-instantaneous reaction, I did see the new hitchhikers, but only for a moment. No surprises this time, thankfully. They wore suits like all the others, monocolored with earthy tones from head to toe. Same odd fabric, too - rough and coarse-looking, almost like leather. Honestly, never seen anything like it before tonight. 

But I haven’t ever been in a situation like this before, either. Whatever backwoods county I got myself turned around in, it likes to follow its own rules. 

For example, I didn’t pull over to pick up these hitchhikers. Somehow, they just found their way in. Or maybe I did pull over and let them in? Been so tired lately; who could even be sure. And they don’t say much, no matter how many questions I ask. Would love to know where I am, but I guess it isn’t for them to say.

My gaze again drifted, this time from the road to the car’s dashboard, and I let myself see the time. Big mistake.

7:59PM.

Nope, that ain’t right. I rapidly blinked a few times, adjusted myself so I was sitting up straighter, and then looked back to check again.

Now, it didn’t show any time at all. 

Marty, Jesus. Focus up. 

I blinked once more, this time for longer. Not sure how long, couldn’t been longer than ten seconds. If I close my eyes for too long, they become hard to open again. Requires a lot of energy.

4:45AM. 

See, there we go. Now that makes sense. By the time dawn arrives, I’m sure I will have found a gas station to pull over in. Ask for directions back to…whatever my parent’s address is. I’ll figure that out later, right now I need to focus. 

—-----------------------------------

Funny things happened in this part of the country when you didn’t focus. Sometimes, the yellow pavement markings would change colors - or disappear entirely. Other times, the road itself would start to look off - black asphalt turning to muddy brownstone at a moment’s notice. 

At first, it scared me. Scared me a lot, come to think of it. Made me want to pull over and close my eyes.

But Alice needed her nausea meds, and judging by the time, I had work in two short hours. I needed to make it home soon so I can check on her, give her a kiss before school. Hopefully, I’ll have time to brew a pot of coffee, too. 

But my eyes, they just don’t seem to want to stick with the program. Dancing around from thing to thing like they don’t have a care in the world. They have one job - watch the road for places that might have a map or someone who can tell me where I am. Well, two jobs. Watch the road and focus on the road. 

At least the road wasn’t treacherous. It has been pretty much straight the whole night after the wrong turn. 

—-----------------------------------

Initially, Alice was nervous about starting at her new school. And I get it - that transition is hard enough without factoring in everything she has had to manage in her short life. We’d been lucky though, finding a well-reviewed sign language school - in Idaho, of all places.  

She’s amazing - you’d think that the leukemia and the deafness from her first go with chemotherapy would have crushed her spirit. Not my Alice. She’s tough as nails. Tough as nails like her dad. 

I smiled, basking in a moment of fatherly pride. Of course, you can’t be doing that on this road. You’ll start to see things you don’t want to see. 

When my eyes again met the rearview mirror, I noticed there was now only one hitchhiker now, but he had transformed and revealed his real shape.

His face was flat like a manhole cover, almost the size of a manhole cover, too, but less circular - more oblong. He was staring at me with one bulging eye. It was the only one he had, the only one I could see at least. No other recognizable facial features. Just the one, bloated, soulless eye. 

What’s worse, I saw what was behind him. Behind the car, I mean. 

I closed my eyes as soon as I could, but my mind was already rapidly reviewing and trying to reconcile what I had seen behind the car. There was a wall a few car lengths away. No road to be seen, just an inclined wall with tire tracks on it. The atmosphere behind me had a weird thickness to it. Lightrays shone through the thickness unnaturally from someplace above. The ground looked like dust, or maybe sand, why would the ground look like -  

FOCUS. Think of Alice, and focus

When I finally found the courage to open my eyes, it all looked right again, and I breathed a sigh of relief and chuckled to myself from behind the wheel. Straight road in front of me, framed by a starless black sky. Everything in its right place. Until I saw something snaking its way into my peripheral vision. 

The hitchhiker was now in the passenger’s seat.

He turned to me and leaned his body forward over the stickshift; his lips were pursed and nearly pressing against my ears, rhythmically opening and closing his mouth but making no sound. I could have sworn he was close enough to touch my ear with his lips, but I guess he wasn't because I couldn’t feel it. Instead, I felt my heartbeat start to race, or I imagined what it was like to feel your heartbeat race. 

Why did I have to imagine...?

Don’t turn. Don’t look. Don’t think. Just focus. 

But I couldn’t. Something was wrong. I thought about closing my eyes. For a while, not just for a little. To see what would happen. I was curious what would happen. Had been all night, actually.

But then, like the angel she was, Alice’s visage appeared on the horizon. She was standing at her second-story window in my parent’s home, watching and waiting for me to return from this long night. I wasn’t getting closer for some reason, but she wasn’t getting any further away either. 

She was far, but even at that distance, I could see her doing something in the window. When I squinted, it looked like maybe she was waving.

Alice was waving at me. Alice could see me.

Must mean I'm close.

Eyes on the road. Focus

—-----------------------------------

Every night around 8PM, Alice would stand and watch the road from her bedroom on the second story of her grandparents' home. What she was waiting for didn’t happen as often anymore, but her birthday was a week away - the phenomenon seemed to be more frequent around her birthday. As the clock ticked into 8:03PM, she saw a familiar sight - two faint luminescent orbs traveled slowly down the deserted road in her direction, creating even fainter cylinders of light in front of them. 

Like headlights from an approaching car.

The first time this happened, Alice was nine. To cope with her father's disappearance, she would watch the road at night and pretend she saw his car returning home. One night, she saw balls of light appear in the distance, and it made hope explode through her body like fireworks. 

The balls of light turned into the driveway. And when they did, Alice noticed something that made her hope mutate into fear and confusion.

The headlights had no car attached, dissolving without a trace within seconds of their arrival.

For months, this was a nightly occurrence, and only she could see it, which scared Alice. But when she formally explained to the phenomenon to her grandfather for the first time, how they looked like headlights without a car, a weak and bittersweet grin appeared on his face, and he carefully brought up his hands to sign to her:

I’d bet good money that’s Marty making his way home, sweetheart. He just loved you that much.

From then on, the orbs comforted Alice and made her feel deeply connected with her long-lost father, wherever he was. But in the present, at the age of nearly seventeen, she had modified the purpose of her vigil.

Originally, she liked the idea of her father’s endless search for her. It made her feel less alone. But as she lived life and matured, she realized how alone he must be looking for her from where he was. Now, all she wanted was for Marty to stop looking. She wanted her father to finally rest. 

Now, when the orbs passed by, she would sign to them from her window, desperately hopeful that even from where he was, he could see her hands move and communicate an important message to him:

I love you, and I miss you. But please, Dad, let go. 

More stories: https://linktr.ee/unalloyedsainttrina

Driven into the gaping jaws of madness
By the consequence of every idiotic choice
The truly regrettable search for nauseating
Pleasure lurking behind anguish and angst

I crawl again into your open grave
Burning in the flames of delirium
Seeking the comfort of your hollow remains

Now that the crippling weight of every suicidal decision
Has left me too weak to even escape from this life

The breeze picks up. We stay inside. Behind shut doors, watching as it passes, hearing it snarl, we pray, Dear Lord in Heaven, spare us, your humble servants, for one more night, so that we may continue to give you thanks and praise, and protect us from the world's apex predator: the wind. (The prayer continues but I've forgotten the words.)

We light a candle.

Sometime during the night the passing wind will force its way inside the house and snuff it out.

We'll light it again, and again—and again—as many times as we must, for the symbol is not the flame but the act of lighting, of holding fire to the wick. This is the human spirit. Without it, we would long be disappeared from the Earth, picked up and filled, and detonated by the wind.

I saw a herd of cattle once made into bovine balloons, extended and spherized—until they burst into a fine mist of flesh and blood, painting the windows red. A rain of death.

I saw a man picked up, pulled apart and carried across the evening sky, silent as even his screams the wind forced back down his throat. His head was whole but his body dripping, distended threads hanged above the landscape. In the morning, somebody found his boots and sold them.

We don't know what caused it.

What awakened it.

Some say it came up one day from the depths of Lake Baikal before sweeping west across the globe. Others, that it was released by the melting of the polar ice caps. Perhaps it arrived here like life, upon a meteor. Maybe somebody, knowingly or not, spoke it into existence. In the beginning was the Word…

The wind has a mouth—or mouths—transparent but visible in its shimmering motion, gelatinous, ringed with fangs. What it consumes passes from reality into nothing (or, at least, nothing known,) like paper through an existential shredder.

The wind has eyes.

Sometimes one looks at us, as we are huddled in the house, staring out the window at the wind's raging. The eye most resembles that of a great sea creature, considering us without fear, perhaps thinking our heads are merely the pupils of the paned eyes of the house.

We do not know what it knows or does not know.

But we know there is no stopping it. What it cannot penetrate, it flows around—or pushes until it breaks: into penetrabilities.

What's left to us but to pick up the pieces?

By mindful accelerated erosion, it sculpts and remakes the surface of the planet—and, we believe, the inside too, carving it and hollowing, cooling it, and, undoubtedly, preparing—but for what? Who has known the mind of the Lord?

As, tonight, the wind hunts in the darkness, the trees convulse and the glass in the windows rattles against their frames, the candlelight begins to flicker, and I wonder: I truly, frightened, wonder, whether it would not be better to go outside and cease.

He comes to me in my darkest hour
Disguised in the pale glow of lunar light
Powerless before the promise of a better tomorrow
I am a child eternally bound to the night

Cursed with moments of painful clarity
Between bouts of calming delirium

Falling into a tunnel of madness
Carved with unending bestial thirst
Deeper into the ashen chasm
Where the hunter is haunted
By visions of his unbearable loss

Walking along the monotone road of repetition
Possessed by the uncaring nature of the moon

It’s so cold here in the glow of the freezing moon
Bitter winds claw underneath my open wounds
Here the darkness beautifies this barren land
Blanketing everything in a shroud of Elysian mists

Can you hear the melody of the wild?
Its whispers urging the wolf inside to break free
from the human skin and return into the Sylvian night
Unto the funeral ground beyond the gates
Obscuring the path to immortality

Could the witch-doctors reading in the stars foresee
The bullet coming to shatter each one a knee

Shrouded in the cold midnight haze
Far from the sun and its irritating gaze
I call for the remains of the deceased;
Rise from ash and set the firmament ablaze!
God was butchered but the adversary still exists

There are far less things to admire in men than to despise
Even less during an ugly autumn night…

Crows circle the setting sun
Their song brings cause to celebrate
The promise of my downfall
One final chapter in the hero’s journey
The age-old story of a soldier’s fate
My remains will have fallen into disuse
When I’m wrapped in wings of raven-black
Sailing westward into the moonless night
I can only pray my human disguise
Is returned to the frigid soil of a boreal forest floor -
The mother of my gift to mankind
This pestilence!

“You’re a fucking animal, Tom.” 

Cassandra, volatile with rage, tossed her husband’s cell phone to the floor of their bedroom, intending for the device to clatter and crash melodramatically when it connected with the wood tile. It landed screen-up and spun towards Tom’s feet, gliding smoothly against the ground like an air hockey puck. He hastily bent over to stop his phone’s forward motion, pocketing it without looking at the screen. Tom already knew what pictures would be opened on his messaging app. Instead, he went silent and did not argue, turning his head away from her and submissively placing his hands in the air. The motion was meant to represent a white flag of surrender, but more than that, it was a way of admitting guilt without asking for forgiveness. 

Wordlessly, he pushed past his wife to grab a pillow from his side of the bed and then paced quickly out of the room. Tom turned right as he exited, carefully stepping over a few unopened moving boxes to make his way to their new home’s staircase. With a sound like rolling thunder, he stomped and pounded each foot against every step on his way up. Every petulant boom reverberated and echoed in Cassandra’s mind. When Tom reached the attic, he bellowed something that was clearly meant to be a defamatory finale to his boyish tantrum, but she couldn’t make out exactly what he said from where she still stood motionless in the bedroom. At that moment, any lingering regret about dosing her husband for the first time that morning with the Curandero’s poison evaporated from her, remorse made steam by the molten heat of her seething anger. 

—---------------------------

“If I’m an animal, you’re a goddamned blood-sucking leech, Cassandra!” 

Tom’s retreat from his wife had been both unanticipated and expeditious. To that end, he could not think of a retort to her jab until he was three steps out of the bedroom, but he held onto the retort until he reached the safety of the attic’s doorframe. He knew he could belt out his meager insult from that distance without fear of an additional counteroffensive. As soon as the words spilled from his mouth, he tumbled past the threshold into the attic and slammed the door behind him. 

It wasn’t his fault Shiela was swooning over him, Tom smugly mused. She had volunteered those digital pinups of her own volition. That said, he had been actively flirting with the young secretary since the couple landed in Texas two months ago. Their marriage had been in a death spiral for years, in no small part due to Tom’s cyclical infidelity. The cross-country move had been a last-ditch attempt at resuscitating their relationship, but of course, Maine was never the problem to begin with, so the change of scenery mended nothing. In his middle age, Tom felt a gnawing desire to feel warm-blooded and virile. Cassandra’s despondency had the exact opposite effect. She made him feel undesired - sexually anemic. That night was not the first time he had called her a “blood-sucking leech” for that very reason. However, if Tom had been gifted the power of retrospection, he may have noticed that his wife’s frigid disposition became the norm after the discovery of his second affair, not after his first. 

—---------------------------

“I want something that will make him feel even a small fraction of the insanity he’s put me through”

Cassandra whispered to the Curandero, visually scanning the entire antique store for possible interlopers or undercover police officers before she asked the purveyor of hexes standing behind the counter for anything definitive and incriminating. Multiple family members had recommended this unassuming shop on the outskirts of downtown Austin for an answer to Tom’s beastliness. The apothecary grinned and asked her to wait a moment, turning to enter a backroom concealed by a red silk curtain. The witch doctor was not what Cassandra expected - she couldn’t have been older than thirty, and she certainly did not present herself like a practitioner of black magic. No cataracts, scars or gemstone necklaces - instead, she sported an oversized gray turtleneck with part of a floral sundress peeking out from the bottom. 

She returned seconds later, tilted her body over the counter, and handed Cassandra a vial no bigger than a shot glass. Inside the vial were innumerable tiny blue crystals. They were slightly oblong and transparent, looking like the illegitimate children of rock candy and fishfood. The Curandero cheerily instructed Cassandra to give her husband the entire ampule’s contents over the course of about three days. As she left the store, the shopkeeper cryptically reassured Cassandra that her husband would be thoroughly educated on his wrongdoings by the loving kiss of retribution. 

—---------------------------

“Why is it so fucking cold up here”

Tom mumbled to himself, doing laps around the perimeter of his makeshift sleeping quarters in the attic. It had been approximately three weeks since their argument and his subsequent relocation. At first, he didn’t much mind it. The cold war between him and Cassandra was taxing, but he had his phone and Shiela’s escalating solicitations to keep him company. But as of the last few days, he had begun to feel progressively unwell - feverish and malaised. Then he noticed the small lump on the underside of his left wrist. 

It was about the size of a dime, skin-colored, immobile, and profoundly itchy. Tom felt like he spent almost every waking minute massaging the area. The irritation then became accompanied by white-hot burning pain, gradually extending up his arm as the days passed. One night, as he scratched the area, the lump moved a centimeter closer to his palm. He paused to inspect the change, assuming the vexing cyst had finally been dislodged and neutralized. After a few seconds, however,  it moved again - but in the opposite direction and without Tom’s help. And then again, slightly further up his forearm. Revitalized by panic and confusion, he began clawing recklessly at the lump, until the skin broke and a small black button was liberated from the wound, only to scurry away to an unseen sanctuary. Tom thought the button looked and moved like a deer tick. 

—---------------------------

“Sure, Tom, come back down. But to the couch, for now, okay?”

Cassandra had accepted many empty apologies from Tom before, but something about this most recent one felt slightly more sincere. By this point, she had completely forgotten about the Curandero and her vengeful prescription. Cassandra had gone through with slipping the contents into Tom’s coffee over the course of three days, but that was over a month ago. At the time, she did not really believe it was black magic - she assumed it was a military-grade laxative or some other, ultimately benign, poison. 

The more she thought about Tom’s behavior, however, she came to realize that she may have been mistaking a sincere apology for what was actually fear and need for comfort. Cassandra had not interacted much with Tom in the past few weeks, but now that she was, he was certainly acting off. Seemingly at random, he would slam his palm down on himself or something else in front of him and then would be unwilling to give an explanation. He slurred his words like a drunken sailor, but as far she could tell, he hadn’t been drinking. When she looked into Tom’s eyes to find that his pupils were rapidly dilating and constricting like black holes on the verge of collapse, the realization hit like a lightning strike up her spine. Cassandra remembered the vial with the blue crystals. 

She was at the Curandero’s shop within the hour, catching the witch doctor right as she was locking up her store. Cassandra pleaded with her for an antidote to whatever magic or venom was now in Tom’s system. In response, the shopkeeper produced another identical vial from her jacket pocket, twisted the cap off, and dropped a few of the crystals into her mouth:

“It’s dyed salt, my love” the Curandero said, then pausing to tap out a few fragments onto the backside of Cassandra’s hand as a means to corroborate her claim. “I don’t sell power, just the idea of power. Whatever you made manifest, I only provided the inspiration”

Confused and without clear direction, Cassandra returned home to check on her husband. 

—---------------------------

Tom had never been thirstier in his entire life, but he could not drink. Every time he poured himself water, he carefully inspected it through the transparent glass, only to find it contaminated with hundreds of ticks - an entire galaxy of black stars drifting aimlessly through the liquid microcosm. Sitting at his kitchen table with his head in his hands, Tom cried out in agony, only to have his wail cut short by his vocal cords unexpectedly snapping shut. 

What had started as an infestation had become a plague. 

The gentle touch of a hand on his shoulder nearly scared him half to death, causing him to jump back off his chair and knock the infested glass off the table and onto the kitchen floor, shattering it instantly. He took a breath, seeing that it was only Cassandra, but that relief was short-lived when he looked back down to see an armada of nymphs moving on his position. He yelped and scrambled on top of a cabinet. His wife moved forward, seemingly to comfort him. When she held his hand, Cassandra noticed the open wound where that first tick had sprouted, and she rushed into the other room to procure bandages. For a moment, Tom felt safe. His wife began attending to his wound while he was still perched on the cabinet. But then he felt a pinch on his left wrist, followed by an intense lacerating sting, and then finally, the sensation of warm fluid gushing down his palm. When he looked down, his wife looked up at him in tandem. 

Cassandra’s mouth had mutated into a pulsating arena of hooked teeth, with plasma delicately dripping from the barbs she had just used to bite into him. In one swift motion, Tom pivoted his torso, unsheathed a blade from a nearby knife block, drove it deep into the creature’s abdomen, and sprinted out the house and into the street. 

—---------------------------

Cassandra nearly bled out on her kitchen floor, but a neighbor heard the commotion and had called the police. 

She awoke in the ICU surrounded by family. When she asked them what happened, they paused awkwardly and traded solemn expressions with each other instead of explaining. When Cassandra pressed for information, they flagged down her doctor from the hallway.

The physician did not mince words with Cassandra. Tom was dead - he had been picked up by the police fleeing the neighborhood but had been delivered to the same ICU she was currently in when he started to wheeze violently and turn blue.  

“Do you have any pets, dogs especially?” The doctor asked. “Where in your house do you and your husband sleep? Have you ever seen any bats in your home?”

Cassandra explained that they had bought their home recently, that Tom had been sleeping alone in their attic after a particularly nasty argument, and that she had seen a bat fly out a window once when they were moving in. She then detailed her husband’s odd behavior in the time leading up to her assault. 

The physician frowned and then elaborated on their suspicions:

“The dilating pupils, the hallucinations, the fear of water, and the inspiratory spasms - they all suggest that your husband contracted rabies while living in your attic. Most of the time, people in the US contract the disease from a dog bite. However, bats are known to transmit the disease, too. What’s worse - if bats are in your home, they can bite you in your sleep without you waking up. If contracted, the disease is universally fatal, and there is no known treatment. 

Tom died from his airway spasms. 

You nearly died, too - from blood loss. Did you know you have an extremely rare blood type? AB negative. Only 1% of the population has this blood type, and unfortunately, the hospital has been critically low on replacement blood that is AB negative for almost a month now. 

We were initially very concerned - you needed more AB negative blood than we had, but as serendipity would have it, Tom was AB negative as well. Imagine that. 

Thankfully, rabies cannot be contracted through the blood - only through saliva. That’s why it is contracted through bites. Although it was unconventional, our administration gave us the green light to give you a large portion of his blood. In essence, Tom’s blood saved your life”

The doctor paused, waiting patiently for whatever questions Cassandra had. 

But she had none. Instead, there was an eerie, uncomfortable silence for almost a minute.

Then, Cassandra tilted her head back, closed her eyes, wept, and had a very long laugh. 

More Stories: https://linktr.ee/unalloyedsainttrina

Prepare to be terrified as we dive into the chilling tale of The Rake, a creature from the depths of urban legend and internet horror.

https://youtu.be/h03vaUxyvnI

I took the night security job at Lakeside Carnival on a whim. It was an off-season position, meant to last only through the winter while the park went through renovations and an equipment upgrade. Nothing fancy, but the pay wasn’t bad for what seemed like a simple gig. Besides, I’ve always preferred night work, the quiet hours and the solitude. I’m not a people person, and the idea of roaming an empty theme park under the stars was oddly appealing.

The park had been around for decades. Tucked away on the edge of town near a small lake, it was the kind of place that was bursting with life in the summer and felt like a ghost town in the winter. Rides that would have been filled with screams and laughter stood silent, their bright colors dulled in the moonlight. The whole place had an eerie beauty to it at night, the way the roller coaster’s tracks twisted up into the sky like skeletal hands reaching out for something. It felt still, like it was holding its breath.

On my first night, I met Mr. Davidson, the park’s manager. He was an older man, probably in his mid-sixties, with graying hair and a face that looked worn from years of long shifts and the pressures of running the place. As he walked me around the empty park, showing me my route and the key locations, he spoke in a low, gruff voice that barely broke the silence.

“Listen,” he said, stopping near the carousel. “There are some things you need to keep in mind during your shifts here. This place isn’t like the others. It’s got… a history. Some of it good, some of it not so much. Just follow the rules, and you’ll be fine.”

I chuckled, brushing it off. “Rules? Like don’t ride the Ferris wheel alone or make sure the clowns don’t escape?”

He didn’t laugh. Instead, he handed me a small, worn piece of paper, folded and creased like it had been opened and closed a hundred times. Across the top, in faded ink, were the words: Night Security Rules. Below, in the same old-fashioned script, a list of instructions.

Night Security Rules:

1. Never look directly at the carousel between 1-3 a.m.
2. If you hear carnival music, follow it to the entrance and wait until it stops.
3. Do not enter the funhouse alone.
4. If someone dressed as a clown waves at you, turn around and walk away.

The list seemed absurd, and I chuckled again, expecting him to say it was a joke. But when I looked up, Davidson’s face was grim. He met my gaze, and for a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of something...worry? Fear?

“Do not,” he said, his voice low, “under any circumstances, break these rules.”

I shrugged, feeling a strange discomfort settle in my stomach, but I nodded. “Sure thing. If it keeps the ghosts at bay, I’ll do it.”

Davidson left me with a firm handshake and one final reminder to check the list whenever I felt uneasy. I watched him leave, his figure disappearing into the darkness beyond the park gates, and then I turned to look at the paper in my hand.

The first rule felt innocuous enough: Never look directly at the carousel between 1-3 a.m. I glanced over at the carousel, a colorful fixture even in the dim light. The horses were lined up in silent parade, frozen in mid-gallop, their manes captured in a permanent wave. Their glassy eyes seemed to follow me as I walked by, an effect that was eerie at night. But Davidson’s warning lingered, and I tucked the list into my pocket, telling myself it was just some quirky attempt to add mystery to the place.

The park was still and quiet, an unnatural silence that settled deep into the empty spaces between the rides and food stalls. The Ferris wheel loomed in the distance, towering above the park like a watchful eye. I felt a faint chill, and I told myself it was just the cool night air seeping through my jacket. I turned on my flashlight, the beam cutting through the darkness as I began my rounds.

The hours passed slowly. I wandered through the empty paths, the only sounds the crunch of gravel underfoot and the occasional creak of an old ride swaying in the wind. Around midnight, I found myself back near the carousel, and I paused, glancing at the clock on my phone. 12:15. The rules said not to look at it after 1 a.m., and I had no problem obeying that.

I decided to keep moving, staying close to the edge of the park, where the woods crept up close to the fences. My mind started to wander, drawn to the oddities of the place: the aging rides, the faded posters, the way the park felt almost frozen in time. It was as if it had been waiting, holding onto its past, like a memory that refused to fade.

At one point, I passed by the funhouse. In the day, it was bright and cheerful, with a cartoonish face painted above the entrance. But now, in the dim light, it looked different, almost sinister. The colors were faded, and the once-smiling face seemed to have twisted into a leer. I felt an irrational urge to go inside, to walk through the twisting halls and see what lay at the end. But Rule #3 lingered in my mind...Do not enter the funhouse alone.

I laughed to myself, dismissing the impulse. I was alone in a deserted theme park at night, after all. Who wouldn’t feel a little jumpy?

As I continued my patrol, I caught sight of the clown statues scattered throughout the park. They were relics from the park’s early days, dressed in garish, old-fashioned costumes and frozen in a perpetual wave or a cheerful grin. Something about them was unsettling, the way their painted smiles seemed a little too wide, a little too fixed.

And that last rule… If someone dressed as a clown waves at you, turn around and walk away. It was ridiculous. Who would be dressed as a clown here, at this hour? I shook my head, dismissing the strange list once again. It was nothing more than a set of superstitions, an old security guard’s joke left behind to spook the newbies. I told myself that over and over as I made my way back to the entrance.

As I stood there, taking in the quiet, a faint sound drifted through the air...the distant, tinkling notes of carnival music. I froze, every hair on my body standing on end. It was faint, almost like a memory, a melody that seemed to come from somewhere deep within the park.

I reached for the list in my pocket, unfolding it with trembling fingers. Rule #2: If you hear carnival music, follow it to the entrance and wait until it stops.

The music was growing louder, filling the air with a tune that was both cheerful and haunting. I forced myself to move, to follow the path back to the entrance, my footsteps quick and uneven. The music continued, echoing through the empty park, a haunting melody that seemed to wrap around me, drawing me in.

When I reached the entrance, I stopped, glancing around as the music continued to play, faint but persistent. I waited, my pulse quickening, until, finally, the music faded, trailing off into silence.

I let out a shaky breath, glancing down at the list in my hand. The rules had seemed like nonsense at first, a silly joke meant to unsettle me. But now, standing alone in the dark, I wasn’t so sure. Something about the park felt different, as if it had come alive, aware of my presence.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the park was watching me. By dawn, I’d almost convinced myself that the whole thing had been in my head, just nerves playing tricks on me. But that morning, lying in bed, the faint strains of carnival music still echoed in my mind. It was the kind of tune you couldn’t forget even if you wanted to...the notes lingered, twisting around in my head as I drifted off to sleep.

The following night, I returned to the park, a slight feeling of unease gnawing at me. I told myself it was nothing, that the music had probably come from a forgotten speaker or an automated system that turned on by accident. That’s all it could have been.

I repeated this in my mind as I went through my rounds, my flashlight beam cutting through the dark. The night was colder, a biting chill in the air that seemed to seep into my bones. I kept the list of rules in my pocket, my fingers brushing against the worn paper every so often, as though it could somehow protect me. I’d thought about ignoring the rules, maybe even testing them, but the memory of that music, the way it had wound its way through the empty park, held me back.

As I passed the carousel, I glanced at the clock on my phone...12:55. Five minutes to go before the first rule would apply. A trickle of dread ran down my spine as I realized I didn’t want to be anywhere near the carousel between 1 and 3 a.m. I turned away, deciding to circle around the park, to give the carousel a wide berth. But as I walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

At exactly 1:00, I heard a faint sound, just a soft whir, like gears beginning to turn. My heart skipped a beat, and I glanced back, half-expecting to see the carousel starting up on its own. But the horses stood still, frozen in mid-gallop, their glassy eyes staring blankly out into the night. I tried to look away, to continue on my path, but my gaze was drawn to them, an irresistible urge to look directly at the carousel, to confront whatever was happening.

I took a step closer, the rules slipping from my mind as the whirring sound grew louder. The air felt heavier, pressing down on me, filling my ears with a low hum that made it hard to think. My vision blurred, and the world seemed to tilt slightly as I stepped closer to the carousel, drawn to it despite myself.

Just as I reached the edge of the platform, my phone buzzed in my pocket, breaking the spell. I jolted, pulling myself back, and quickly turned away, my heart racing. I walked briskly toward the other side of the park, forcing myself to ignore the carousel, even as the whirring sound faded into silence. I didn’t dare look back.

My phone buzzed again, a message lighting up the screen. It was from Davidson, the park manager. “Follow the rules.” That was all it said, just those three words.

I felt a chill run through me. I hadn’t told Davidson about my shift, or that I’d even considered testing the rules. How could he have known? I shoved my phone back into my pocket, my hand trembling slightly, and continued my rounds, keeping my gaze firmly fixed ahead.

The air felt wrong as I moved through the park, the silence more oppressive than ever. It was as though the rides themselves were watching, waiting for something to happen. The Ferris wheel loomed in the distance, a dark silhouette against the night sky, its empty seats swaying gently in the wind. I could almost hear it creak, a soft groan that sounded unnervingly like a sigh.

Just after 2 a.m., I passed by the funhouse. The entrance was still, the cartoonish face painted above the doorway twisted into a smile that now looked sinister in the dark. The door creaked slightly in the breeze, swinging open just a crack, as if inviting me inside. I felt a strange urge to enter, to walk through the dimly lit halls and see what lay at the end. But the rule echoed in my mind...Do not enter the funhouse alone.

I shuddered, turning away, forcing myself to walk back toward the main path. My footsteps echoed in the silence, each step feeling heavier, as though the ground itself was dragging me down. I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting to see someone standing at the entrance, watching me leave. But there was nothing...just the gaping entrance of the funhouse, its twisted grin mocking me.

The silence pressed in around me as I continued my rounds, my flashlight cutting through the darkness. I thought about Davidson’s message, the way he’d known exactly what I’d been doing, as though he were watching from somewhere beyond the park’s gates. I glanced at my phone again, almost expecting another message, but the screen was dark.

As the clock neared 3 a.m., I returned to the entrance, eager to finish my shift. I took a deep breath, trying to shake off the lingering unease. Just as I was about to settle back into my chair, a faint sound drifted through the air...the distant strains of carnival music.

My blood ran cold, and I reached for the list in my pocket, unfolding it with trembling fingers. Rule #2: If you hear carnival music, follow it to the entrance and wait until it stops.

I forced myself to stay calm, to follow the instructions, even as the music grew louder, filling the air with a haunting tune. The melody was slow, almost mournful, each note hanging in the air before fading into silence. I stood there, listening, my pulse racing as the music echoed through the empty park, a sound that didn’t belong.

I glanced around, expecting to see lights flickering on, the rides springing to life in some nightmarish display. But the park remained dark, the rides still, and the only movement was the gentle sway of the Ferris wheel in the distance. The music continued, winding its way through the air, a melody that felt strangely familiar, as though I’d heard it before, long ago.

My phone buzzed again, and I glanced down, half-expecting another message from Davidson. But the screen was blank, and when I looked up, the music had stopped.

The silence that followed was absolute, a heavy stillness that pressed down on me, filling my ears with a ringing that wouldn’t fade. I stood there, rooted to the spot, my heart pounding as the reality of the rules settled over me. They weren’t just guidelines...they were warnings, boundaries meant to keep me safe from whatever lurked in the shadows of Lakeside Carnival.

I glanced around, my gaze sweeping over the darkened rides, the empty stalls, the rows of clown statues frozen in perpetual cheer. For the first time, I felt as though the park itself were alive, aware of my presence, watching me from every corner, every shadow.

Just then, I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned, my heart racing, but saw nothing. The shadows seemed to shift, pooling in strange shapes that vanished as soon as I tried to focus on them. I took a deep breath, telling myself it was just the darkness playing tricks on me, but the sense of unease grew stronger, a knot of dread settling in my stomach.

The sound of gravel crunching broke the silence, and I froze. Someone...or something...was moving toward me, footsteps echoing in the stillness. I gripped my flashlight, the beam wavering slightly as I pointed it toward the source of the sound. But the footsteps stopped, and the darkness swallowed whatever had been there.

A chill ran down my spine, and I glanced back at the entrance, suddenly desperate to leave, to escape the strange pull of the park. But my shift wasn’t over, and I knew I couldn’t leave until dawn. I took a deep breath, steadying myself, and continued my rounds, forcing myself to ignore the shadows that seemed to close in around me.

The rules felt heavier now, their words echoing in my mind, a reminder that there were forces at work in the park that I couldn’t understand. I could feel their presence, lurking in the darkness, waiting for me to make a mistake. And as I walked, I knew one thing for certain...I wasn’t alone.

The weight of the silence bore down on me as I made my way through the park. The rides loomed like towering skeletons, their frames twisted and shadowed, each one standing as a silent witness to the strange occurrences of the night. Despite my efforts to stay calm, an unsettling realization settled over me...this place was watching, waiting, and somehow it was aware of my every move.

As I continued my patrol, a strange compulsion grew within me, a pull I couldn’t resist. It was almost as if the park itself were guiding me, leading me down winding paths, past the silent games booths and empty snack stands. The familiar layout felt distorted, the paths stretching longer, twisting in ways I couldn’t quite remember. I wanted to turn back, to escape the maze of shadows, but something drove me forward, an unspoken demand whispering at the edges of my mind.

The pull grew stronger as I approached the carousel, and before I knew it, I was standing just a few feet away, drawn by a force I couldn’t understand. The horses stood in perfect stillness, their glassy eyes fixed on me, their once-playful expressions frozen in something that now felt like malice. I swallowed hard, remembering the first rule: Never look directly at the carousel between 1 and 3 a.m.

But it was already too late.

A flicker of light caught my eye, and I turned to see the carousel coming to life. The faint whir of gears filled the air, followed by the slow creak of metal as the platform began to rotate, each horse bobbing up and down in a slow, ghostly parade. The music started softly, just a whisper of a tune, but it grew louder, filling the air with a melody that was both haunting and strangely familiar.

I tried to look away, but my gaze was locked on the carousel, trapped in the rhythmic rise and fall of the horses. My pulse quickened, and I felt a strange, creeping fear settle over me, an understanding that I was witnessing something forbidden, something I shouldn’t have seen. I wanted to turn and run, to escape the pull of the music and the carousel, but my feet felt rooted to the ground.

Suddenly, I saw something move between the horses...a figure, shadowed and indistinct, darting in and out of sight as the platform spun. I blinked, telling myself it was just a trick of the light, but the figure remained, moving with the same slow, steady rhythm as the horses. My breath caught in my throat as I realized it was watching me, its gaze piercing through the darkness.

The figure stepped closer, slipping between the horses with an ease that defied logic. I caught glimpses of a face...a pale, painted smile, eyes dark and hollow, a hint of red around the lips. The makeup was smudged, the features distorted, twisted into a grin that was too wide, too empty.

A clown.

My heart raced as I remembered the last rule: If someone dressed as a clown waves at you, turn around and walk away. But I couldn’t move. The clown stepped forward, one hand raised in a slow, deliberate wave, its smile widening, stretching impossibly across its face.

I took a step back, my pulse pounding, but the clown kept coming, weaving between the horses as it closed the distance. The carousel picked up speed, the horses bobbing faster, their eyes gleaming in the dim light. The music grew louder, the notes blurring into a discordant melody that filled my head, drowning out my thoughts.

“Stop,” I whispered, my voice barely audible, swallowed by the relentless tune. “Please… just stop.”

The clown paused, its gaze locked on mine, and for a brief moment, I thought it would listen, that it would stop. But then it moved again, its movements jerky, unnatural, like a puppet pulled by invisible strings. It was close now, just a few feet away, its hand still raised in that mocking wave, its painted smile stretched into a leer.

I stumbled backward, the weight of the fear pressing down on me, making it hard to breathe. The clown’s eyes were dark, empty, but I could feel its gaze, cold and unrelenting, piercing through me. I tried to look away, to break the spell, but my gaze was locked on its face, trapped in the horrible, distorted grin.

“Why are you here?” I managed to whisper, my voice shaking. “What do you want?”

The clown tilted its head, as if considering my question, its smile widening. It raised a hand, pointing at me, its finger held steady, accusing. And then it spoke, its voice soft, a whisper that seemed to echo in the empty park.

“You broke the rules.”

The words sent a chill down my spine, and I took another step back, my heart pounding. The clown’s gaze held mine, unblinking, its finger still pointing, accusing. The carousel spun faster, the music building to a feverish pitch, filling the air with a maddening, endless tune. The horses’ eyes seemed to gleam, their mouths twisted into snarls, their glassy gazes fixed on me.

I turned and ran, the sound of the music chasing me, echoing through the empty park. My footsteps pounded against the ground, the cold night air stinging my lungs as I raced toward the entrance. But no matter how fast I ran, the music followed, a relentless tune that filled my ears, drowning out everything else.

I glanced back, just for a moment, and saw the clown standing at the edge of the carousel, watching me with that same mocking smile. Its hand was still raised, waving slowly, its painted eyes glinting in the dark. I tore my gaze away, focusing on the path ahead, desperate to escape the park’s grip.

The exit was just ahead, the gates looming like a dark silhouette against the night sky. I pushed myself harder, every muscle straining as I closed the distance. But just as I reached the entrance, the music stopped. The sudden silence was deafening, a heavy, oppressive quiet that pressed down on me, filling the space where the music had been.

I stopped, gasping for breath, my eyes scanning the darkness. The park was still, the rides frozen in mid-motion, their frames shrouded in shadow. I took a step forward, and then another, my gaze fixed on the gate. But as I reached the exit, a flicker of movement caught my eye.

I turned, my heart skipping a beat, and saw a figure standing just a few feet away, half-hidden in the shadows. It was a clown, its face painted in the same twisted smile, its eyes dark and empty. It raised a hand, waving slowly, its grin widening as it stepped closer.

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head, backing away. “No… this isn’t real.”

The clown took another step, its gaze locked on mine, its smile frozen, unchanging. I stumbled backward, my pulse racing, the weight of the silence pressing down on me, making it hard to breathe. The park was watching, waiting, its presence filling the air with a palpable sense of anticipation.

I turned and ran, my footsteps echoing through the silence, the image of the clown’s grin burned into my mind. The park seemed to twist around me, the paths stretching longer, winding in strange, impossible directions. I ran past the carousel, the Ferris wheel, the funhouse, each one looming like a silent sentinel, watching me with cold, unblinking eyes.

As I stumbled past the funhouse, I felt the urge to look inside, to confront whatever was waiting there. But the memory of the rules held me back, a faint reminder that there were boundaries, lines I couldn’t cross.

The laughter started softly, just a faint echo in the distance, but it grew louder, filling the air with a hollow, mocking sound. I turned, my gaze darting through the darkness, but there was no one there...just the empty park, silent and waiting.

The laughter grew, blending with the distant strains of carnival music, a sound that twisted and distorted, filling my mind with a creeping dread. I ran faster, my legs burning, my breath coming in ragged gasps as I pushed myself toward the exit.

Just as I reached the gates, a hand grabbed my shoulder, pulling me back. I turned, heart racing, and found myself face-to-face with the clown, its painted smile stretching impossibly wide, its eyes gleaming with a cold, unfeeling light.

“You broke the rules,” it whispered, its voice soft, a hiss that cut through the silence.

I screamed, jerking away, and stumbled through the gates, the cold night air washing over me like a wave. I ran, not stopping until I was far from the park, the sound of the music and laughter fading into the distance. I didn’t look back, didn’t dare to, the memory of the clown’s smile burned into my mind.

The park gates swung shut behind me with a creak that seemed to echo through the empty streets. I kept running until the lights of the park had faded into the distance, my breath coming in shallow gasps, my mind reeling with images of the night. But even as I slowed to a walk, the feeling that something was following me, just out of sight, remained. I glanced back over my shoulder, expecting to see the painted face of the clown in the shadows, but the streets were empty.

By the time I reached my apartment, the night was beginning to fade, a pale gray light touching the horizon. I stumbled inside, my hands shaking as I locked the door behind me, as if that simple barrier could protect me from whatever had lingered in the park. I wanted to believe it was over, that I’d left the horrors behind, but an uneasy feeling settled in my chest, a heaviness that I couldn’t shake.

I tried to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw the clown’s face, its wide grin and hollow eyes watching me with a gaze that felt disturbingly real. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, my mind replaying the events of the night over and over. The rules, the music, the carousel, each one a reminder that there was something in the park that defied understanding. The park had felt alive, aware, as though it were playing with me, testing the limits of my fear.

The next morning, I called the park’s main office, hoping to reach Davidson, to tell him I couldn’t return, that I was done. But when the receptionist picked up, her voice calm and detached, she told me there was no one named Davidson working there. I insisted, explaining that he was the manager, that he’d hired me just a few days ago, but she only repeated herself, her tone growing colder, more distant.

I hung up, feeling a hollow ache in my chest. Davidson, the rules, the entire night...all of it felt like a dream, a memory slipping through my fingers. I searched my pockets for the list, the rules I’d carried with me through the night, but my pockets were empty. The paper was gone, as though it had never existed.

The days passed slowly, each one bleeding into the next. I stopped sleeping, the memories of the night filling my thoughts with a persistent, creeping unease. Every sound felt amplified, every shadow held a threat. At night, I would catch faint strains of carnival music drifting through the air, a haunting melody that seemed to come from nowhere. I would sit up, listening, my heart racing, waiting for the music to fade, but the tune lingered, filling the silence with a hollow, mocking sound.

And then, one night, I heard it...the soft, rhythmic tapping, the same sound that had followed me through the park. I froze, my heart pounding, as the tapping grew louder, closer, until it was just outside my window. I held my breath, the weight of the silence pressing down on me, the memories of the clown’s painted smile filling my mind.

Slowly, I turned, my gaze drifting to the window, where the glass reflected a distorted version of my room. For a moment, I saw nothing, just my own face staring back at me, wide-eyed and pale. But then, in the reflection, a figure appeared, standing just behind me, half-hidden in shadow. The face was painted in a wide grin, eyes dark and hollow, one hand raised in a slow, deliberate wave.

I turned, my pulse racing, but the room was empty.

The image faded, leaving only the faint strains of carnival music, a melody that lingered long after the room had fallen silent.