You want me to write something about myself and what I experienced? Fine, here it is. “Treat it like a journal,” you said. But I’m not sure if people who are being detained and ordered to summarize the hell they’ve just been through usually consider what they write a “journal.”

It started and then got worse when two strangers came here, you being one of them. You’re new, but she arrived four years ago. The winter of ’22 is when we all started talking about her. In our homes, to the last few stores in the historical town square, and then the aisles of our lone Walmart. But I think it really began in our middle school. There was a frenzy for a while, like the kind someone your age might remember from before social media. Less memes and putting a stranger on blast, more murmurs in the hallways and increasingly absurd rumors out on the PE field or in the gymnasium.

“The witch” was what we started calling her, more and more frequently. You haven’t been here long enough to get a nickname, but we have noticed you. That happens in a small town, where most people know each other. Outsiders who blow in get spotted fast, and when the daughter of the sheriff is one of the most popular gossip girls in school, there’s no way a guy like you is going to stay under the radar. You and your long black jacket with the high collar, looking like some movie villain or, at best, a grizzled vet of… “special missions.”

You know where we are, the name of this town. I can see its lights from this big metal trailer I’m locked up in. But you don’t want me to write it or my name down, even if the odds of this getting out are tiny. If I can’t at least explain how we’re a small place in northern Wisconsin with fewer than 10,000 people, then redact this part. I guess I’ll call the only home I’ve known… Kennel.

Maybe you find that funny. You do all use dog breed code names already. I heard a few after you guys showed up in your unmarked black vehicles. Spaniel, Beagle, Lab, and Doberman. You know it’s stupid, and like you’re a bunch of little boys playing spec-ops in their backyard, right? I think I might’ve heard what they call you once. Is it Mutt? Do you like being called that? If we’re also hiding names when I need to write about people, I guess I’ll call myself Pom. Even though I’ve been shy, quiet, and reserved up until now, and the small dogs yap the most. But I’ve always been able to share my feelings fearlessly in writing. And I’m not going to apologize for anything I jot down on this crappy old laptop you let me borrow that’s so old it doesn’t even seem to have wi-fi.

So, Mutt, you want to know about the witch who came out of nowhere and moved into that old cabin in the woods outside town, yes? I don’t know that much. I get that the more I aid your investigation, the sooner you might let me go, but I don’t like lying and I won’t make up a story. Not when you likely have the tech and training to disprove anything I invent. You guys definitely seem like serious business, a secret branch of the government type of crew. I’ll just assume you won’t hesitate to waterboard a fourteen-year-old girl if you really want information. But I’ll cooperate as best I can, and be as clear as possible.

Lucky for you, you’ve locked up a creative writer who takes some AP classes at school, and has been putting stories on the internet since she was seven. So, even though I don’t want to get all this down while being a captive, if I have to do it, I’ll do it well. But it’d be a shame if this ends up being my best work and it never gets out into the world, left to gather dust in some filing cabinet in an office on whatever military base you came from.

With my emotions out of the way, I’ll begin properly.

My name is… Pom. I’ll be fifteen in three months. I barely connect with my parents anymore, and the few friends I made in elementary and middle school aren’t really my friends these days, so I’d say I’m mostly on my own. And observant. I spend my nights in my room, researching without really believing in topics like conspiracies and the paranormal, and then come up with stories that like-minded readers enjoy online. Some have even been narrated on YouTube. At school, I keep such a low profile that I’m rarely picked on like other antisocial students are. My peers know so little about me, that they wouldn’t know where to begin if they wanted to torment me. And I’d say I’m smart enough, and aware enough about social cues, to be an expert in blending in and disappearing.

When the witch arrived in November, 2022, she caused a stir right away. There was no stealthy move-in. It didn’t start with someone noticing that the lights in that old cabin were on in the woods. I doubt she even made it to her new house before half the town noticed her. Just minutes after school let out and the town square filled with students walking home, or about to get a slice at the pizzeria, she came barreling through slush-covered streets in this old truck that spewed exhaust and towed one of those U-Haul trailers. I happened to be on the sidewalk that she went right by, and was, not by choice, near the popular or well-off teenagers who tended to be judgmental. They laughed or showed disgust as her junker sputtered by. She must’ve picked up on it, because I saw her give them the nastiest, meanest scowl in response. She’s in her eighties or nineties, and that was the first impression she left. I try not to judge people, really, but if anyone fit the definition of “old hag…”

Over the next few weeks, she became a big topic at school. If she had just disappeared into her cabin to wither and die or whatever, all we would have to go on was her initial appearance downtown, and the gossip train might’ve quickly pulled into another station. But her reasons for choosing our town were as mysterious as her public behavior. Because of course she was set in her ways, and couldn’t just have deliveries made so she’d leave us all alone.

Kennel may not have much to see or be proud of, but there’s one shop still going strong after all these years: the small grocery store in the town square. The old-timers claim it looks just as it did fifty years ago, and it’s somehow survived the local chain places by having good customer service and loyal patrons. And by rebranding as our only fully organic store that works with surrounding farmers. Sure, the prices are higher, but the quality is better, and it’s a pleasant if quaint venue to get food.

It was also where you’d go if you wanted to see her for yourself. It took just a month for us to find out that she showed up every Saturday, at exactly ten in the morning. She was known to literally snarl at anyone who got too close, buy obscure ingredients and produce, and frequently complain when something was out of stock. She would demand that the manager special order items just for her, but also pulled out hundred-dollar bills like it was nothing, all to keep her strange requests coming in. She was nasty, obstinate, hated people that laughed or looked at her funny, and yet seemed to be loaded with cash.

As more of my peers heard stories from their parents, or witnessed her for themselves—some even went to the store just to see her—new local legends were made up, schoolyard chatter got louder, and we viewed her odd purchasing habits with inevitable logic. Because of her looks, age, and crankiness, everyone began to unironically call her a witch. And her requested hard-to-find spices or unappetizing animal parts? Ingredients for spells, stuff tossed into a cauldron.

And these stories began in early 2023, when society had mostly moved past thinking actual witches were real. But now Kennel had one of its own, born from the bored minds of local adolescents. It was a curious development that I got interested in and kept track of, just to have some drama to enjoy. If nothing else, I saw the potential for a little social study. I stayed back and wrote down what I heard, kind of hoping I’d end up with enough material to make a book out of when I was older and these days were forgotten. I didn’t interject myself into the discussions, and certainly never contributed my own falsified or overblown encounters with an old woman who likely just wanted to be left alone. But time moved on, and gradually we lost interest in the witch. Me and my classmates entered high school, and with it came some maturity.

Over the past few years, we’ve had a noticeable rise in funerals, and the digital newspaper’s obituary section remains a little bigger than normal. Most of the people who died were on the older side, so it was always “just their time” to us. A generation was fading away, and there were more widows and widowers dying of subsequent heartbreak… or so the whispers around town went.

But there were unexpected tragedies, as well. We had an excess of birth and death dates that were way too close to one another, and yet for a while, no one really seemed suspicious that anything unusual was going on. Every few months, someone my age or a few years older passed away, but the frequency never felt quite at a point where it would illicit concern. People suddenly began to know other people who had lost a child, and it would cast a pall on our schools for a time, but what was there to be done other than comfort each other in a town this size?

Despite the losses that weren’t enough to form a trend, life continued. By January of 2026, I had become even more distant than I was in middle school, which doesn’t seem possible. I couldn’t connect to anyone, and I never spoke in class. My grades have only been decent because I do my homework and get high marks. Not out of a necessity to excel, but to keep my mind off of… other things. Homework, writing, and music. That’s all I’ve had these last couple of years. The stories are therapeutic, even if I no longer feel joy or accomplishment after posting them. My parents will probably never read them, as they’re both lost in their own separate worlds. And the witch has become nothing more than a middle school fad, a bit of cruel fun and scorn towards an outsider and other.

But it all changed, quickly, with a series of events that I can say began when a kid I’ll name Tony died. He was our popular quarterback, a senior, and in the prime of his life. We have few sources of entertainment, and high school football is our biggest one. I don’t care at all about sports, but I can’t deny the star power he had. He might’ve been going places, and losing him was finally what broke something at school, and across town. He got professionals to begin looking at the mortality numbers here seriously.

Mutt, we don’t know each other yet, but you did tell me that one reason you and your pack noticed us in the first place, is because of the higher-than-average amount of people dying in their sleep here. And they’re often younger, too. I don’t know how big the city where you came from is, but when Tony died just two weeks ago, this place was in mourning. Girls were crying in the school halls, Tony’s teammates got so angry that the next game was cancelled, there was a memorial outside the gym building by the end of the same day that the news broke in the morning announcements, and the town had a candlelight vigil that evening.

The sudden loss lit a fire in the old rumor mill and turned us all into middle schoolers again. Students began looking into the deaths and sharing facts and available reports on social media. Some stories were exaggerated like they could be when we were younger, but for the most part, we’d become old enough to spot hyperbole or trolling and valued truth more than garbage. Within a few days, the buzzing hive that was our school had uncovered a simple fact that the local authorities almost seemed to be keeping from us.

That being that the rise in deaths began in 2022. It could even be argued that there was a noticeable change only a month after the old woman first tore through Main Street. And this discovery really reignited things.

“Hey, you remember that old bitch we were all making up stories about in middle school?” students would ask each other. “I heard she can curse people. Don’t be stupid, curses aren’t real—she’s probably just breaking into homes and injecting her victims with a drug. No, no—my cousin says she saw that crazy ancient lady dancing in the woods naked, summoning soul-eating demons.”

Explanations and theories ranged from more rational and down-to-earth, to wild and supernatural, regardless of the degree of acceptance of supposed observations and witness accounts. But the correlation of her arrival and the number of people, young and old, dying in their sleep was harder to deny.

Our teachers couldn’t extinguish the flames, and after a few days, they spread when students told parents about the findings. The beginning of what could become mass hysteria was soon noticed by the sheriff office, who weren’t exactly trained to placate a riled town but had to try their best, by dispelling rumors and emphasizing pesky things like a “lack of evidence.”

It got to the point where an emergency meeting was called at town hall. While not something I would’ve paid attention to as a kid, I couldn’t personally remember this happening before in my lifetime. A little surprisingly, my parents made me go with them, not that I complained. I’d already thought about attending alone, to see local history and do something my younger middle school self would’ve yelled at me to do. I only hesitated because I was worried about getting caught up in some angry mob like out of a movie. But then my parents grabbed the car keys and made the decision for me.

The auditorium, able to hold about a tenth of the town, was packed full, and the sheriff wasted no time in addressing us in an attempt cool tempers. I don’t remember everything he said or how he answered every accusation or question, but I can sum it up by mentioning that he never called the target of ire out by name. She was always just the, or this “individual.” She “lives out in the woods in an old cabin, yes. No, we don’t know her reasons for choosing to move to Kennel. But we need to respect her privacy. I’m aware of how interactions go when she’s in town, but she’s done nothing illegal,” he told everyone.

But people were scared, and these answers were unsatisfactory. No one was outright certain that she was responsible, or called for her arrest just yet, but some people did demand she be questioned. A few attendees were more reasoned, and asked if there could’ve been some chemical spill, or contaminated drinking water, but all the sheriff was there to do was keep us grounded in reality and ease nerves. It didn’t work on everyone. My parents, for one, stayed quiet throughout the meeting, but I could tell they were seething inside.

“I want you all to know,” he said in a more somber tone near the end of the event, “that I’ve spoken with the pathology lab here in town, and not all of the people who have died in their sleep in the past few years have passed the same way. Things like heart attacks, and choking in some instances have all occurred in regular numbers. It seems we have an increase in, what was it…? Cerebral hemorrhages. Massive strokes and aneurisms, to put it another way. There’s just no easy way to induce something like that without signs of trauma, and none of the victims have shown it.”

One of our town’s few doctors then took the stage and explained it further in medical terms. The cause of the increase remained unknown, and was a legitimate concern, but if the point of the meeting was to keep a militia from forming that would remove the old woman from her home, it had succeeded. For now. I remember looking towards the back of the room where the bearded men who did most of the hunting were standing, and seeing the mild disappointment on their faces because their “time to shine” hadn’t arrived yet.

Us teenagers, however, weren’t so tempered. After all, we just lost Tony. He never should’ve had a stroke, and the next day at school, there was a general feeling like the adults had failed us. It culminated with a sudden falling-out that happened in front of most of the student body. A junior I’ll call Jessica led a small in-crowd of smarmy girls, and they did not appreciate that Sami’s father hadn’t, I don’t know, led a band of pitchfork-wielding townsfolk to a particular cabin the previous night. Tensions had built all day, and Sami was cast out of the social circle when all of us could see it happen. Jess probably timed it that way.

I think you arrived later that evening, Mutt. I didn’t see you, but I take the bus for high school, and I remember noticing your big matte black RV parked in the abandoned drive-in theater as we drove by around dawn. And then Sami, determined to bounce back and wily in her own ways, passed around stories of your arrival on her own at school. About how you showed up in that big camper, and the first thing you did was announce your presence to her dad at the station, flashing some kind of badge and looking very official about it. She hangs out there after school most days. Doing homework, watching people get tossed into the drunk tank, and power tripping with daddy, or so students say.

She claims to have seen you eating at our diner at around 5:30, an hour after sunset. A large coffee and a cheeseburger. Patrons stare as you refuse to look anyone in the eye and hide behind a black outfit. Sami embellishes details, so I’m surprised she didn’t say you brandished a gun to scare someone off. But now that I’ve seen you, I’d probably believe it if she had. If you’re trying to keep a low profile, you’re bad at it, or just don’t care. Plenty of students saw you skulking around town, looking like you were hunting someone.

One of the craziest things about all this, is that Sami’s baseless assertion that quickly got her back in good graces with Jessica was right all along. You really were here to find the witch. I have no idea if you knew where she was all along but needed to gather some sort of evidence first or what, but if you were not aware of the cabin in the woods, you could’ve asked around. Either way, I think your dawdling cost someone their life. If I’m wrong, tell me otherwise.

Call me naïve, but I’m going to assume you did know what you were doing and you’re aware of what happened next before you read this. After all, I know you briefly met Jessica and her squad. They came to you at the diner last Thursday. Sami says Jess also believed you were here to investigate the deaths, and the old woman. You, of course, do what your type does and brushed them off, asked them to stay out of it. You were never going to tell some annoying teenagers why you were here. I wish you had handled it differently somehow. I think she saw you as the help who was in town to “save” us. When you told her to go home like she was a kid, she probably lost her remaining faith in adults.

On Friday, I overheard her making plans for that night with her friends outside school after the last bell rang. They knew I was listening in, and didn’t really care. Jess saw me as a freak, but didn’t know what to say to me, and I was beneath her attention. I realize I never could’ve stopped them from going out there, but I hate that I didn’t even try.

That night, Jess and her three friends took a car to the old woman’s cabin and taunted her by shouting jeers and calling her a murderer. It wasn’t until one girl threw a bucket of animal blood she must’ve gotten from the slaughterhouse where her dad works that the witch finally responded, and threatened them in a very… un-witch-like manner, by brandishing a double-barreled shotgun. But her alleged shouts of “you’re all going to die,” may have been more on-brand. The girls, being unarmed, made their one smart decision of the night by running off. Even so, Jessica apparently laughed the whole drive back and “had no regrets.”

On Sunday morning, she was found in her bed after not coming down for church. She died sometime Saturday night. Her folks said she looked peaceful.

Her three friends were left traumatized. None of them came to school on Monday or Tuesday, and only Sami showed up on Wednesday. She’d probably been forced to by her dad, but I didn’t ask.

The thing about Sami is, we used to be pals back in elementary school. We even still talked on occasion, if the rest of Jessica’s group wasn’t looking. I could tell how much she was hurting, and so I made a rare effort of my own and reached out. We talked privately in the library, for just a few minutes. She told me about what happened at the cabin, and that she wished she could take it all back. She felt hopeless, and claimed that she “knew in her heart that the woman is evil,” but didn’t have much else to say.

Well. There was one other thing. She seemed so broken and lost, so it wasn’t a surprise when she bore a little bit of her soul and said between sobs, “you know what death does to people.” And then she got up and left.

The school was in shock all week. The teachers pressed on with lessons, and a special counselor had been brought in to meet with us if we needed help, but the energy had changed so much. Rumors persisted and changed, only now underneath a layer of numbness and sense that there was nothing any of us young people could do that would make any of this better.

It felt like we were being hunted, and anyone could be next. Those who were aware of the classics spoke of a Freddy Krueger-like entity murdering us in our sleep. The ones who only knew of characters that were more relevant to our generation murmured about Pennywise. Even though he, or It, wants the victims alive and full of fear, so the comparison doesn’t make much sense.

But it did seem like Jessica had been targeted out of revenge, and that was new. If Sami or her friends had admitted what they’d done to the sheriff before what I went through just last night, then… I don’t know. Would it have made a difference? Would the sheriff have gone out to that cabin and asked the old woman if she might’ve, what, put a hex on Jessica? If we’re all trying to remain civil and law-abiding, it’s like we only make ourselves powerless to stand up to what can’t be explained or observed. I get that it separates us from the dark ages, but now that I think about it… what if what we’re dealing with is from an older time? Something ancient and cruel? You haven’t told me just what has cursed our town, so all I can do is speculate.

Yesterday morning, Saturday, began like any other… for everyone but my family. And the ones that recently lost someone, I suppose. It was cold and gray. I was planning to spend the day inside, even if it meant being around my parents for all of it. They were both so quiet, more than usual. Empty. But I woke up wondering if Mom would do the “thing” again this year. I didn’t have to wait long to find out. Just after breakfast, she began to shift into a manic state, and was soon scouring the cupboards.

“We’re out of it. It’s all gone. I need some. I need it to make the cake,” she said thoughtlessly, as if unaware that we could hear her as she opened little doors in the kitchen and slammed them repeatedly. “No, no. That won’t do. It has to be real, organic flour. A top shelf brand. It has to be the good kind.”

My dad sat in his armchair, exhausted from trying to calm such behavior over the last few years, knowing it was best to just let it run its course. I could tell what was coming. Mom would ask him to run an errand. He’d attempt to get out of it. She’d call him useless and turn to me next. This wasn’t going to end anytime soon, so I figured that we might as well skip a step.

“Pom,” she said and turned to me when I set foot in the kitchen. “Be a dear and go to that store in the square, would you? Get the most expensive flour they stock. The smallest bag will do. Please. I have to bake a cake.”

“Mom, you know you don’t have to,” I tried halfheartedly to dissuade her.

“Please, Pom. I need this. It will help. I’ll light the candles, you can blow them out, and we’ll enjoy it together. Like a family. It helps. You know it does.”

“Sure, Mom,” I relented with a sigh.

The store was a ten-minute walk from our house. I could be done with the whole trip within a half-hour and then curl up in bed, I figured.

So, I grabbed my keys and jacket, put on my boots, and headed out.

And I can’t delay any further what I’m about to reveal to you. I’ve tried. I’ve focused on events you’d want to hear about. But my mind is stuck on a loop, and I need to break out of it. I don’t know how important this information is to you. Maybe it’s not at all. It sucks that I have to get into it, but I either share it, or I stop writing here.

It’s probably obvious to you by now that I’ve lost someone.

I had an older brother. “Had.” God, it’s been three years, and typing that word in relation to him still doesn’t feel real. Maybe it sounds cliché, but he really was everything I could hope for in a big brother growing up.

His life was just getting started when it happened. He moved out after graduating, settled into his first small apartment, and got work doing inventory at Walmart. Six months later, he died in his sleep. Alone, in the dark. Just like so many others. Though in his case, the cause was never determined for certain. The old woman had been in town for just a few months by that point. He had never said a thing about her; his days of school gossip were long behind him.

While writing, I’ve known he’d come up eventually. I’m not going to name him after a dog breed. But I’ve thought about it, and while I didn’t like the idea at first, it’s grown on me. Maybe it’s even a little endearing. So… I’ll try calling him Charlie. From one half of the main pair in All Dogs Go To Heaven. Do you like old, 1980s animated movies, Mutt? We watched that one together when we were young. Not all the time, but enough to memorize the story. See, Charlie is killed by a mobster dog, but he finds a way to come back, and he befriends this orphan girl who can talk to him, and… You get the point. I’m not going to summarize the whole film.

It’s always felt like Charlie’s life was considered a small thing in the town, as like me, he kind of faded into the background. That means he also seems like one of the forgotten victims of our “curse.” Even so, my peers knew it had happened, and afterwards, no one was sure how to approach me anymore. I got some low-effort condolences, but eventually other students must’ve just seen it as another barrier that stopped them from trying to engage with me, which did nothing to help my grieving process. And, since he died just weeks before his 19^th birthday and Mom always enjoyed baking us rich and elaborate cakes… You can see how she turned it into a coping mechanism. She was compelled to keep at it, even for someone who wasn’t here anymore. We’re letting her have it, for now. Even though I think it just makes it hurt more for all of us each year.

Needless to say, the witch was not the foremost thought in my mind that morning as I headed to the store. It wasn’t until after I’d gone in and grabbed the flour from the shelf while half-asleep did it occur to me that our paths would intersect, and I only realized it once I heard her snapping at a stocker boy as I was finishing up. I checked my watch and saw that it was 10:14 in the morning. She was on time and nearby.

As other customers and employees gave her a wide berth, I picked up my pace and headed out, doing my usual best to avoid attention. And yet, as I waited in the checkout line, I couldn’t help but sneak a glance at her. Outside of that one time she drove past me when she first arrived, the two of us had never been so close, and I wondered if she really was as bad as people say.

She was in the spice aisle, directly behind the only open checkout lane. The instant I looked at her, I knew I had made a mistake. She’d already been heading my way, and we locked eyes. At our distance, it would’ve been hard to tell that she was gazing straight into me—especially with those beady dark eyes that squinted between her sagging wrinkles—but her stare was so piercing that I felt a chill. And as she looked at me, her face morphed from its typical scowl into a wicked grin that showed off her dark yellow and crooked teeth. She tossed a spice jar into her basket and pointed at me, communicating nothing.

We might’ve stared at each other for a total of five seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. I suddenly felt extremely grateful when I was called up next. I quickly paid with cash, and skipped the bagging so I could get out of there faster. I didn’t want to be anywhere near her, even if I was among the shrinking number of students at my school skeptical that she was killing people.

I thought I was safe once I was outside, so I walked at a relaxed and careful pace as to not slip on ice. I had no idea, or would ever expect, that she’d forgo her purchases and instead come out of the store and chase me down with surprising speed for someone her age. I heard her uneven footsteps behind me, turned around, and needed a moment to process that she had just put her hands on my shoulders.

Out of the blue, I was being assaulted by a psycho with wild, long gray hair and putrid breath like she rotting inside, all in subfreezing temperatures. She wore so many layers of black clothing that it was impossible to tell how frail she truly was, but she had surprising strength. Now she was shaking me, right on Main Street where bystanders could see it. I held onto the flour like it was precious cargo, and for some reason, all I could think about was how I was about to costar in the next witch story the school would be passing around on Monday.

“You stupid girl,” she told me, barely coherently. “Don’t you know what you can do? Why do you keep it locked inside? I see it! I can see that it wants to come out, but you deny its freedom! Embrace your gift, girl! I need to take it from you. We must take it from you. It’s my time. It’s our time! Don’t you want to have its power? Don’t you want to know its blessings?!”

She rambled these words repeatedly, along with other things I can’t remember or will never decipher, but I think I got pretty close to at least a few of the things she said. And I just stood there taking it, unsure what to do or how to react. The safety I usually found in the darkness of closed eyes wasn’t there.

“Hey!” a nearby man I’d never met shouted. “Leave her alone!”

I opened my eyes to see him approaching as he crossed the street. He was acting tough, but she still turned her attention to him, pointed, and then growled, “Come any closer, and maybe you’ll be next to die in your bed!”

That was enough to give him pause. He must’ve known the stories, too. But her grip on me had loosened, and I was able to free myself and back away. What happened then was something that could only occur with such almost comedic timing in a small town like ours: a patrol car rolled up to us before I had a chance to fully escape. The young officer inside must’ve seen at least some of the situation, as he put the cruiser in park and stepped out.

“We good here? Or do I need to get the sheriff involved?” he asked, his focus mostly on the man—they must’ve known each other.

“She just assaulted the young lady after she came out of the store,” my would-be defender replied. “Everyone out here saw it. It’s only going to get worse, ‘Hank,’ you know that. Why isn’t the department doing anything?!”

“That a fact?” the deputy said and looked at me as the witch just stood there, not moving a muscle. “Missy, did she lay hands on you?”

“I… I just want to…” I murmured weakly, feeling overwhelmed and violated but also not at all in the mood to file a report or whatever else might be involved. And besides, I thought, if there was a case, it was weak. A little bit of shoulder shaking wasn’t much to go on. Heck, she could probably claim that she was slipping and needed to grab onto me to save herself. “It’s okay, it’s nothing. I have to get home,” I said emphatically.

“Damn it, Hank, that’s not what happened! I’m telling ya, that woman is dangerous, and it’s only a matter of time until—”

“Look, ‘Buck,’” the deputy grumbled. “The sheriff’s tryin’ to keep the peace as long as possible. He doesn’t want Kennel to be known as a town that rips senior citizens from their homes and tears them apart, you know?” He leaned in and added quietly so that the ‘senior citizen’ couldn’t hear, though I still picked it up. “She’s old and a little funny in the head, that’s all. Let it go.”

The guy I’m calling Buck looked as fed up as some of my classmates, but relented and left the scene—which got another smirk from my tormentor.

“Young lady, before you head off—you wouldn’t happen to know anything about an incident making the rounds, would you? That some teens might’ve vandalized her cabin?”

I just shook my head, still trying to not get involved in any way.

“I can promise you that nothing happened, Officer,” the witch said. “Kids these days, always trying to impress one another with wild stories…”

“If you say so, ma’am. But don’t forget—we have an eye on you, too. We try to provide safety for everyone, but if you ever put hands on a child, we can’t guarantee your own,” the deputy passed on a possible thinly-veiled threat.

“I’ll be on by best behavior, Officer,” she said with a crooked smile.

Once he had driven off, the old bag gave me another grin as part of what felt like a “see you soon” expression, and then returned to the store.

By the way, Mutt. I did see you across the street, watching the entire thing. You must’ve been following her. I wonder if that was when I got on your radar, too, the moment she ran out after me. If you realized that she found me special in some way.

We had Mom’s cake after another quiet dinner. It’s still tough for us to even just eat together, and it’s like me and my dad had to force ourselves to enjoy the admittedly well-made dessert. But it appeased her, and went a long way to keeping our own peace in the household.

I’ll admit something else I don’t want to, only because I can see how it’d be relevant. Ever since we lost Charlie, I’ve been taking sleeping pills on a semi-nightly basis, but not for the reasons you might expect. Last night, because of the encounter at the store that left me shaken (and that I didn’t tell my parents about since they worry enough already), I doubled my usual dose. I was knocked out minutes after I got under the covers in my cold, dark, second-floor bedroom.

I did start taking the pills in the wake of Charlie’s passing, but I’ve stayed on them because it’s hard to get a full night’s rest without help. It’s been this way since he started visiting me in my dreams nightly. It sounds like I’m trying to shut him out, and I know most people relish the chance to see their deceased loved ones in dreams. I did, too, at first.

But it got to the point, where when Charlie showed up, all he’d try to do was… tell me things. Stuff I didn’t understand, that made no sense. And when I say “tell me,” I mean through sign language. He wasn’t completely deaf, but his hearing was diminished to the point where he relied on lip-reading and signing to communicate, which is kind of heartbreaking because it must’ve stunted his social life around town. He was outgoing, smart, and funny. Always ready to crack a joke. I learned how to sign when I was just six so that we could chat and humor one another while we were both still kids. I took to it better than my parents did, and still know how to sign maybe half of the dictionary.

It hurt when I upped my dosage to sleep more deeply. I hated myself for it, but my wakefulness was taking a serious toll on my grades. He’d sign to me in my dreams, but his fingers and hands were always a confusing blur of gestures. Instead of hanging out or going on nonsensical adventures, or whatever it is we do in dreams, he eventually only tried to teach me something, it felt like. It was just a matter of time before he’d get angry, or a little scary, and then I’d wake up, often multiple times a night. I blame my mind for how it presented Charlie to me, and while I did see a therapist for a while, it did nothing to quiet the dreams. I couldn’t live like that, even if it meant casting him out. Now I only dream in jumbles of feelings and flashbacks of places without narrative. But I sleep.

Last night, that all changed. Charlie came to me out of the darkness that had been brought on from a stronger dose. It was the first time he somehow visited me while I was on the pills. As he stepped closer, a large field or meadow grew around him, lit in dark blues under a full moon. I was groggy and sluggish, afflicted by that feeling of being stuck in tar.

He looked even more determined to tell me something, but didn’t seem mad that I wasn’t, or didn’t know how to listen. As he signed, I caught a fast-moving shadow in the corner of my vision, or whatever we call how we “see” in our sleep. He demanded my attention, but it was hard to focus because of the pills, and the distraction of the shadow flying around, just out of sight.

Charlie kept repeating two things. He looked desperate; he needed me to decipher them. But sign language doesn’t translate well in dreams—or mine, at least. I did what I could to focus and sharpen my senses. I shut out the roving shadow, and felt my heartbeat pick up. I managed to enter something closer to a lucid state, and finally understood one of his words enough to recall when I had seen him say it before.

My dreamscape picked up the association and transformed into a familiar stream surrounded by trees, where we once often ventured out to. The water wasn’t deep or threatening, but there was a time when I kept walking on the wet rocks and ignored his warnings like any stubborn child might. I ended up slipping and falling backwards. I would’ve hit my head on a bigger rock if he hadn’t caught me. From then on, I told myself I’d listen the next time he did an upward loop gesture with one closed hand over the other, kind of like reeling in a fish—which meant danger. Now I could see that clearly.

Danger? How was I in danger? Wasn’t I safely dreaming in bed?

But the other thing he was saying… Two letter L’s, opening near his eyes… He was telling me to wake up. Danger. Wake up. Danger… wake up.

The shadow passed overhead. It had come with us to our new location.

I didn’t know how, but he was warning me. I tried to force my addled mind to cooperate, to think faster and sharper, and wake up. I suddenly remembered that Tony, Jessica, Charlie, and many other people had died in their sleep in this cursed town. Curse. The witch’s curse… I was next, wasn’t I?

Maybe I had a chance, though. Charlie had found me in time to warn me, and kept the hunting shadow from taking me by surprise. I’d be okay if I could just wake up. I’d never get back to sleep that night, and probably not the next few nights, either, but I’d survive. As much as I tried, though, I couldn’t awaken. It was almost like the medication had paralyzed my muscles.

I put a hand up to my mouth and spread my finger and thumb out to sloppily respond with, “pill,” combining it with a head shake. Charlie’s memory, or… ghost, or whatever he was, quickly understood that I couldn’t wake up.

We both glanced up when the shadow soared over us again. Then he looked at his hands, and back at me. He made a sort of “I’m going to try something” expression and, next thing I knew, he had rammed into me—shoving me with both arms. I felt a strong jolt, too real to only be in a dream. My nerves and muscles spasmed, like when you sense a sudden drop before you get to sleep. I thought I was falling backwards, into the remembered water.

But instead… It’s strange to try and explain, but Charlie pushed me… out of my body. The blow felt incredibly powerful and physical, and it was as if my soul had been kicked out of the bones and blood that contained it.

I came to on the floor of my bedroom. It was very dark, with little light coming in through my curtains, but I could still see my arms­—now faint and translucent. Steadily, I found a way to stand up, feeling untethered to gravity or the floor, and like I could float off if I wasn’t careful. I had “fallen out of myself” facing my door, which led into the hallway.

My first assumption was that I had just died, and now I was a ghost. I never thought for a second that it was Charlie who had somehow killed me and all the others, but I did recognize in the moment, as confusing as it was, that he had separated some part of myself from my body.

My sense of time was skewed, but I think it took maybe thirty seconds or so to situate myself while I did little more than look around my room in the dark. I also realized that I was cold. It felt like I was shivering. Was it because I had no skin? Or could I still feel what my body did, even when outside of it? Coldness became my dominant sensation. And darkness. And… fear. I’d grown unnaturally frightened. I wasn’t alone. I was being watched. Something… was behind me.

Barely able to gather the courage to do so, I very slowly turned around. The closer my eyes got to seeing myself and my bed, the more reluctant I grew.

I was sleeping soundly under the covers, my apparent tranquility a betrayal of what I was feeling inside. And… hovering over me…

Words fail, but I’ll try. To say there was a solid black cloud the size of a table floating above my head would be the simplest way to put it, but it was so much more than that. This thing, this formless entity, just… existed there, in a corner of my room, not drifting back and forth or up and down. The light from my window should’ve made it cast a shadow, but it had none.

It was like my mind was screaming at me, and yet my subconscious was also trying to reject what I was seeing. “It isn’t real,” it whispered. “It doesn’t belong.” The cloud was a glitch in space, something “added in post” and overlaid on top of reality itself.

As I studied it over the next few seconds, I realized that it wasn’t entirely still. Actually, it was an incredibly intricate thing. It looked like a cloud of frozen dark smoke, but it was actually composed of countless tiny shapes of different opacities. The shapes wriggled, but not randomly. There was an order, as they impossibly folded in and out of themselves at a constant rhythm.

I remember now where I’d seen that type of movement before: from science videos attempting to visualize fourth-dimensional objects. Tesseracts, I think they’re called. But this didn’t occur to me back then, as I only had a moment to look before an appendage emerged from the cloud. It was also made out of the strange material, and it slithered and slid like a snake while looking like some kind of stinger, or insect proboscis.

I watched in equal parts terror and disgust as it descended onto my sleeping face and felt around like the cloud had no eyes. When it began to curl around my neck and the stinger hitched upward as if it was about to drain the life out of me, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I was powerless, and about to witness myself get killed in third person by an alien life form, so I covered the spot where my mouth would’ve been with my ghostly hands and shrieked.

No sound came out, at least nothing that I could hear, but the entity still responded like I had just cried out. The appendage retreated into the cloud, and a glowing orb of eerie orange light briefly appeared or formed in its body. Maybe it was an eye? It had certainly locked right onto me for an instant.

Frozen by fear, I watched in true disbelief as this thing, which I already knew by then must have been what killed or drained the others, began to take on a new shape. The cloud was morphing into something complex and bipedal, and at the same time, it looked like arms and legs were also emerging from its center. I could almost describe it as an unfolding black hole.

As debilitating fear and panic took hold, I watched as the process finished after a few seconds, and the cloud had transformed from an amorphous puff to a more recognizable being with limbs that could better show its intent. Its huge and bulky body had a barely-defined shape similar to a grizzly bear. Its long claws glowed a dull orange in the dark, and looked like a powerful cluster of sharp spears. The being’s large mass stood at least nine feet tall, and its head—if it even had one—would’ve been hidden in the pitch-blackness near the ceiling.

At first, it just stood there. Maybe breathing in some way, I can’t be sure. Every few seconds, its body would shudder and emanate a heavy, deep sound that vibrated the air. I felt it through my spirit, or whatever one calls their essence when out-of-body. I couldn’t see its eyes, but I felt it staring at me, and it clearly showed no further interest in my physical self.

Remembering how Charlie had given me a chance by somehow ejecting the part that this shadowy monster did seem to want, I instinctively reached for the doorknob without giving it proper thought. Of course, my hand passed right through it, and my mind was still so muddled that I wasted time by trying again. I hadn’t even considered simply going inside and out of the door yet.

The beast took a powerful step towards me, and then another, and one more. Its gait was getting faster, like it had to get used to moving again. I fell backwards in fright, floated off of the floor, and accidentally propelled myself right through a wall. I went past what must’ve been a hall closet, not that I could see anything, and then found myself in Charlie’s old room.

My mom had kept everything tidy in there, and used to dust his collection of vintage toys and memorabilia, but after we lost him, his door had pretty much stayed sealed. It wasn’t locked; we just hadn’t gone in there in years. But I barely had any time to realize where I’d gone before that thing’s claws started to come right out of Charlie’s wall. Its body emerged seconds later, and while it was hard to tell in the low light, it also didn’t seem to be touching the ground anymore. It was floating towards me.

I realized that I was faster than it, at least for the time being, so I turned around and did whatever I could to move through the air. I made swimming motions, I kicked, I tried launching myself off of walls; all the things we do in dreams in our attempts to fly or defy gravity. I got better at moving and eventually flew through the hallway, the upstairs bathroom, and then exited the house entirely. I avoided my parents’ room, just in case the creature would have seen them as… nourishment… or whatever it is it wants from us. I figured that if I stayed away from it, I’d live. I was used to outrunning people and monsters in dreams, and this felt similar.

That thing, though, was constantly at my back while I was in the house. I could feel its reverberations get stronger as it drew near. It made no other sounds and didn’t speak. It just wanted to get closer.

Once outside, I went upward, thinking it might be the best way to escape something so huge and lumbering. Maybe by my logic, it would need more effort to rise up towards me. Under dull moonlight, I stopped maybe around a hundred feet above the house, looked down, and then all around at Kennel’s lights.

I’d never left my body before. I had heard of something like this while researching paranormal occurrences for my stories, but I didn’t think it was real. I couldn’t quite remember the word just then, and it wasn’t my main concern.

As I hovered in place and checked every direction, I suddenly felt like I was being watched again, and something caught my spectral eye against the twinkling stars of a cold night I couldn’t feel. There was another being, right by me. It was human-shaped, but blobby and basic, like a kid made it with clay. Shadowy and see-through, with faintly glowing white eyes, this apparition was tranquil; nothing like the violent chaos of the monster somewhere below.

When it realized I was looking at it, it made several repeated gestures. It… was signing to me, just like Charlie had… in the dream…

It took me a bit to remember the first three words he was repeating, but the last of the four, which looked like a sun rising over a horizon, was obvious.

“Run. Hide. Until. Dawn. Run… Hide… Until… Dawn…”

I didn’t know if he was somehow Charlie. My world and grasp of reality had gone completely askew in the last few minutes. But the instructions were clear, and I signed back, “Okay,” trusting that he could see my response.

I felt the tremor in the air, and we both looked down to see it coming towards us, gaining in altitude without moving any part of itself. The two of us scattered into the night, and I did as I was told.

Worried about what would happen if I got too far from my body, I spent what felt like an endlessly long night keeping on the move. I stuck to the old familiar small-town blocks around my home, being sure to avoid other sleeping people as to not risk their lives. I hid among trees on the edge of the woods, and floated over roads and near street lamps that would help me see the monster’s shape. It always knew where I was, it seemed. I couldn’t shake its pursuit, so the “hide” part of Charlie’s instructions might’ve been bad, or outdated information.

Still, my mental map of the place where I’d grown up managed to keep me safe, and I stayed out of its reach. By the time the first light of sunrise finally emerged after my long night of torment, I hadn’t seen the creature that defied explanation for at least an hour.

Feeling exhausted, which I guess in this state meant that I could barely think clearly anymore, I returned to my body, hoping I had survived long enough. I thought I would wake up right away, but I instead entered a dreamless darkness that lasted another three hours and left me helpless.

Even so, the thing’s hunting hours must’ve run out because I was woken up by my mom’s door knocking. Groggily, I left my bed that was now dampened by cold sweat and went downstairs. As I ate breakfast, I tried to remember more about the night before, but it remains a blur. I did know that I didn’t want to live the rest of my life like that; entering some ghostly form each night and running from an otherworldly predator. If I couldn’t figure out another solution, I wasn’t sure what else to do except run far away from home. I’d been born with a gift that gave me a chance Tony or Jessica never had, but it wasn’t enough.

After sneaking a few of my dad’s caffeine pills, I settled in with frayed nerves to spend a day researching. Normally I’d do this kind of thing in the warm comfort of a library, but it was, and still is Sunday. I’d have to settle for my iPad’s onscreen keyboard and slow wi-fi under my covers, where I felt safer.

Out-of-body experiences, astral projection, new-age spiritualism. I looked at it all, and read personal accounts. I learned that I had something very rare, yet hadn’t found out about it until now. Maybe the sleeping pills had suppressed it? And I wondered about Charlie. It’s weird to admit after what happened, but I still don’t really believe in ghosts. But if he had the same gift, and had somehow found a way—and I can’t believe I’m typing this—to exist without a body… Then could that really have been him last night? I’m not ready to seriously consider it, or what such a thing would mean. I’ll have to give it some thought.

Without realizing it, I dozed off in bed after getting such poor sleep the night before. One moment, I was looking at a Wikipedia page about projection, and the next, the tablet slipped from my hands and I was out.

When I began to lucid dream without trying, I nearly startled myself awake. But I managed to hang on and leave my body again, this time with sunlight pouring in through my windows. In contrast to the nightmarish hell of last night, no dark cloud hovered above my sleeping self. I’d done nothing so far with my supernatural ability but run and hide, so I figured I could explore the town, and see what people were up to when they thought no one was looking.

I didn’t get that far. As soon as I had gone through the attic and onto the roof, I saw the shadowy figure again, stretched out near the chimney, almost like it, or he, was casually sunbathing. If it really was Charlie, or some memory or other remnant, I really could picture him using this gift to just relax with a good view, under the sun.

When he noticed me, his eyes grew a little. He got up, and we stared at one another. He had no other features or a face, and without bodies that breathed and swayed, we were both very still.

Unsure what else to do, I signed with barely-visible hands, “What now?”

After a moment, he answered by telling me to find… something. I didn’t remember the second word, and I said as such. Instead of spelling it out, he used his fingers and thumbs on both hands to form a W. Why did he want me to go to the witch? Did she have a secret I could uncover in this state? Or did he want me to go over there and finish what Jessica started?

“Return to body,” he said, meaning I had to confront her in person. He then looked out at the woods across town where her cabin was, pointed, and added, “Find truth.”

He began to fade, and I was afraid he was about to disappear forever. I hadn’t even asked if he was really Charlie. I didn’t get a chance to say anything I wanted to. Either sensing my concern or already planning to reassure me, he signed, “Sleep now,” before vanishing.

Prior to waking up, I took in the view of our town on a quiet, cold Sunday afternoon. It really was a lovely place to grow up. You couldn’t tell that it had seen so much tragedy recently.

I bolted out of bed, dressed warmly, and I admit stupidly didn’t tell my parents where I was going. I also grabbed Charlie’s old baseball bat from his room, which I was no longer afraid of going into, and stuck it through a loop on my backpack. In case I needed to defend myself against a crazy old woman.

I rode my bicycle through empty streets and onto the rugged dirt road that led to her cabin. I didn’t feel as timid and scared as usual. Even if the other spirit who might’ve been Charlie was asleep, it still seemed like he had my back.

When I saw the witch’s old truck, which meant she must’ve been home, I stopped, leaned my bike against a tree, and approached quietly. There was still some animal blood painting the side of the cabin, and I fully expected her to come out and threaten me. On the other hand, there was the way she treated me outside the store. Maybe she wanted to see me, or was expecting I’d visit.

I used the bat to tap at the wooden door for a place that once stood empty for many years. I announced myself by saying I just wanted to talk. I waited. There was no answer.

I tried the door, found that it was unlocked, and pushed the creaky wood open on its rusted hinges. The cabin was shockingly normal and practical. Simple and rustic, it was little more than a main room with an attached bathroom, four windows, a bed, a kitchen, an armchair, and a table. She lived meagerly, not needing much.

Its small size precluded the need for an extensive search. Seconds after coming in and closing the door behind me, I found… what was left of her. Her frail body was on the wooden floor, her long gray hair in a bloodied mop. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at until I made the mistake of getting closer. Her being dead at her age didn’t come as a terrible shock, and I had already seen my own grandma’s body at a funeral, but the gruesome, unsettling way this happened…

I felt sick to my stomach, but kept my breakfast down, just barely. There were candles everywhere in the cabin, dozens of them. Most were out, but a few of the bigger ones were still burning, telling me that this had happened recently. I wasn’t sure if she just used them for light, or liked the nightly ambience, or if this was some horrific ritual—and if it was, had it gone right or wrong? Whatever happened sometime last night, it had left her in a disfigured mess of a state.

She was face down on the floor, surrounded by a pool of blood, and worst of all… it looked like something had chewed or clawed its way out of her upper back, just above her shoulder blades. I mean… God, you can’t unsee something like that. Did Charlie know she was already dead? I couldn’t suspect him of doing this somehow. He’d always been too gentle.

I fought the urge to leave the blighted cabin and had a look around. There was a small book shelf, filled with ratty old covers that were falling apart. I skimmed the slightly newer books, and even those were still printed way back in the 1960s and 70s. Weird stuff about crystals and New Age mysticism and spiritualism. There were also some old audio tapes, like the kind my dad had in boxes in the garage. It was what I found on the top shelf that might’ve had the most promise as far as any answers went. Did Charlie come in here a few times and get glimpses of the books whenever the crone was reading them?

There were three that caught my interest, lined up together, each of them small and nonfiction. The first was published in 1968 and titled, “Modern Wicca and Folklore in America.” The slightly bigger book next to it, called “The New Age of the Radical Spirit” had a first printing in 1976. Both of them, like the last book, had been written by the same person.

An author named Moira Burke. And when I looked at the back of the New Age cover, I recognized the writer in the black and white photograph, even though she was fifty years younger and both vibrant and smiling.

I glanced over at her body, wondering what had led her here, and why she became the way she was at the end.

The last of the three books with her name on it was much different. It was a hardcover in dark red, and while it had a 1982 date inside, it seemed to be missing some details books usually showed at the front. No ISBN, no publishing company. Nothing but the title, the author’s name, and the year alongside a “First Edition” label. I flipped through the pages, and couldn’t make sense of what little I skimmed. The paragraphs were dense, the font tiny. It looked like a bunch of insane rambling with dogmatic overtones, nothing at all like the intelligent and thoughtful sentences I noticed in her other two books.

Its title: “Embracing His Shadow: Praise Be The Torn World’s Girük.”

What. The. Hell. What kind of book is this? I can’t imagine there are many copies in the world. Who reads this madness? Is it a guidebook to worshipping a dark Lovecraftian god? I don’t think “evil” is a tangible thing in this world, but I still dropped the tome to the floor instead of holding it a second longer.

And just what is a Girük supposed to be?

Is it the name of that horrible monster?

Just before your team barged in, I noticed one more collection of paper I wished I had gotten a chance to look at it, which may hold the answers I was meant to find here. On Moira’s table, there was a big binder which might’ve been a scrapbook or journal. Did your people grab that, Mutt? Are you scouring it right now? Before you lock it away or burn it, please let me see it. If it can explain why Moira came here, or what she brought that cursed our town… I need to understand what happened to Tony, Jess, Charlie, and everyone else. And what Moira wanted from me.

Seriously, though. After all I’d been through already, your guys decked out in black military gear busting in and pointing their guns at me was enough to give me a heart attack. They must’ve been right behind me. Did I get followed as soon as your full team arrived in town, in their ominous cars and trucks?

Now I’m a part of your convoy, stuck in some kind of prison trailer. It’s almost midnight as I’m finishing this up, and I assume you’re out there helping to encircle our town and take all the power from the local authorities. I haven’t even been given a chance to call my parents, who already lost one kid and must be worried sick. Everything about my life has stopped making sense and I’m starving in here, so can I get that dinner I was promised?

“Hello, Pom,” you had said when I was first brought to your hopefully very temporary base, after I got tossed into the back of a van. “I want to ask you some questions. I saw that you like to write stories—would it be easier to write it all down? Don’t worry. I know it’s scary, but we’re here to help.”

I did what you asked. I’ve never written so much in one sitting, especially about myself. And if it comes back for me tonight… I’m not sure I’ll last until morning. Do you have anything in your arsenal that can keep me safe? I’m too young to have just written my last story.

As with Moira, I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but if you really want to help us, find a way to destroy that monster.