What We Dig For

130 million people take road trips every year. 15,400 of them are never seen again. Have you heard the story of the passenger that's been circulating online lately? A young couple set out on a van life trip, but a few nights in, they came across a brutal car accident on the side of the road. I'm not talking about a typical crash, something about this was off. And there's one detail that keeps coming up. The car they found had three deep scratches carved into the side. Not dense, scratches. They stopped, they saw it, and then they left. But here's where things got strange. Not long after creepy things started happening, they began to feel like they weren't alone in the van, like something followed them from that road. People online have started connecting it to something they're calling the passenger. Supposedly, it attaches itself to anyone who encounters it and marks their car with three scratches. And once that happens, it doesn't let go. If these reports are true, this couple didn't just witness something on that highway, they carried it with them. From Andre Overdahl, director of autopsy of Jane Doe, comes passenger. Only in theaters May 22nd, get tickets now. Homes to full fiber with thousands more joining every month. The gigaverse is expanding before my very eyes. Gigaclear, faster broadband for rural Britain from only 19 pounds per month. TZZ's apply, 18 month contract. Prices may rise during contract. Check availability at gigaclear.com. No. Is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling and disturbing creepy pastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or our simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Hey everyone, the horrors persist, but so do we. Right? Have I said that before? You know, I've been doing this for quite a while now, and sometimes I still feel like I'm new. Like I'm just some kid learning to walk again. Not that I was anywhere near being a kid when this all started, but still. I don't know if it's been moving this to the radio station or what that's made things feel different for me. I'm guessing it feels different for some of you too. And not just those of you who've been around since those early days of rush and sleep and Ted and Candle Cove and all those classics that I loved so much I just wanted to record and be a part of in some way. Then at some point things changed. Not bad change, just change, like all things do. But sometimes they change more than we're ready to handle. I don't know. I'm sorry. Sometimes I wax poetic all alone in here. Just feels different than recording in my closet under the stairs at home. Sometimes it's like, it's like this isn't even my voice anymore. Okay, I'm sorry. This is one of those moments where it would be good to be able to cut out bad takes instead of this stuff going out over the airwaves. Unfortunately, I don't think that there's many ears out in Minnesota farmland listening to me at the moment. Anyway, let's get to this week's stories. First up, after a devastating head injury leaves her memory fractured, a woman begins uncovering disturbing clues about her past along with an unsettling connection to a hidden diary and a long forgotten killer from writer Jen Frankel and narrated by Alicia Atkins. Creepy presents. What we dig for. You knew what you were by the time you could spell the word mendacious. You were a killer. Out in the back lot, out in the sun, the earth off gas is a potent smell of wet grass. I take the time to orient myself to memorize the way back to the house. The doctor, what was her name, said that my memory will be erratic, temperamental even. I've learned what that means in practice. I don't always know what I've done in the last few hours, and I don't always remember how to get where I want to go. If I stare hard at the dirt track leading back to the house through the sunflowers, though, I'll remember the way, at least for as long as I require to get home again. The doctor also says that I'm lucky to have survived a catastrophic head injury with my personality more or less intact. She told me one of her patients woke up as a blank slate. She knew her name and retained her memories, but who she was, her personality was just gone. Her only choice was to wander through her life as a stranger to herself. For me, it's the memory. Erratic and temperamental barely begins to describe it. I can cry at the drop of a hat, but I also seem to be more cautious, and that feels like an improvement. Any personality changes are strictly for the better. For the erratic part? Well, I know I share a birthday with Ted Bundy, but I had to look up who he was online. Then I had to look him up again the next time his name popped into my head, because I'd forgotten I'd read it the first time, which might have been the second or 50th time for all I knew. Despite not being able to match the name to the person, I do, however, remember every detail about his crimes and his victims. I remember every one of their names, the ones they had connected to him at least. I can run down the list of victims as if I was reciting the alphabet, and it wasn't just him. The path is a little slippery where it starts to dip toward the creek, muddy with the viscosity of melted chocolate. I have to catch myself, and that's when I see the white lump in the underbush. Except for the misstep, I wouldn't have seen it. There's a perfect gap in the twisted stalks and the heavy rain of the previous night, has battered the grasses to form an almost magical avenue, a half meter high tunnel right to… to what? I scour my brain for the answer. Puffball, that's what it is. I think, as my heart beats a little quicker with pleasure, that it's probably been a decade since I found one. I can take it back to the house and fry it with eggs for my dinner. Once I leave the path, it's harder to locate, but I part every clump of undergrowth until I lay my hands on my prize. Only the texture is wrong, and even the color is more ivory than white. It's hard, not yielding like mushroom flesh. Pale spider web lines run over its surface, meeting at the apex of the dome. I know what it is, the same way I know that there was a serial killer who committed vulgar and horrifying acts in at least four states, and managed to father a child in prison before his execution even when I can't remember his name. Maybe that's why it's so appropriate that I found it. This human skull. I don't call the cops. There are several reasons for this, beyond the vague worry I have that I'm wrong, that it's not a skull. Then when I go back with the shovel to free it from the earth it has embedded itself in, I will only find a large ball shaped fungus after all, or that it won't be human, but an animal's cranium. I'll have wasted their time and made myself look foolish. There's more, of course. I had far too much to do with the cops when the accident occurred. The interviews, the stern looks, the crossed arms, the guarded expressions that condemned me through their professionally cultivated lack of curiosity. The way I felt them blaming me while they couched their conclusions and casual questions. When did you leave the house? Who was in the driver's seat? Where were the others sitting? When did you see the other car? The interviews began in the hospital where I woke after three weeks in an induced coma. They continued at the Sheriff's Station when I had recovered and went on for almost three months. I could tell them nothing I hadn't on the first day, nothing of any use. The only thing I could tell them was the one thing I could never say. I had been right all along. I was a killer. I found the hidey hole when I was 19 and drunk, the family on vacation without me. I tripped over a loose board I'd never noticed before in the back hall just outside the living room. The offset of its corner was less than a centimeter. And if I'd been sober or just picking up my feet, I'd never have fallen. Funny that. The way I have literally tripped into discoveries. First the diary and now the skull. It took me almost a week to find the board again once I sobered up. My memory was always a little temperamental, like all my memories are now. These days I can't even dream of drinking because of the medication for my headaches. And what feels like drunkenness is just a combination of neurological damage and drug induced brain fog. Then I found the board not by tripping on it, but because it creaked where no creek had been before. My fall must have shifted it just enough to let it speak. I'd used first a kitchen knife and then a baby crowbar from dad's basement workshop to pry it up. I'm not even sure I know why I wanted to. Just that the compulsion to do so was strong. I noticed that this board, apparently alone of all its neighbors, had no nails holding it in place, just the tension of the other boards around it. Later I'd learned that there was a way to step on it at just the right place to pop it up without any tools. But that was years later, when I owned the house myself. Under the board, in the space between the floor joist, was the diary. It seemed wrong to take it anywhere, to my room, to the den, to the back lot by the creek where I went to get away from everyone else. So I sat against the wall and read. The script was a lot like my own, a midpoint between cursive and printing. No one does cursive anymore. But I'd learned it in the last days before its obsolescence. Someone younger than I might not have been able to read the bloody thing, the way the analog clocks are an unreadable mystery to kids who grew up on digital time. The diary began, you knew who you were by the time you could spell mendacious. You were a killer. I was hooked. It took me weeks to digest the whole thing. I'd made a ritual out of turning its pages, a series of rules to extend and fetishize the experience. One, only lift the board when no one else is home. Two, only read in natural light or by candlelight. No electricity can touch the pages. Three, tell no one about the diary. And four, always put it back just the way you found it that first day. His name was Bertrand and he killed people. Maybe I should have been embarrassed by how much I love the way he wrote. His facility with words sometimes made me forget the sense of them. He used long words I vaguely knew but often had to look up. Five, make an inventory of unfamiliar terms and look them up after the diary is replaced and only then I increased my own vocabulary and imitation of him, thrilling when my teachers noticed my elevated prowess with the language, shamed when I received a piece back and couldn't remember what a particularly juicy term meant. Soon I had Bertrand's killings to add to my catalog of Bundy's crimes. Janie in a frosty January, Jill left by the banks of a river in another state. Anwar, beaten to death just because, outside a roadhouse under a full moon. The diary was in second person, something I'd never seen done before. He described everything he did in detail, minute and exacting detail. But the style let him hold himself outside his deeds. He was an observer the same way I was. And sometimes I could all but feel him sitting next to me as I read his breath in my ear. Read, know, remember, remember. The skull is stubborn or the earth holding it is jealous of losing it. I end up back at the house, remember the path, remember the direction, three times for different tools before I land on that same small crowbar I'd used all those years ago to remove the loose board. I wave to the neighbor, his property just over an acre from ours, from mine. His face is a blur at this distance. But I can see him lift a hand in response. I guess if I actually get lost on the way back to the house, he might be able to help me. If I remember he exists at the seminal moment. Back above the creek, I'm finally able to shift enough of the surrounding dirt, dislodging the roots that had grown through its eye sockets and ear holes to remove it from its grave entirely. It's packed full of hardened earth, clay like and texture. I have to take it back to the house with me cradled under one arm because my hands are full of tools that need returning to the basement. On the porch, I sit it on a cinder block with the crown of it pointed down and began to saturate the insides with water. I make new rules the way I had more than a decade ago. One, never a flood until a trickle fails. Two, you will give up your secret in your own time. Three, this is not a task. It is a meditation on the meaning of life and death. I was 28 when I came back to live at home when the markets crashed and I lost my job. More than that, I lost my career and then I lost my desire to find another. Living with my parents was inconvenient and embarrassing. Despite the intervening years, returning to their roof and their rules ignited every rebellious teenage instinct I thought I'd grown past. We fought all the time. I shouted at them, which was new. Before, I'd always hidden the way I felt and tried to blend into the sofa, my bed, the walls. Both of my brothers and my elder sister returned too. And of course, Alicia, still the baby at 20, was still living at home while she went to school. It was Alicia that made me look at the diary with a new set of eyes. We'd been close as little girls, almost a decade apart in ages but temperamentally similar. We both liked to be alone and we were okay being alone together. The slope by the creek where the sun could keep us warm while we were hidden from sight of the house was our private club, where we would go with books or origami paper or markers. Whatever had captured our current interest. Sometimes we remained alone. More often, I'd arrived to find her there, or she'd show up while I was engrossed in something. We were more than comfortable to be together in silence, which was a relief in a house with so many kids and so much chaos. When I returned as an adult, Alicia was more sullen, the way mom had always told me I was at that age. I never recognized it in myself, but maybe you have to be on the outside to appreciate attitude. She talked to me as if everything was an imposition or an inconvenience, and she had an annoying habit of speaking of herself in the third person. Somehow, that put me in mind of the diary for the first time in years. It was almost as hard to find a time when I was alone in the house as it had been when I was younger, but I waited for my chance. The board still creaked to mark its place, and it still tilted up out of its cradle when I set my boot down in just the right way. I could see the book in the shadows of the recess, but I only crouched down at first, not reaching for it. A smell of mustiness rose out of the hidden space, and with it came memories. A Bertrand, the enigmatic writer of the things he wrote about doing, of the oddness of the second person's structure of his entries, of things I'd done or meant to do. You must be extra careful tonight, because she's seen you and noticed you watching her. So, when you commit to your plan, there is no room for a second attempt. If you don't finish it, she will tell someone who you are and what you're trying to do. You can't leave your fate up to her discretion. If she sees you at all tonight, she must be ended by the time you leave. I started writing my own diary in second person as well. The first page began. You went to the party in Lisa's dorm room tonight, intending to get laid, no matter who you displaced to get a man into your sheets. You made sure that you not only looked and smelled amazing, but that you imbibed just enough before heading over to take off the edge of your scruples. Not that you weren't committed, but you did want to give yourself every advantage, didn't you? My diary goaded me on to reckless behaviors. I see now, in a competition I created in my mind between me and Bertrand. We were the same, he and I. Both scornful of the rules of social norms, both stimulated by risk. His diary remained back at the farmhouse where I'd grown up, off limits thanks to my own rules. I visited rarely, usually on holidays, and I was never alone in the house, and able consequently to access the hidden space under the floorboard. I only had the mental inventory of Bertrand's escalating criminal acts to goad me on. He began by experiments on animals. I liked animals, so I experimented on my classmates. I might have drawn less blood, but I'm sure I did more lasting damage. And everything, every word went into my diary. And it was good. It was very good. Bertrand was a psychopath. That was pretty obvious from the diary. I was on the fence about myself. I thought if anything, I was teaching myself to be a psychopath. Sometimes, I caught myself justifying my escapades on the basis that the world was a bad place. That there was no divine power that ever stopped any evil men do. And that I had had enough turmoil and trauma to legitimize my every action. It was bullshit, of course. I was having fun, and the damage I did was superficial. Just the wear and tear of life. Right? Right up until the moment I killed my family. Alicia had been nagging at me all day. All I wanted was to be quiet, to hole up in my old room and wait for supper. Not to engage in some pointless fight about something I didn't even remember saying. She was convinced, of course, that I remembered very well however I insulted her. But I didn't. Even before the crash, my memory was unreliable. I could say harsh things which passed through my lips and entirely out of my mind. Things that would sting. Particularly her. Probably because we had been so close. I didn't even intend to make her crazy. Unlike my social manipulations at school, the anger Alicia directed toward me came out of no particular ill will on my part. I simply was. And that drove her nuts. In retrospect, I expect that lining up her behavior and mindset with my own at that age would have shown a hell of a lot of parallels. All the complaints levied at her from mom and dad could have been cribbed directly from a list of things that they said to me at the same age. Alicia was acting like an asshole. And in that, at least, she was exactly like me. Going to school and then into the workforce had taught me to hide the rawest edges of my unpleasantness. I could appear to be a terrific friend and coworker when I wanted to. And it wasn't even always an awful way to be. I wondered if Bertrand had mellowed with age. The drives and compulsions he was subject to becoming mere suggestions from a part of the brain gradually being phased out. I thought I might be mellowing. And then I moved home and Alicia reminded me of who I was. Her angry outburst at me and others in the house started to take on the sound of the words in Bertrand's diary, if not the tone. I began to plot to get a bit of my own back. I honestly never imagined that it would end up as a revenge at a proportion to the cause. The officer is hanging over my shoulder as the EMT works around my neck, her fingers icy. I'm fading in and out of consciousness. But I have the definite feeling that I should know why I'm here on the asphalt. The roadway is cold against my back. And then someone says one, two, three. And I'm up in the air, then down on a board. I try to speak, but there's really no point. There's a tube down my throat, and my hands are wet. I can't look down at them because of the brace around my neck. But when I rub my fingers together, they're sticky. No one else. I hear the cops say, or maybe it's a question. It doesn't matter. When I wake up again in the hospital after the three weeks, I'm the only surviving member of my family. They found my diary while I was in the coma. Second person, like Bertrand's. But they seem to have very little doubt that I'd written it about my own actions. If you're capable of this, why wouldn't we believe that you caused the accident on purpose? Because I tried to explain. I didn't hate my family. I didn't need to manipulate them. I didn't want anything from them at all. Just what they gave is a matter of course. Yes, I got mad at them. But I didn't want them dead. Yes, I wrote horrible things about Alicia in the past few months. But I didn't want her dead either. It wasn't until the accident investigators had gone over the scene about a million times that the verdict came in. I was innocent of wrongdoing. Alicia, in the car behind, had rear-ended my vehicle on that cold, wet road. Why she had? No one could say for sure. There was fog, but I didn't remember if it was bad at that moment. There were tire marks that indicated that one, or both of us, had used the brakes. No indication that she had accelerated to hit me from behind. And no evidence to suggest either of us had wanted for it to happen. The house was mine. Free and clear. No mortgage. There was no run around to see when I popped up the loose board and took out Bertrand's diary. I couldn't stop hearing Alicia's voice enumerating the daily list of my faults, giving me a running commentary of my previous actions from the moment I passed through the door to my room to the moment I shut it in her face. Now, all I wanted was to hear her bitching at me, just to have her there. She could have stored my memory, like a human external hard drive for what I didn't have the personal capacity to remember. Her voice was in my head when I sat down with my back against the wall, the way I used it all those years ago when I first found the diary and opened its cracked cover. And for the first time, I saw this was not Bertrand's diary. This was the diary of someone who was watching him. This was the diary of the man who knew Bertrand's secrets. The skull is clean now. And I'm so very curious about the patterning on the inside of it. I'd always thought of skulls as smooth and empty. But the texture of the interior is like an endless fingerprint. All crenellations and channels where blood vessels used to feed the brain that once lived here. I don't know much about the history of this farmhouse before it came into the possession of my family. We bought it when I was around 13. So depending on when the diary had been written, Bertrand could still be alive. He could still be killing. Who are you? I asked the skull. Before I realized that Bertrand was the subject of the diary, but hadn't written it himself, I would have thought it was one of the victims I'd read about in its pages. Now, I wonder if it could be the diarist himself. I take the skull to the Sheriff's station that afternoon. Derelict in the urgency I should have felt upon his discovery, and feeling stupid for having unearthed it. I watch the murder shows on TV. I know you don't disturb a crime scene. The officer who interviews me is one I've met before, but he's professional and doesn't mention where we know each other from. The tone of this interview is identical to that of the ones after the accident, and I begin to think that this was just the way these things are done. Maybe I was never as much of a suspect as I had assumed. Maybe it would have even been safe to tell them that Alicia had been tailgating that night, that she'd gotten too close once too often, that I was pissed off both at her and at my father, sitting in the passenger seat beside me critiquing every aspect of my driving. So I had slammed on the brakes to teach them both a lesson. That's the truth, as I remember it. It was nominally an accident, but I had been a great part of its cause. I have tried to be a better person since then. Bringing the skull to the police was a big step. I feel it. Yes, I was a manipulator, and yes, I have killed. But the horrible things described in the diary? They are beyond me, and I think they always were. The light in the back hall is on when I let myself in, and I go to turn it off. I can't remember leaving it that way when I went out, but so many things slip through my mind these days. The loose board creaks as I step on it. Then again, because there's someone behind me, someone who... I wake up, soar from scalp to ankles. I'm lying on the floor in the hallway, bound with zip ties. Riot cuffs, I think. Not just hand to hand, but hands to feet. I can see the loose board, removed from its place and resting across the secret hiding spot. Beside it, between it and my face, is a boot. There's too little light to make out more than its shape. I start to rock side to side like some ridiculous mashup of turtle and crab. I want to see his face. But the boot rises up and comes down on my back with force. A saw pushes out of my diaphragm through lips that are desiccated wastelands. I might as well have just been a bare mandible, stripped of flesh and tendon and sinew for all the power I have to speak. He stoopes to me, and I feel his hands under my chin, lifting, bending my spine backwards. He makes a funny sound, and it's a moment before I realize what it is. He's giggling, and then I feel flecks of spittle on my neck. He has begun talking to himself, so low under his breath that I make out no words, just the obscene delight in his tone. His obscene delight, as he drags me into the living room, then loops another long plastic strand around my neck, bending me painfully even further back to secure it to my feet. When he lets go, the tie bites into the flesh of my neck, until I wrench my own spine back miserably, straining to bring my head toward my feet. The plastic restraint loosens just enough that I can catch my breath. He's still talking to himself, nearly inaudible. I'm here, but what's going on in his own head is paramount to him. He doesn't feel the need to communicate, not yet. I recognize him now. Of course I do. I've been watching him for years, the killer, watching him and recording what I saw in the diary I kept under the board in the hall. Hell, I'd even used the same style in the journal I kept for myself. I'd even waved at him the day I found the skull. My neighbor, Mr. Tammany, Bertrand, this horrible memory of mine. How many times have I remembered him, remembered watching him, remembered recording my observations, remembered rereading my own words, then forgotten again, twice or fifteen times, a dozen or a hundred. Good, he says now, amusement and pleasure in his voice. He steps back, lowers himself into the comfy chair. I hear its springs creak under his weight. Then I hear him open the diary, the crack of its spine unmistakable. You know, all you had to do was keep watching. I didn't even mind you were writing about me. I thought it was sweet, especially the way you wrote about yourself the same way in your diary. Why did you change our arrangement? Weren't we happy the way things were? And really, sweetheart, you know exactly who's had that was. It's all right in here. He taps the book with his palm and giggles again. I strain to keep the tie from biting further into my neck. He flips the page as if he has all the time in the world. He does, at least as long as my strength holds out. And if I hold out long enough, if he takes too long to kill me, I might just forget why he's here. 130 million people take road trips every year. 15,400 of them are never seen again. Have you heard the story of the passenger that's been circulating online lately? A young couple set out on a van life trip, but a few nights in, they came across a brutal car accident on the side of the road. I'm not talking about a typical crash. Something about this was off. And there's one detail that keeps coming up. The car they found had three deep scratches carved into the side, not dense, scratches. They stopped, they saw it, and then they left. But here's where things got strange. Not long after creepy things start happening. They began to feel like they weren't alone in the van. Like something followed them from that road. People online have started connecting it to something they're calling the passenger. Supposedly, it attaches itself to anyone who encounters it and marks their car with three scratches. And once that happens, it doesn't let go. If these reports are true, this couple didn't just witness something on that highway. They carried it with them. From Andre Overdahl, director of autopsy of Jane Doe, comes passenger. Only in theaters May 22nd. Get tickets now. And next, after a classified experiment is abandoned, a scientist begins seeing a ghostly figure tied to the project, and learns her former colleagues are dying in increasingly horrific ways. I keep seeing her, even though it's impossible. Never close up or in plain view. She appears at the edge of my vision, just before I round a corner or in that blurry space, just before I close my eyes. It's always the same, though. That long, raven black hair and her emaciated body in the dirty hospital gown. It's just guilt and trauma manifesting in visual hallucinations, because the alternative would be impossible. I try to go about my day at my new job, hoping that I can have a normal day. Until I check my emails, I find out another old coworker is dead. The details were all the same as the last four, with their doors locked and no signs of breaking or entering, and nothing on external security cameras. Then there was the state of the bodies, which wasn't described in this email other than the statement that he died in the same fashion as the others. I know from my other sources, they died slowly and brutally. I popped an antacid. My stomach had been prone to stress ulcers ever since I got the job at the lab, and since its closure, I thought they'd go away, but with this, they've been getting worse. I couldn't focus on my work. I stared at the computer screen, not processing anything at all, only the implications of what these deaths could mean. Once the last wall went up in the veil spread, the directors considered it too dangerous to commute to the labs within Lambda Sector, so they just abandoned everything and made us all sign NDAs. The directors knew that if anyone talked, it would raise all sorts of ethical concerns. They even hired Reavers to go in and destroy the specimens and any documents left in the labs. Reavers weren't trustworthy. They could have easily sold that data to the highest bidder rather than destroy it. Then another organization or government could recreate Project Whiteshirt. If that were the case, why were we dying? If that were the case, why were we dying and not being recruited? If it hadn't been for the email I received, I would have thought I was going insane. A colleague from Project Whiteshirt, Dr. Isaac, he was the project manager and was there long before I came on board. He was a staunch believer in the project, more so than any of us were. An untraceable way to strike our nation's enemies. He considered himself a true patriot, America first, no matter what. He didn't see a problem with meddling in other countries, even if it was just for oil or whatever else. As long as it ensured that America was the number one nation in the world, he was all for it. He chugged that red, white, and blue Kool-Aid. So, when we were told we had to leave the labs, Dr. Isaac was distraught. He acted as if we were leaving his children behind. I guess in a way we were. His fury didn't last long. The man disappeared into another project within a week. Mine like that isn't one to be wasted. So when I got an email from him that simply said, she is coming for us? Four dead and I think I'm next? Three one three isn't dead? I knew it wasn't a joke. The labs were supposed to be purged when we left. I wasn't too upset. The entire area gave me the creeps and the project weighed on me spiritually. They were all just kids when they were first sourced and then the veil. It wore on you, going through it repeatedly. I was glad to never have to cross it again to fear mundane things like grass, shadows, and music. That was before the sector expanded. Now the trip to the labs would be twice as long and even more dangerous. I emailed him back but never got a reply. So I did some research on my own and confirmed that four of the eight of us were now dead. Five actually because I assumed that Dr. Isaac Silence was a sign that he was no longer in the land of the living. I was a latecomer to the project so I was hoping three one three would overlook me that she wouldn't turn her evil on me. I was wrong. Two days later I saw her in the distance through the bustle of traffic. Then that night she was standing behind me in my bathroom mirror. I stood stone still, trying not to let her get to me. Emotional responses and stimuli are how she works her way into the mind. Instead I finished brushing my teeth, ignoring the sound of her breathing and the putrid smell of her unwashed body. I knew how she killed and I hoped I could keep her from doing it to me. I needed to keep a level head and when I looked in the mirror a corpse looked back out at me. Flesh hung from the bones and ribbons of dissected brown and the sockets stared empty back at me. Its mouth opened and insects crawled out over its face and it reached out through the mirror with cadaverous hands. I stepped back tripping over my laundry basket and fell to the floor. The corpse crawled out over the sink and down the sink. I couldn't move. Fear had me anchored to the linoleum. It put its putrid face and mind and whispered in a voice like gravel, I am coming for you. I clamped my eyes shut and focused on my ragged breathing instead of her words. Minutes passed before I opened them again and she was gone. I got up shaky as a newborn deer and my reflection while no longer a corpse didn't look good. 313 can't directly kill someone. She can't stop a heart or cause an aneurysm and while that is true it's just nuance. Even though she can't mentally crush a heart in spectral hands, she can create images so horrifying that a target's heart stops because of fear alone. Or she can cause the person's perception to change so drastically that they walk into traffic or off cliffs. Terrible accidents happening to terrible people. That was how we justified it. Terrorists, enemies of the state, threats to our nation. Dr. Isaac said we could have ended every war in history using her. I wasn't sure if that was true and I couldn't even be sure that the government would continue to use her powers in this way. Now I was in her gaze, a target for her wrath and I couldn't blame her. She had no autonomy, no agency in her life. Still, I wanted to live. 313 was in my dreams. She showed me the deaths of the other scientists. Isaac fell down the stairs of his apartment building, breaking his spine. So he lay there, unable to move his arms and legs, waiting for help. But she altered the perception of every person who walked by him, making him invisible. He died of dehydration, watching people who would help if they could see him. Another, Dr. Alex, carved her wrists open trying to dig spiders out of her skin and bled out in her bathroom. Dr. Wez walked into a field and laid down in front of a lawnmower. I sat up, the sound of the blades hitting bone and flesh was still audible, and it shifted to the sound of the box fan in my room. My skin was clammy and my heart felt like it was beating against my ribcage. When I looked down at my feet, a snake had coiled up and rattled its tail. Already shaky, I jumped as it struck, and I fell off the other side of my bed, hitting my head on the nightstand. I can't do this, I grunted, holding the back of my head. I can't live like this. It has to end! There was only one way for me to make it out alive. I would have to kill 313. It took nearly four days to get everything in place, a driver to bring me back to Lambda Sector, a reaver as a guide, and then bribes to let me into the sector without a permit. There was no way I could get one fast enough, especially for the reason I needed it. This was all made more difficult because 313's constant interference, voices over the phone, hallucinations of insects, fires and home invasions, I ended up walking most places with my eyes half open so I could focus on my other senses, and even then it wasn't a guarantee. She could, after all, make me feel, hear, taste, and even smell things that weren't there. It took immense focus and patience to get anything done. On day five, I stood at a gate just before dawn with my guide, a reaver named Silent Sam. I made sure that he knew if I acted strange to grab me and pull me along as needed. I learned quickly how he earned that name. He only ever responded to anything with grunts of affirmation or disagreement. We met at an entrance, the cameras went dead, and the hum of electric current fell silent. After a thumbs up, we crossed into Lambda Sector and waited for the sun. Since the darkness beyond the fence was far more dangerous than on our side. White flames bobbed and danced between the trunks of trees as if there were a party of revelers with strange torches chasing each other through the woods. Sam looked at me and shook his head and pointed to the ground. Don't look, got it, I said, and looked down at the gravel in front of me. I could still see them, though, in my periphery and could hear the faint tinkling of chimes. Focusing on the stones, I tried to hum and tune it out, but even they were becoming peculiar. A water-smooth bit of quartz rolled a few inches and smaller gray stones shifted, joined by another and another. Soon the stones were all shifting and changing to form something, a face. 313 crinned up at me with a smile made of gravel, and I heard the whispers of her voice. I kicked the stones, startling Sam a bit, and looked up at the pink sky. Her voice was all threats and promises of pain, but I tried my best to ignore them as the sun came up. The flames receded into the woods, the sound of chimes going with them, and then silent Sam and I began walking. We passed through the veil, neither of us flinching since we were both used to it. Sam watched me, though, used to folks falling over from the wave of vertigo that went with crossing it. He nodded, and we continued down the gravel road. I knew where I was going and only needed him for protection and to help if I was hallucinating. The labs were half a mile within the first wall, the wall that used to mark the border of the sector. I wasn't sure why it expanded and didn't know if anyone knew. The anomalous activity inside the sector was the subject of more scientific interest than anything else in history until it expanded again. We thought it was stable after the first two times it expanded in pretty close succession, but after ten years it jumped a third time. That jump halted most of the research, but not all. Lives were lost, but people are still convinced that Lambda Sector holds miracles. I didn't know, especially now as 313 messed with my mind, trying to find ways for me to cause my death. I couldn't blame her, though. She didn't have a good life. I read the files on 313, even though I wasn't supposed to. She was taken into custody after her parents were killed in front of her. Apparently her father found out she had some kind of gift and used it to cheat that illegal poker. This made him lots of enemies, and they caught up to him. But the men who killed her parents both ended up killing each other afterwards. This caught the attention of Dr. Isaac, who was a firm believer that humans were evolving. He tried to hone her powers through every method he could think of, but the only thing that worked was sensory deprivation. At first it started with tanks. She could find people anywhere in the nation. All she needed was a picture of their face, and within minutes she could give their exact location, which worked great for targeted missile strikes. Only he kept pushing her abilities, and she learned to change perception so well that missiles were no longer necessary. Then, trying to hone the process further, he got rid of the tank and opted to sever her nerves. So she lived in a constant state of sensory deprivation with a feeding tube and IV. It wasn't a life. She wasn't a person anymore. She was only a weapon, and it seemed at the time she didn't mind or didn't have the mental capability of carrying. She could have turned on us before the sector jumped, but there's no way to know. Folks died all the time inside the sector in strange and horrible ways. The only reason they got away with any of this was the fact that the laws were different. As long as the individual was within the sector when the veil dropped, they were allowed to experiment on them, since those people who survived the veil were changed. 313's origin obviously wasn't within the sector, but there was no way to prove that, and no one was looking for her. I could only imagine how many others they dragged across the veil and fell to the same fate. As much as I wanted to live, I couldn't blame her for wanting to take revenge. I would, too. She watched me from between the trees, in the reflection of puddles, and from the inside of buildings, omnipresent in her spectral form. I was so ready for illusions that when a pack of wild dogs came out of an open bilko door behind us, I didn't react. They got closer, their panting breaking off into barking and silent Sam spun around with a shotgun and started shooting. I ducked down onto the ground, forgetting that I'd purchased a pistol for this. The thunder clap of the gun made my ears ring, and I only moved when he grabbed me by my coat and pulled me to my feet. His silent glare told me all I needed to know. Sorry, I said, and he responded with a nod and kept walking, reloading a shotgun. 313 tried to send illusions my way, more dogs, shambling monsters, but each time I got silent Sam's attention and pointed to whatever monstrosity was there, and he shook his head. I avoided giant holes in the ground that Sam walked right over. I jumped over snakes that weren't there and jumped at disembodied screams. Sam kept hold of me every time I wandered. He knew he wasn't getting paid unless I survived, and I promised him a good sum. We passed through the gate into the inner sector where the labs still stood. The strangeness and danger grew the closer we got. Cars and homes looked immaculate, as if someone was maintaining them regularly, when their neighbor's houses had collapsed from rot. Other homes, even ones that had caved-in roofs, were lit up with shadows cast on the windows moving around inside. We stopped when a man walked out and checked the mail in a bloody bathrobe before walking into his burnt-out house, leaving footprints of soot on the sidewalk. This man was one of the left behind. There were lots of names for these people, revenants, townies, and zombies. Either way, scientists captured and studied them, but I was never part of those experiments. I only heard whispers of what they found, and all of it made me want to never go near them. We turned off onto a side road and drove through the woods to a solid metal gate. I put in the passcode to enter, hoping it still worked. Most electronics don't work inside the sector, but since they built this place after the veil dropped and shielded everything inside, it all should still work. I waited for a moment after pressing Enter, hoping that the gate would open. I held my breath and Silent Sam looked at me with his cool, stoic glare. Then I heard the whir of electronics, and the gate screeched open on rusted bearings. I was relieved, but Sam's face instantly became fearful. He raised a shotgun and stared down the road. I realized too late what he was afraid of. The sound was going to draw in anything in the area. We rushed inside, and I ran over the guard shack, trying to find a way to shut the gate. I heard a howl, and when I looked up, a figure ran up the road. As it became clearer, I recognized them. The man in the bathrobe. I searched, and in my panic I found a shutoff switch and clicked it. The gate stopped its movement, but it didn't close. The man in the bathrobe was closer, and there were other figures behind him. Silent Sam went to one knee and aimed his shotgun, waiting for them to get into range. I searched, but the switches moved, vanished, or grew legs and scrambled away. I closed my eyes and brushed my hand over the panel until the gate came back to life and slowly closed. Sam fired, and the robed man fell. His leg shot out from under him. Two more shots, and the other people dropped. The gate closed so slow that I wondered if it was moving at all. Sam waited as they dragged themselves closer with incredible speed. The robed man stood, his shattered leg bending grotesquely beneath him. Sam fired again, and his other leg exploded in a red mist. The gate closed as the other two slammed into it. The smooth steel left nothing for them to grab onto, and they smashed their fists into it as we walked into the building. It looked untouched. Even after the last four years of being abandoned, the lights still worked, and the passcode opened all available doors. The howls of the townies outside faded as they lost interest and wandered back to their cycles. I walked the same path I used when showing up to work. I knew all the dangling exposed wires, open pits, and other hazards were illusions. Sam checked the rooms ahead as we walked past, but I knew these were going to be safe. This facility looked untouched, and there was no way that anything got in. However, it occurred to me that if 313 was alive, other experiments could wander the deep halls. I took out the pistol. It was heavy, and Sam looked at me, then at the weapon in my hand. Don't worry, I see nothing but… I trailed off, looking behind him. 313's face was looking out a door window behind him, and he turned, raising the shotgun, scanning the area. It was just a reflection. He nodded, but looked rattled. As we walked down the hallway, he jumped at nothing and raised his shotgun again. I gripped the pistol, but was too scared to raise it and accidentally shoot him. He looked back at me, his eyes wide. The shotgun turned and faced me. Hey, Sam! Sam, it's me! I shouted, raising my hands. Don't shoot if you want to get paid! I tripped over my boots, and Sam fired the shotgun. I scrambled backward, remembering the pistol in my hand. I raised it and shot at him. The first three bullets went wide, and he fired again. A slug grazed my left leg. Red flashed through my vision as the pain took my breath away. I squeezed the trigger one more time, and heard a thud. It took a moment for my vision to clear, and when I looked up, silent Sam was on the ground, a pool of red growing around him. Fuck! I shouted, impressed against the gouge in my leg. I took off Sam's belt, opened his backpack, and found a med kit. Using butterfly strips and some gauze, I covered the wound, but it still oozed and burned as if there were a hot iron in my leg. It would have to do. I pulled myself up, my vision swimming and narrowing. I couldn't quit and stepped around silent Sam, his blood squelching under my boots down the hallway. The corridor elongated, doors sprouted open, and creatures from every depth of hell emerged. I closed my eyes and kept walking. The screeching of the monsters filled my ears. I could feel their claws on my skin, but there was no pressure behind them. Nothing held me back, and after a moment, my head bumped into the door. I opened my eyes and looked behind me. 313 was there, approaching, fire erupting from the ground as if she was bringing hell with her. I put in the code shakily and passed the door, closing it behind me. The lab lights came on, and it was exactly as I remembered. My notes were even on the table where I'd left them. In a room with glass walls was a single pod. Inside was 313. I shambled over and opened the door, even as things lunged at me from the walls. Her face was shrouded in hair, and the IV and feeding apparatus still hummed. I raised my pistol to shoot her, but remembering the file I'd read, I lowered it, opened the hatch, and the pod hissed as it depressurized. I reached in and picked her up, the pain in my leg blurring my vision. I found a wheelchair, a gown, and wheeled her out using it to take the brunt of the weight off my leg. Nothing jumped out at me. There were no screams or strange monsters. Just the bright, warm sun of a new day. 130 million people take road trips every year. 15,400 of them are never seen again. Have you heard the story of the passenger that's been circulating online lately? A young couple set out on a van life trip, but a few nights in, they came across a brutal car accident on the side of the road. I'm not talking about a typical crash, something about this was off, and there's one detail that keeps coming up. The car they found had three deep scratches carved into the side, not dense, scratches. They stopped, they saw it, and then they left. But here's where things got strange. Not long after creepy things started happening. They began to feel like they weren't alone in the van, like something followed them from that road. People online have started connecting it to something they're calling the passenger. Supposedly, it attaches itself to anyone who encounters it and marks their car with three scratches. And once that happens, it doesn't let go. If these reports are true, this couple didn't just witness something on that highway, they carried it with them. From Andre Overdahl, director of autopsy of Jane Doe, comes passenger. Only in theaters May 22nd, get tickets now. And finally, a jaded space hauler nearing retirement expects one last routine salvage mission, until a strange living meteorite comes aboard and begins to change everything it touches. From writer George Larson, creepy presents the speckled rock. Big Jim was bored. No, he was mildly depressed. He was wondering how much down time he had until the next collection. Now on his fifth mission with Ariel, he found the routine monotonous, then looked forward to some rest and relaxation. The work had become repetitive, reminiscent of his days on the assembly line in Detroit. Get up in the morning, have a cup of Java, then man the controls, rise and repeat and do it all over again. His only moments of engagement came during the high alert operations to retrieve debris, lassoing another piece of metal junk clogging the airways. Jim felt disconnected from his younger energetic crew and was unaware of his burnout. Artemis II, the vessel, was also aging, but remained reliable. As a junk hauler with many years of service, she was nearing retirement, much like Jim. Both faced the prospect of being replaced after years of dedicated work. Turned out to pasture like two broken down stray horses. Just old, down on the heels, relics. Their mission was to collect defunct satellites and miscellaneous debris that had outlived its usefulness. Communications, spy or navigational, it made no difference. The Earth's orbital sphere was crowded with failed satellites and it was up to Arty and its crew to remove them to prevent collisions with active equipment. It was a money making enterprise for aerial space reclamation and it had a lock on the business with no viable competitors. The crew was preparing to capture their next target, a Japanese communication bird in geostationary orbit that had failed several years prior. Jim anticipated a straightforward retrieval and easy catch, but what they grabbed was more than just a satellite. The crew went over close to the satellite, adjusting its speed and attitude to bring aerial aside. Extending the arms of the catchers, they grasped the bird and gently carried it to the cargo hold of the ship. It was deposited along with other satellites he previously retrieved, a total of five and a mixed nationalities. Now they could go home, mission accomplished. Jim inspected the new acquisition as was his custom. This bird was old, likely launched about 12 years ago. He'd later check his data screen to verify when and note his report accordingly. Aerial would be pleased. The originating companies and governments paid dearly for the return of their satellites, more so for the spy variety. Alley signaled Jim to meet in the cargo bay. She was his heir apparent who had accompanied him on several missions and was now ready to take command. She earned the top spot on the crew by demonstrating her proficiency in all aspects of the mission. She was a true professional and Jim was pleased at the prospect of her taking control of Arty. She pointed to the rock that had just been deposited in the cargo bay along with the Japanese satellite. It wasn't the first time they picked up a piece of iron in the process, but this meteorite was highly unusual. Unlike typical finds, this rock featured fluorescent green speckling and a dense spherical form distinguishing it from previous recoveries. It had a mossy covering and resembled an overly large football. But the weight was almost too heavy to lift. Alley tried it and was barely able to lift the rock. It actually turned down the lighting and the rock glowed in the dark. They both thought it had an eerie creepy look. Jim later would consult his data screen to determine the nature of this unusual find, but first had to concentrate on the ship's reentry plan for earth. Home again, home again, jiggy jig. The next day, Ali frantically called Jim, telling him to immediately come to the bay. It seemed the rock had changed. The green moss had grown substantially overnight. The thing now resembled a chia pet on steroids. They speculated the oxygen-enriched atmosphere at a to the growth of the mossy tendrils now coming from the rock. Jim could find no reference to the speckled rock in the ship's database. It was puzzling since the data cache was supposedly state-of-the-art. Apparently what they had found was unique, a one-of-a-kind prize. Ali was taken with meteorite. Perhaps obsessed would be a better description. She spent much for spare time sitting, looking at the rock as if in a days, almost a dreamlike state of reverie. She spoke to it as if it were alive, caressing the tendrils which continued to grow under her watchful eye. Jim was busy with the details of their reentry process, going over the computations for a safe journey back home to earth. He knew it was to be his last one. It was over. Jim gave the strange rock a lot of thought over the next few hours. Something was alive and growing on the meteorite, that was for sure. He thought the mossy substance might, just might, contain a cure for cancer or other horrific diseases besetting man. It was possible. Or it could be a virus that would wipe out all of mankind in short order. It was also possible. He sent off an immediate precedence message to Ariel's ground headquarters asking for guidance, passing the buck for a decision. He now had less than 24 hours before the ship started its descent, gradually leaving orbit and wending its way back home. Ali had been quiet for the past few hours, and Jim was worried. He was concerned about her need, her compulsion to stay watching the speckled rock. It wasn't normal the way she'd interacted with the damn thing. It was almost like her innate maternal instincts were coming to the fore. Dangerous and unhealthy for sure. Jim tried to contact Tony, the other member of the crew. This was his first voyage, and so far, so good. He was wet behind the ears as expected, but he performed his duties ably. He was in nobby with a dry sense of humor who could keep the three of them entertained, belly laughing at times with his racy tales of a randy bachelor. He was a great kid who'd do well. But Tony must have been out of your shot now since he wasn't answering his call. That was unusual, since he never went anywhere on the ship without his earbuds. Very strange. Jim was going to the cargo hold to check on Ali, but before he did, he stopped by Tony's quarters to see if he was okay. He wasn't. No, God, he wasn't. What he saw chilled him. Tony was on the floor, wrapped tightly in green tendrils, choking on the moss that had climbed over him and filling his mouth and nose. He was trying to pull the green strands out, but was unable. His airway was blocked, and he was gasping for air. The thing was trying to suffocate him. Jim reached down, and with all his strength, he was able to free Tony's mouth and nose of the god-awful globs of green. Now, sitting up and still gasping for air, Tony puked his guts, exhaling tiny bits of green threads as he did. He was alive, but shaken and confused. Jim immediately left him to recover and went to the cargo bay. Walking the length of the ship, he glimpsed greenish moss adhering to the bulkheads. It seemed that it was turning color to a shade of bright green, perhaps maturing into something even gaslier. It was quickly engulfing the entire ship. Ali was totally enveloped in a cocoon of green filaments, extending from head to foot the moss protruded into her eye sockets, nasal cavity, and mouth. The top of her head was a swirl of green threads moving about like the Medusa. She was dead by the look of her as she stood tall over the rock. The word over was apropos since she seemed to be levitating rather than standing. She then spoke in a tinny, maniacal voice. The words were not coming from her mouth, but rather conveyed in an almost telepathic manner. Jim was frozen in shock by what he saw and then heard. I am the conveyor of death, death with no beginning or end. I have traveled the universe for untold millennia, seeking death and destruction to living creatures. That is my destiny and quest. I revel in my work to bring sorrow into worlds well beyond yonder. Immortals are yet another creature to be vanquished. This is what I live for. Death. Shuddering as he did, Jim ran to the hatch, opening and securing it, keeping the creature safely inside. At least for now. He had to regain his wits, although he wasn't sure what to do. What to do? On his way back to the bridge, he decided to contact Ariel again. This time he'd tell the truth, the whole truth about what was happening to Artie. They probably wouldn't believe him, but he didn't have any better thoughts now. Big Jim feared death. With trembling fingers, he typed a message once again to Ariel, explaining the bizarre encounter with the alien force. He waited for what seemed to be an indeterminable amount of time for a response, and it finally came. Abort reentry. Repeat abort reentry. May God have mercy on your souls. Big Jim realized what the message meant. He and Tony were about to die in space. He then unlocked the self-destruction switch on the ship's console. He hesitated for just a second before pushing the red button. It was his last act as a commander of Artemis II. He thought it was a fitting end. Going out with a bang rather than a whimper. Like a line of verse he hazily remembered from long ago. Two seconds later, Artie imploded, momentarily making a bright spot in the sky for all to see. Today's episode is presented by Corporate Retreat, in theaters May 22nd via Western film services and passage pictures. Described as a gory mix of the menu and saw, Corporate Retreat centers around a group of young executives whose luxury team building trip descends into a bloody fight for survival against a vengeful retreat leader, played by the inimitable Alan Ruck. At the center of this horror comedy is an eclectic cast that also includes Odea Rush, Sasha Lane, Ashton Sanders, Zion Marino, Kirby Johnson, and Rosanna Arquette. Aaron Fisher directs from a scripty coro with Carrie Lee Romeo, with special makeup effects handled by Candyman and Screamforum maestro, Gary J. Tonacliff. You'll laugh, you'll cringe, you'll cover your eyes. When Corporate Retreat hits theaters May 22nd, get tickets now. In the alley, the scent is stronger, overpowering. As I watch, the overhead lamps flicker and wink out one by one. God damn it, no. The girl appears briefly under the last streetlight, the headphones snug against her ears, the Walkman clasped to her hip. She's oblivious as she walks, lost in her own world. Hey, stop! I need to talk to you! Then she swallowed up by the darkness again. Helen, wait a second! It strikes her in the gloom so fast she barely has time to scream. She falls into the edge of the lamp light and lies there, bleeding, motionless. The man's skin is scaly, flaking, and there are patches of soot on his cheeks. He stares at me with eyes like midnight, eyes that are devoid of remorse, devoid of humanity. He's one of them. I turn and run, and I don't look back. The Road of Shadows, a new mystery and suspense audio drama by Mark R. Healy, creator of The Strada. Listen now at TheRoadofShadows.com