#### Chapter Three: Things That Wait in Darkness
The haunted park.
I didn’t think about it much on the playground. It was the sort of place you walked past every day until you forgot it was there, a patch of grass bleached by the sun, mulch pressed by sneakers, jammed between the gray apartment blocks like a crooked, accidental smile. It wasn't anything special: a swing set that groaned like old bones, metal slides that burned your thighs in July, a jungle gym whose rust bled into your palms. Each weekday after school I would take my daughter, Ellie, and turn her loose on the world while I nursed a cup of coffee and pretended to read. This was business as usual. It was safe. Or so I believed.
Looking back, I could have paid more attention to her. I tell myself that, in the long hours after midnight sometimes, when the world is still and my thoughts turn to rot. I wish I could see the danger before it was too late.
The first child went missing Thursday. Tommy's got red hair, a laugh like a firecracker popping, and knees that are grass-stained. One minute he was there, chasing the other children around the swings, the next he was gone. Authorities anticipated he would probably flee. But nobody in the neighborhood believed that. 4:00 p.m. There’s no place for excluding kids on the playground. Not in our town, Outlawed in broad daylight.
Weeds grew, and so did the rumors. The parents murmured at the bus stop about strange children they had seen about the edges of the park. Pale, mute children with bottomless black eyes. The kind of rumor you want to laugh off but can't. I heard it in snippets, “He went into the trees with them,” “He didn’t speak,” “His eyes were like ink,” and with each piece the knot in my gut became colder and tighter.
Ellie began to have nightmares that week. She would crawl into my bed shivering, her little fists holding on to my shirt as if she were drowning. "They are waiting for me," she would whisper in a voice so low I could barely hear it. children of darkness. They want me to do outdoor activities in the forest.
I tried not to think about it, but the children kept disappearing. Five. Two weeks. The police plastered fliers on every telephone pole, dredged the creek, and dragged the woods. None. No footprints, no ransom, not a thread of clothing. Absence – a thick, heavy thundercloud over the playground.
One afternoon I saw Ellie and two girls I had never seen before playing by the sandbox. It was cold, but they had no shoes on and their dresses were thin and faded. I called for Ellie. She turned, her eyes wide and distant, as if lost in something. The other girls turned too and I immediately saw their eyes, as black as obsidian, glistening and icy cold. My heart sank.
Dad, can I go to the home of the fairies? “Ellie,” she said, her voice growing more and more strained.
“No my dear. “Not today,” I gagged, my throat constricting. "It is time to go home."
The black-eyed girls looked at us with unblinking eyes, hands held out as if waiting for Ellie to go.
Later that evening Ellie ate just a little of her dinner. "Also they said I could bring you along," she whispered. They said we could stay as long as we liked.” “They are alone.”
I couldn't go to sleep. The shadows in the house crawled and shifted. At midnight four slow knocks came at the window, then silence. "I have made out myself. I saw 2 faces in the dark. Their eyes looked like holes poked in the nite.
The next day I made Ellie stay at home. She was clawing at my arms and screaming because she wanted to go to the park so badly. "They're going to be mad, daddy! Now it's my turn! Her voice was ragged and inhuman, and sounded desperate.
My hands trembled when I contacted the authorities. It didn't matter that they assured her that a patrol car would be parked at the playground. The swings were deserted and the sandbox undisturbed. The knocking continued from the window, from the door.
One night I found Ellie, in her nightgown, barefoot, halfway out the window. The two girls with the black eyes stood in the mist, their hands reaching out. “Ellie come with us,” they sang. Their voices echoed like a broken music box. Exercise. You can't stay here but you don't have to go home.
I pulled Ellie back inside and slammed the window. The girls disappeared into the dark, but their eyes remained fixed on the glass, as if they were on fire.
That was enough. I gathered our things and left the city before dawn. Ellie is not talking much right now. Sometimes when she takes pictures of empty playgrounds there are shadows at the edge of the frame, figures with eyes like bottomless pits. Sometimes I wake to find her at the window, fogging the glass with her breath, talking to someone I can't see.
If you ever see children at the edge of the playground, skin too pale and eyes too black to be real, take your children and go home. Don't let them fall behind. Don’t accept their invitation to recreation in the forest. If you hear them knocking in the dark, don't let them in. None whatsoever.
Chapter 3 Things That Lurk in Darkness
The Secret Of The Hitch Hikers
You wouldn’t expect to see a child walking alone down a country road after midnight. It's the kind of thing you only see in your rearview mirror when the world gets too quiet and the radio is only static. Hours I'd been driving, the hum of the tires and the darkness taking me into that half-awake trance where you start to wonder if you're still alone in your own head. Then the headlights picked out something in front, a small, shuffling shape.
At first I thought it was a deer, the way it moved, slow and nervous, weaving along the shoulder as if half expecting to vanish. But as I got nearer I could see it was a child, maybe ten years old, in an old fashioned jacket with those shiny silver buttons that catch the light and throw it back at you. He didn't even look up, just kept walking with his head down, hands shoved deep in his pockets like he was trying to burrow into himself, didn't flag me down.
I eased up, and the car crept now, the window cracked in the cold and the sharp smell of wet leaves and blacktop. “Hey, kid, you alright? Lost?” (5) My voice was weird, too loud for such an empty night.
He said nothing. He just stopped. He just stood there, head still down. My heart began to beat faster, thumping in my ears. Perhaps he was afraid. Maybe he was wounded. I pulled over and parked the car, against my better judgment. The nite pressed in, heavy and oily.
“Want a lift? I dialed. I tried to make it sound casual, but my voice sounded small and thin back at me.
Then he looked up and I saw his eyes black, lid to lid, not a white in them. I cringed and looked away. Just a trick of the light, I told myself. Just shadows. Just fatigue. But the longer I looked the more I knew: those eyes were wrong. They fed on the light, drank it all up. Hungry infinite.
He said nothing, opened the passenger door and got in, the slam of it louder than seemed possible. I didn’t ask him where he was going. I'm driving again, hands tight on the wheel and the world outside a blur flashing by.
“Where’s your mom and your daddy? I kept myself as steady as I could. He looked at me and I got goosebumps up my arms. “They’re close,” he said, voice flat, empty. “Always at hand.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out of my throat cold and sour, dying. We went on, the world growing stranger and stranger. The trees on either side of the road seemed to lean in, their branches scraping at the roof as if they wanted in. The radio spat static, then whispers murmured voices, names I didn’t know. My phone chimed. And chimed. And chimed again. Blank texts piling, the screen going dark.
Ahead, a gas station stood out like a lighthouse. I was relieved. “All right, we’ll stop here,” I said, trying desperately to sound normal. “You can call somebody.”
He didn't answer. I pulled in, the lot empty, no clerk, no other cars, just buzzing fluorescent lights and shadows that jumped when you looked at them. I looked back to ask him if he wanted anything, but the seat next to me was empty. The door didn’t budge. He was just gone.
I got out, my legs trembling, and surveyed the lot. Only my footprints in the greasy gravel. I rattled the station door locked tight. I turned back and he was there, at the edge of the woods, watching me.
I should have gone. Just got in the car and drove till the sun came up. Should've. Yet something kept me there, curiosity perhaps, or fear that if I turned my back he would follow. “Help?” I yelled. “Who are you?
He said nothing. He just held up his hand, palm out. One by one the lights winked out, until the world was silent. So quiet I could hear my heartbeat.
That was when the dream began. For weeks I would see him every night at the foot of my bed. Those black eyes boring into me, whispering secrets I would not remember by morning but would always wake up sweating from. Empty texts buzzed my phone. Sometimes I'd catch him in the reflection of a store window or a passing car, always watching.
I told myself it was my imagination, but the world kept slipping away. My friends stopped answering my calls. In the mirror my face was thinner, paler, as if something were eating away at me. I saw other children, too, black-eyed, silent, under street lamps or outside my door. They didn’t talk. Waited for me to let them in.
I drove down that road one night, desperate for answers. Parked in the same place, window down, waiting. Time passed. He never arrived. But I heard soft steps behind me bare feet on gravel. I spun around. Car empty. But my phone buzzed in my pocket.
One message flashing on the screen: “You should not have stopped.
Now every night there is a tapping at my window, gentle, patient. I see those eyes in the glass sometimes. Waiting. I know it’s just a matter of time before I let him in again. My world is falling apart at the seams.
If you see a child walking alone down a dark road, keep on driving. Whatever you do, don't give up. They look tiny and confused. But some secrets of the road are never meant to be discovered. And some rides go on and on.
Chapter 3: Monsters of the Nite
The Eyes in the Bush
If you’re reading this you may think I’m nuts. I wouldn’t fault you. I’d laugh too if I hadn’t been there myself, blame it on nerves, too many midnight horror flicks with the lights out and the popcorn bowl empty. But I swear to you, on what it counts, this was the way it went. My name is Cole Jennings and I live a few miles outside Greenville, Michigan, in a squat little house that people drive by and think, "nothing ever happens there." I'd have agreed until last October, let's say.
It was the kind of Saturday afternoon that gets into your bones, cold enough to see your breath but not cold enough to stay inside. The sky was thick and sullen gray, and the trees, the old maples and oaks were shedding gold and crimson in slow and silent drifts. I decided to take my big German shepherd Duke out to the state land. We’d walked that walk a hundred times, maybe more. The woods sprawl endlessly out there, tangled and forgotten, where you think you are alone, until you are not.
Duke was in paradise, tail thrashing, nose hoovering up the scent of everything that had ever run or crawled. We went deeper, under the old trees, leaves crunching underfoot, the world filtered gold and red There was a quiet period. The sort of peace that makes you forget there is any world but this one.
And in an instant, that peace fell away. Not with a bang, but a hush so thick that it pressed in on you. Like the woods themselves were holding their breath. No birds, no cars in the distance, not even wind in the branches. Even Duke could sense it. He froze, stiff as a tombstone, hackles up, lips pulled back in a low warning growl.
“Easy, boy,” I whispered, but my voice was weak, even to me.
And then – I saw it.
A flicker. A shadow in the brush, something hunched and wrong just off the narrow track. At first I could see only two sharp ears poking up through the tangle. My mind raced to figure it out: coyote, wolf, maybe a big stray? But the ears were too long, too pointed.
The Duke growled deeper. He tugged at his leash in my hand, muscles bunching as if to spring. Then the thing in the bushes moved. Not away. Up. It opened up, slow and careful, until it rose, taller than any man I had ever known, matted and oily with fur. The head was wrong, too, a wolf's snout, teeth gleaming even in the gray light. But the eyes. Jesus. Those eyes were the worst. Big and yellow, slit like a cat’s eye, glowing in the dark Right at Duke, me.
We just stood there for a heartbeat, thirty feet of dead leaves and dying sun between us. The thing growled. A low wet rumble that vibrated in my chest. Duke lunged, barking, and I barely held him in check.
My legs just felt like water. My mind screams, Run, run, run. The thing lurched forward, looming, chest heaving, claws flexing on arms that seemed too long, too strong. I could see the muscles working beneath the fur.
That was sufficient. Something primal took me over and I ran. I dragged Duke along with me, his barks turning panicked, defiant. Branches whipped my face, roots caught my boots, the world a blur of fear and motion.
Behind me came the sound of it plowing through the brush, heavy and swift and implacable. I took a chance and looked. It was coming on all fours, head down, eyes aflame, closing in.
“Come on, Duke! I shouted, voice hoarse.
We burst out of the trees and there was my old beat-up red pickup, a lifeline at the edge of the woods. I pushed Duke into the cab, jumped in after him and slammed the door so hard it rattled. My hands shook, and I fumbled with the keys.
I turned to look back. The thing was standing at the edge of the woods, upright, its fur blowing in the wind. It was staring at me, not the truck, not Duke. On me. The eyes glared. Brighter now. Almost electric in the heavy daylight. That didn't happen. I dropped it into gear. The gravel sprayed. Watched.
I never returned. Never. Not a single time. The real kicker? I knew it knew I'd seen it, I knew it in my bones. Driving, I could feel those eyes, still watching me. I kept looking through the back window waiting for them to come blazing through the glass.
That night, I slept very little. Duke prowled the house growling at every squeak and rattle. I tried to convince myself it was over. That it was only a trick of the light, a bad dream. But then, just after midnight, I heard it--heavy footsteps in the leaves outside, and a growl so deep it froze my blood. Duke hurled himself at the door, barking, angry. And then a tapping, a deliberate, patient tapping on the knob of the door, as if testing it.
I took a flashlight and shined it on the window. For an instant I saw them, two shining eyes, looking back from the dark.
That should have been it. But some nights I see things moving at the edge of the yard. One morning I woke up to Duke barking at my bedroom window and there it was, face pressed to the glass, eyes red and wild, mouth twisted in a silent snarl.
I’m telling you this because I don’t think we’re supposed to see things like that. I saw it and it saw me. Now it knows, I know. I never go out in the evening. I don't hike in the woods. I lock the doors, leave the lights on. But every now and then when the wind is just right, I can still hear the growl. The Michigan Dogman is out there. Observing. Waiting. And now it knows I know it.
Chapter 3 Things that wait in the dark
Goalkeeper of the Souls
My name is Jimmy My last name I won’t spell out, it stopped mattering the day my daughter disappeared All you need to know, I had a daughter, Mia. She was twelve years old. She liked to draw: animals with too-wide grins, cartoons with too-big eyes, wild things of her own invention that made her laugh. But the last thing she ever drew was no laughing matter. Not in the least. It was a woman, a tall thin woman in a long black dress, with eyes like empty rooms and no mouth at all. Mia was gone. After three days ...just vanished. No sign.
They looked for her. Police Police Volunteers. . Neighbors. All those feet, all those frantic hands, had crushed and ripped apart the woods outside of our campsite. But Mia never arrived. Just her final drawing, taped to the pink wall of her bedroom like a soundless scream. My wife couldn’t bear to see it. I clung to it. I had to do it.
I kept on looking.
I’m in those woods again tonight. Same trees, same cold air, same heartache. The moon is full, silvering the tops of the pines, casting a thin, sickly light over the swirling fog licking at my boots. Just enough to show me my own breath. Fast and shallow, ghosting out in bursts.
My flashlight flickers, once, twice, and then dies. What I am looking for is dead. I hit it but it did no good. I only have the moon. And the old stories gnawing at my mind.
Where is the bravery that sent me out of the tent with my heart in my throat? It is gone, replaced by a living dread that coils inside me, tighter with every step. The woods aren’t empty. They’re watching.
And the stories. Oh my God, the stories. The campfire was only a few hours ago, orange and bright and safe, but my brother’s voice returns as clear as if he’s whispering right here, right now:
"There's a thing out here," he'd said, firelight flickering in his eyes. "No face. No mouth. Don’t have a nose. Some say it 'hunts for souls'. We laughed then but I could see that his smile didn't reach his eyes.
Snaps a branch.
I'm still.
Another crack, closer this time. Sharp, wet in the thick dark. My mind races for a name. Slenderman? Not that one. My brother had another name for it.
I turn in a slow, panicked circle, fog swirling around me, heart pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears. The only sound is my ragged breathing. Then I see her.
She is nothing at first, a smudge, a shadow. Then she slips between the trees, silent as decay, a woman in a black dress that clings and floats at once, her skin bone-pale in the moonlight. Her face is smooth. Too much. There are only her eyes, black and glistening, deep as wells, boundless as nite.
My fear, hard and bright a moment ago, softens. It’s a comfort, a numbness that washes over me. I want to run, to look away, but her eyes pull me in.
Something's wrong. Something is very off. My mind is screaming, but my body moves toward her, inch by inch, as if I am underwater and she is the surface. Her eyes are pretty. No chance. They drink the moonlight and return nothing. I want to scream but I don't.
I take a step. And another. Until I am feet from her. Then I see it. It isn’t that her eyes are empty. They are voids. Black and bottomless and soulless. I try to look away, try to fight the tide, but my limbs are numb, thoughts thickening like syrup.
I stop walking, but I don’t stop moving. My mind breaks loose, floats to her, to those eyes. The world is gone, collapsed down to two points of endless black. I drop into them. I roll and roll, deeper than sleep, blacker than the grave,
Then nothing.
Only darkness. Forever. My memories flicker and sputter and die. I fell to pieces. Only darkness, cold and absolute.
They say she haunts these woods.' She is the Lady in the Nite. Not many tell the tale, and those that do, their eyes are never quite right after. Some say she seeks out the lost, the bereaved, those in search of what they can never regain.
What is she? She is nothing and everything, a hollow between worlds. No soul of her own, but a collector, millions locked inside her like moths in a jar. Some say she was made by Death itself, born from loneliness and longing. Love and hate, beauty and terror, alive and dead.
Skinny Woman.
If you see her, don’t make eye contact. Run if you hear her footfalls in the fog. Don’t ever come back to these woods. Don't chase after what you have lost.
Some things are supposed to wait in the dark.
Chapter 3: Things Lurking in the Dark
Children of the Tall Man
In a little town you think you know every face, every secret. But the worst secrets, the ones that change you, are the ones you least expect to be told. They slither between the trees while you look the other way. Emily is my name. If you're reading this, do yourself a favor and lock your windows at night. You can take my word for it.
It began in early October, when the leaves fell in thick, wet mats, and the wind in the gutters sounded almost like a voice, a human voice with something to say. I was walking home with my brother Jack and my best friend Olivia. Our parents told us to take the long way, but we always took the shortcut through the woods behind the school. They said, "Bad things happen in the dark." We chuckled. Monsters were for kids. We were fifteen, we were invincible.
Then the kids began to disappear.
At first it was just things, a bike left on the sidewalk, a backpack by the creek. Nothing to freak about. Not yet. But the whole town held its breath when Caleb never made it home from soccer, and Lily was gone the next morning. The cops searched the woods but all they found were strange footprints and a trail of little muddy handprints that led nowhere at all.
Olivia was the first one to say it. We were on the swings at nite, the sky the color of a bruise.
"Do you ever get the feeling we're being watched?" she asked, not quite looking at me. "Really?"
Jack grunted. "By what, squirrels?
But I’d felt it as well. That itch on the back of your neck. That silence, whenever we passed those old sycamore trees. Sometimes I’d catch something tall and thin out of the corner of my eye, too tall for a man, more like a shadow stretched by the moon.
Then the stories began. My mom said Mrs. Hathaway, my neighbor, told her she saw a man all in black at the tree line at dusk. His hands were dangling at his knees. "He's faceless," she whispered, eyes wide. “And he’s never alone.”
Black eyed children, silent as dreams. Weird kids who stood at the edge of the playground and disappeared when a teacher looked over. That's what the other kids whispered about. I wanted to believe it was all hysteria. Then I saw them with my own eyes.
It was Friday. Olivia and I were on our way home, Jack trailing behind us with his nose in his phone. Laughter high, weird, too close reached me. I looked around and there they were. Three kids, all different ages, standing at the edge of the woods in a line. They were almost white, their skin, their hair was dark and blank and their eyes, their eyes were pits. Black and shiny, sucking in the light.
Olivia took my hand. Don't stare, “Just keep going.
But I looked. The tallest child gestured into the trees. Behind him something moved, a tall faceless figure in a black suit, all arms and shadow. He prowled among the trees, as noiseless as a thought, and after him crept the black-eyed children.
Jack saw it also. He went white and tried to joke it was early Halloween but his voice shook.
That night I dreamed about them. The Tall Man in the woods, arms outstretched. The children were patient, silent, circling him. He leaned down and breathed secrets in a language I couldn’t comprehend. I woke up to my room freezing cold, muddy footprints from my window to my bed.
In the days that followed, more children disappeared. The cops set up curfews, but that didn’t matter. Parents took their kids along everywhere, but it didn’t matter. The children of the Tall Man grew bolder.
Then Jack didn’t come back. I sat by the window, heart pounding, hour after hour. I saw him outside and he wasn’t by himself. With him are two black-eyed children with their hands on his shoulders. The Tall Man paused by the trees.
I ran out, calling his name. Jack glanced at me. His eyes were wrong, bottomless, starless, nite itself.
“It’s all right, Emily,” he said, softly. “Now he looks after us.”
The Tall Man’s arms stretched out impossibly long. I fell back staggering all cold over. I was on the porch shaking and crying. Olivia came and found me. She believed me. She'd seen them too. We promised. Never go out at night. Never answer the voices at the window.
But a week later Olivia was out of her room. No evidence of a fight. Just her window open. And those muddy prints on the floor.
Now I sit in my room at night. I listen to the wind. I listen to the laughter outside. Faint. But closer. Sometimes I see shapes in the dark, black eyed kids, waiting for me to screw up. And always, always the Tall Man, arms wide, ready for one more.
If you see children with eyes like midnight -- and the thing that claims them -- don't venture into the woods. Don’t turn around. And never, never let curiosity take you into the dark.
Chapter Three The Things That Wait in the Dark
Invitation to a Forest
In my hometown, the woods weren't for fairy tales. On October afternoons the trees eating the sun made people laugh, or the coyotes and ghosts did always with a wink, never with fear. But nobody laughs any more. Not since the black eyed kids arrived. Not since we've learned there is something else, something patient, that waits in the dark for them.
I don’t believe in monsters. I told myself nightmares were for little kids and the weak-hearted. Now I turn every lock every night, sleep with the lights glaring, and pray those kids never come knocking again.
It began like these things always do. Small, almost silly. The neighbor’s dog barking at shadows, parents with flashlights combing their yards, cursing lost cats and raccoons. Then one night I heard a strange noise, a tapping on my chamber door. Dawdling. Soft. Childish. The digital clock glowed blood red: 1:14 a.m. My instincts were telling me to ignore it. But curiosity. That's the oldest monster of all. I tiptoed to the door and looked out through the peephole. Two kids, on my porch, in the cold, dark nite. My heart was going nuts.
They could not have been more than eleven or twelve years old. Skin pale enough to glow. Hair slicked down flat as if someone spent hours combing it down. In identical black coats, buttoned up like little undertakers. They didn't fidget. They didn't tremble. The girl moved forward. Her voice was a whisper, thick as bad honey.
“Please.” We need help. “May we come in?”
Her brother tipped his chin up and that’s when I saw their eyes. No whites, just bottomless black. Like staring into a well at midnight. My hands started to tingle. I went dry-mouthed.
"I-I can't, sorry..." I stammered, my voice a thread.
The boy's lips curled up. Not a smile, exactly. "Just for a moment. Let us in.” The words were flat, old, too heavy for a child's mouth.
I slammed the door, bolted it and staggered back into the living room. The knocking stopped, but a new kind of fear gripped my veins, slow and icy. That feeling you get when you know you're being watched.
I peered out the back window past the trembling fence, outside the faint glow of the porchlight. At the border of the tangled woods there stood something impossibly tall. If you could call him a man, with a black suit, long arms that hung like ropes, his face blank as a moonless sky. He didn’t budge. I didn't need to. His shadow was black beyond black. I could feel him. Be patient. Coil. Like the spider waiting for the fly to blunter in.
Try to shrug it off the next day, bad dream, stress, too much late nite coffee. I was a mess at work though, hands trembling, nerves shot. When I got home, I found myself staring out the windows, half expecting to see those black eyes staring back.
Next night the knocking came back. This time three kids. I can't tell what's wrong with their faces. Eyes empty and infinite. The smallest pressed close to the wood, voice a thin trembling wire:
“Please. Let's go in. Coldness. We are lost.”
I turned out the lights and hid in the bathroom, counting my breaths, waiting for the world to come together again. The knocking stopped after an hour and then he heard footsteps going around the house, soft and methodical. I ventured to look up again, and the tall man was nearer, towering just outside the fence, his arms hanging loose, his head tipped as if he was waiting to hear my heartbeat.
The neighborhood forum was in a panic that week. People heard knocks, polite, always after midnight. Some caved, let the kids in. Their houses blacked out. Curtains closed. After that no one was seen for days. Rumors circulated of families “moving away in the night.” But I knew better than that. Muddy footprints led from porches into the woods. Sometimes if you listened you could hear laughter coming from between the trees.
I attempted to warn people but no one paid attention. The story was too strange, too scary. So I went around and checked the houses myself. No response Sometimes, behind the curtains, a pale face, with eyes blacker than sin, would look down after me as I hurried by.
The kids kept coming. Every nite the same hunger in their voices:
“Open up. We won't be staying long."
But they had weight, a need that made my teeth ache.
And that tall man waited behind them, always. Sometimes his arms would beckon or the moonlight catch the sharp line of his suit. He never went away. Patient decay.
Sleep was a memory. I started to see things in the daytime, shadows that weren't quite right, children on the edge of the playground, quiet and staring. I saw my reflection with black rimmed eyes wavering.
And then, after a rain-soaked night, the knocking ceased. But I could hear muttering outside my bedroom window. I lay frozen, blankets to my chin, listening to their voices, pleading, coaxing:
“Let us in. Your turn. “We won't be long.”
I couldn't sleep. At dawn I crept to the window. Muddy footprints scuffed the glass. And there at the woods' edge, the tall man's shape waited, arms outstretched, patient as ever.
I don't know how long I can hold this up. I know what will happen if I open that door. I'll be gone too, like the rest. Maybe I'll be one of those hollow-eyed kids knocking on some other poor soul's door.
So if you hear a knock late at nite, don’t answer it. If you see pale faced children at your door, keep the locks tight. Because if you say yes, then the tall man will come for you as well. And you'll never see the light of day again.
CHAPTER 3 Things Hiding in the Dark
Look and Hide
I was raised in a town where the woods were both a playground and a warning. The kind of place where kids disappeared into the green and sometimes didn’t come out the same, or at all. “Don’t cross the creek,” said the parents. But you know kids. We never hear . The woods behind our neighborhood were a tangle of brambles and secrets, a place where the sunlight gives up and the shadows grow teeth.
I wish to God I had listened. "I wish we'd stayed by the creek that day. But childhood hunts shadows, even the ones who hunt you.
Late October, air knife-sharp and clean, leaves dying loud under our sneakers. We had one last game before nite, before the world drew its black sheet over everything. There was me (Lucas), my little sisters Zoe and Olivia and the twins, Hannah and Jack. Five of us were prime numbers for trouble.
We decided the deeper part of the woods would be our base. Where the trees grew close enough to whisper. The ground was soft with rot. It was more exciting, more dangerous a challenge in a package of bravado.
My first one. I touched my forehead to the bark of a cold birch, counted to thirty, and heard their laughter swallowed whole by the dark. When I opened my eyes, I was alone, just me, my breath, and the wind moving through the branches like something lost.
I found Zoe first, her curls poking out from behind a fallen log. She shushed me, her eyes huge and glassy.
“Did you see them?” she whispered, glancing over my shoulder, deeper into the woods.
“Who?” I asked, throat tight.
She just shook her head. We pushed through the brush and the woods were too quiet. No birds, no bugs, nothing but the heavy hush of old trees holding their breath. That’s when I saw them: three children, standing too still in the trees. I didn’t know them. Their skin was moon-pale, and their eyes God their eyes were polished black, like someone had pressed marbles into their skulls.
One of them, the tallest, gestured for me to come closer. Zoe grabbed my arm, trembling.
“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Please, Lucas.”
Curiosity is a demon. I stepped forward anyway. The tall girl bent down, lips barely moving.
“Don’t let him see you.” 'If you do, your eyes'll turn black, too.'
I never got to ask her what she meant. The air thickened and cooled as syrup. Something dragged and shuffled behind me, slow as a church bell at midnight. Zoe buried her face in my jacket.
And then I saw him.
He was too tall. His head nearly brushed the lowest branches. He was dressed in a black suit that hung loosely on his stick limbs. His arms were preternaturally long, his hands nearly reaching his knees. But it was his face, or the lack of it, that turned my guts to water. No eyes No mouth No nose Only skin, pulled taut and as blank as a canvas never used.
He did not walk. He crawled along like a nightmare on rails. The black-eyed children shrank from him, huddled in the dark. “Hide,” one mouthed. No word, just shape in the air.
“You have to hide.
I took Zoe and ran. Heart smashing, woods grabbing at our legs. I could hear the others calling. Jack's laugh, high and thin, echoing from some place deeper. I called for Olivia and Hannah but the wind was the only reply.
We ducked behind a fallen tree, Zoe shaking in my arms. The man went by, faceless, soundless, huge. Every instinct in me said not to look, but my eyes wouldn't listen. He turned and a pressure like ice settled in the roots of my teeth. I closed my eyes hard and prayed.
Then Olivia was there with her arm round my shoulder.
"He nearly saw you," she breathed. “Where is Jack?”
I didn't know. I still do not. We never found him."
We staggered toward the creek. The woods opened out. Endless. Strange. The black-eyed children watched in silence, their eyes deep as wells.
“Don’t let him get to you,” said one. “Or you come with us. “Forever.
We came out of the trees into the fading light. Hannah was gone. Three of us were left alive. For days, Zoe wouldn’t sleep with the lights off, clutching me like I was a life preserver. Olivia and I had an agreement: never tell. Not parents, not teachers. Who will believe us?
That night I dreamed of the man with no face, his arms outstretched across my bed, fingers curling about my throat. In the dream my eyes were as black as coal. I came to my senses yelling. In the mirror they were still blue, rimmed red with fear and lack of sleep.
Every few years our town still loses kids. Parents talk about runaways and bad influences but I know better. Sometimes I see the black eyed children watching from the edge of the woods, waiting for someone to play with.
If you are in the deep woods and hear laughter where you shouldn't, don't answer. Don’t look at the tall man without a face, not even if he is close. And whatever you do, don’t go playing hide-and-seek in the dark. If he finds you, your eyes will turn black and you’ll be lost in the woods forever.
Chapter 3: Things That Lurk in the Dark
The Guardian Without a Face
There’s something in small towns, a secret you only learn if you live there long enough: every little town has its monsters. Some have faces. Some don’t. Some are only coming out when the sun goes down, when the streetlights blink and the woods behind the football field are swallowed by the dark.
My name is Josh Phillips and I’ve walked a hundred, maybe more, streets like this. The one where you know everyone’s name, where nothing bad ever happens (except for the things nobody talks about), and where the real stories slip through the cracks when you’re not looking. That’s the kind of place this is. And that’s where this story begins.
Children were disappearing. Their names were whispered, in prayers or curses, and their bikes left to rust in the ditches. This was the place where parents bolted their doors before dark, where the woods out back were a dare, a punchline, a threat. But most people stuck to routine stuck to normal. What else could you do?
Then one day Mara showed up.
She came in the middle of sophomore year, a transfer who was nobody's. White skin. Dark hair, pigtails, matted. Eyes like two slippery bits of obsidian stone, no whites at all—just black, depthless and shining. The kind of eyes you don’t encounter, if you’re smart. Most kids stayed away from it like you stay away from the cold air that creeps under the door in January. But loneliness has a scent and I could smell it on Mara. Maybe she could smell it on me.
Against all sense I sat next to her at lunch. She picked at her food, not eating much, her eyes darting to the shadows at the edges of the cafeteria. Always watching, always counting the escape routes. I waited, then asked, “You ok?” I didn't mean to have such a soft voice. You know how it is, sometimes fear makes your words small."
She looked up, and those eyes caught the light, black and bright and ancient. You shouldn’t even be talking to me. He'll see it.
Who? I asked, but she shook her head.
That night I dreamed of shadows in trees, tall, arms too long, faces shifting like clouds. I woke with a taste of metal in my mouth and the image of Mara's eyes burned into my memory, eyes filled with a fear I understood.
Mara was waiting by the lockers the next morning early. 'You’re the only one who’s been nice,' she said, her voice almost an apology. “But you must keep away. “Look for the helpers, first.”
I drove. “Who is this guy?
She looked over her shoulder. "The tall one. He finds lost children. Or by myself. Or nuts. He makes you choose between him and running. Come follow me and you will be like me.”
Her words crawled over my skin. But I stayed, driven by something I still can't explain. Maybe I wanted to be of help. Maybe I just didn’t want her to go into the dark alone.
After school she asked me to walk her home . We pass through the empty lot behind the old library. The weeds are thick and the air is heavy with rain. "He likes places the light can't get to." Mara whispered. He waits. If he finds out you're helping me, he'll mark you as well."
There was a wind, keen and cold. I heard something, twigs, footsteps, or maybe it was just the world holding its breath. What has he done to you? I said.
She hugged herself, shaking. He gave me an escape. My parents were always fighting. I felt like I was invisible. He swore I would never be alone. I went after him into the woods. I looked back, but it was too late. I saw myself in his flesh. My eyes turned black.
Her voice faltered. “He’s got eyes everywhere. If I run he will hunt down anyone who helps me. Just let me be. Please."
But I couldn't.
That night my phone buzzed at 3 a.m. Not a call, a message:
YOU'RE NEXT.
Sleep was not a possibility. I kept seeing a man when I closed my eyes, impossibly tall, with arms like ropes and his head tilted as if he were listening for my heartbeat. Always, always, that feeling of something just out of sight. Tapping fingers on glass.
Mara was frantic at school, begging me to stay away. “He’s close now,” she gasped, her voice ragged. You have to run.
But I would not hear. I followed her into the woods behind the track and field after class. The trees were close, and the sun was cut off. I heard footsteps – far too heavy and too deliberate for an animal.
Mara stopped. “Look behind you!” she hissed.
But curiosity is a disease. I spun round.
There he was. The tall man. Look into a blank slab of flesh. No eyes, no mouth, nothingness. His arms reached out, impossibly long, fingers curling like smoke. The cold had me gasping.
Mara took my hand in hers. Run!” she yelled.
We pushed through the trees, branches tearing at us. I heard him behind, gliding, never hurrying, always a step nearer. Mara staggered. I hauled her up, desperate for daylight, for safety, for the illusion of normal.
Mara reached the edge of the woods, and turned back. The fading light caught her black eyes. "Thanks for trying," she said. But he doesn't let anyone go. "Not really.
She ran into the trees, lost in the shadows. The tall man stopped, his eyeless face toward me. I could feel his eyes drilling into my mind, branding it.
I went home but I was not free. Every nite behind my eyelids is Mara's face, and behind that the faceless guardian. Sometimes I hear tapping at my window. Sometimes a shadow just moves away from view. I know he waits.
If you ever meet a girl with black eyes at midnight, be nice. But don't try to save her.
The tall man never forgets. And when you get marked, you’re never really by yourself.
Chapter 3. Things Lurking in the Dark
The Curse of the Discoverer
I was never like the others. It’s in your bones, the kind of thing that’s like a sliver that just won’t work its way out. The people of my town, good, God-fearing people, the kind who still leave casseroles for the bereaved, whispered about my strange knack. They called me the Finder. Some said I was lucky, some, unlucky. I could not find anything. Lost keys, a wedding ring down a sewer grate, a neighbor’s dog missing since Tuesday. Even people sometimes alive, sometimes not. I just had to close my eyes and let the darkness in me take the lead.
After that day in the park, when the air was muggy enough to chew, my reputation grew. A woman, quaking like the leaf of November, implored me to find her gold brooch. Her grandmother's, she said, her voice breaking at the seams. I didn't ask questions. Never did. I stepped out on the crabgrass, let the chill snake up my spine, and reached down, fingers burrowing into the dirt until--there it was, still warm from her skin. She cried. She thrust bills into my hands. I took them. Why not? Gratitude, misfortune; all cost the same.
My wife, Marsha, hated it. She'd call me a parasite, a lazy bum, her voice sharp enough to strip paint. Her words cut deeper than any injury I ever suffered in a playground fight. When she started in on me my blood boiled and sometimes – just sometimes – I’d see flickers of shadow at the edge of my vision, like something waiting for a chance to crawl through. I would go out and slam the door, and pace the empty streets, looking for peace I would never find.
But peace is not so easy for me. Not when the gift won’t be quiet. The cops came calling, too, blue lights leaking through the curtains. They needed answers. One night they begged me to find a missing woman, all of them long and desperate-faced. I followed that nagging pull, the one that never lies, to a lake where her body floated face down, hair spread like black seaweed. Another time a boy went missing. Found him in the woods, alive but broken, eyes as wide as full moons. The truth is dark, even when you don’t want it.
The more thanks I got, the more Marsha hated me. She said I was fake. I swore I'd never be nothing, never make her proud. I began to dream of silence, of her voice finally stilling. Her words bounced off the walls of our falling-down house. Sometimes in the depths of night I wished she would just disappear, sink below the surface of my life and never come up for air.
And then came the nite that changed it all. The air was dense, the kind of heat that clings. The police called. Girl, eighteen, missing. River swallowing her father’s speedboat. I trudged down the bank, letting the nite enfold me. It took me around a crooked bend, where her body bobbed in the reeds, half-eaten, skin glinting in the moonlight. Not even death could escape me.
I came home that night and found Marsha packing. Tears ran down her face, her mouth twisted with hate. “I’m leaving you!” she hissed, her voice shaking. There was a break in me. Anger poured out for years. My fists Her screams The taste of blood in the air like copper pennies When it was over she was quiet. At last, blessed silence.
Panic began to climb my throat. Cleaned up. Had to. Waited for darkness. Wrapped her in a carpet, drove to the lake. Saw her go down alone, taken by the black water. Her hat and coat drifted off, props for the lie I’d tell the cops.
I phoned them at dawn. Played the mourning husband. I sang so well I nearly convinced myself. They found her clothes, as I hoped they would. Decided it was a drowning.
But then - a last job. The chief, voice laden with pity, "Finder, can you help us?
Yeah. “I could help.”
I took a boat out on the lake, flashlight shaking in my hand. The water is thick, darker than ever before. I looked down, my heart pounding. Just below the surface of the water, a pale bloated hand broke the surface, its fingers waving like weeds.
It took me. Cold as the grave Strong as iron I screamed. I kicked. But she pulled me down. Down. Down. Crushed, cold pressed in. Black only.
Days later they found us. The police recoiled in horror. Me? I pressed my body into hers, nails digging in, not letting go. I finally found what I had been looking for. Or maybe I found it.
Chapter Three What Walks in the Dark
The Nite I Met The Monster Within My Looking Glass
3:00 a.m.
That’s one o’clock, when the world leans just a little, where the shadows are bolder, and the things that don’t exist in the daytime start to stretch their legs. Three a.m. is when writers like me, Amilia, twenty-four, Jersey girl by accident, novelist by obsession, should be sleeping, but never do. It was so quiet in the house that if you listened you could hear your heartbeat. I listened. I’d just finished a chapter about a man who liked to peel the skin off his victims and had been feeling pretty pleased with myself until the cold started to seep in.
I can’t recall when I began to keep a flashlight by the bed. Maybe a habit. Or maybe that’s what you do when you live by yourself and your head is full of ghosts. All realtors have a survival kit. Mine just happens to include a crowbar and a caffeine addiction.
The tapping started as a polite hint. The wind, I told myself. Just the wind. Just nerves, like piano wire coiling. I waited a minute for my heart to come down, and then it started up again. Louder. Like a child banging with both fists and a promise: let me in.
I looked out the window and I saw nothing. My own face, pale and wide-eyed, looked back at me and I wondered for a moment who would blink first. So when nothing else happened, I shrugged, crawled back under the covers, tried to put it out of my mind.
But that’s the thing about dark. It's a patient one.
The tapping was off the hook. Bam, bam, bam, bam. The sound that makes your skin crawl and your heart try to punch its way out of your chest. I shot up, adrenaline burning the last of the coffee fog out of my brain and flung the curtains open.
Nothing. Only the glass, smeared with fingerprints—mine, I hoped—and the fat blackness of 3 o’clock in the morning. walked around the house checking locks, checking windows. The kitchen. The lavatory. The toilet. Monsters could be anywhere. I know all the rules. I told myself I was being stupid, that it was okay, but checked it twice anyway. It’s all good.
Until it wasn't.
The curtains of my bedroom window fluttered like the arms of something drowning. The cold bit into me, right to the bone. My mind did the math—one plus one equals get the hell out—but my feet were cemented to the floor.
I told myself I’d left it open, that maybe I’d been distracted by a plot twist or a late-night text. People fuck up. I am a person.
But the air felt wrong, like metal and old pennies.
Knife in hand. Joke, not joke. I checked the closets, the bathroom, and under the bed. Just shadows and dust bunnies. I set the blade on my nightstand and attempted to tell myself I had won. And then it happened.
The knife went off the table and hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. That was sufficient. My heart galloped as I ran, fingers scrabbling for the keys. I got halfway to the door and something yanked my legs out from under me. I hit the floor, my teeth clacking shut, and the world went white with pain.
Invisible hands, cold, oh so cold, grabbed my ankles and pulled me back. I dug my fingers into the floor, splinters piercing my skin. I was trying to scream but no sound was coming. The door closed of its own accord. The windows banged shut. I was stuck.
The cold closed in and the house was cold. The whispers started. High and sharp, low and throaty. Laughter that did not sound like anything living. Then the hands around my neck. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze until it goes black.
My last thought was that I had written myself into a story that I could not rewrite.
I woke up with the sun in my face, the world carrying on as if nothing had happened. Birds were singing. The coffee machine gurgles. Normal." That is, except for the bruises around my neck. Big, ugly purple handprints. Too big for me, or anyone I ever met.
I dragged myself to the bathroom telling myself it had to be a nightmare. I threw some water on my face and stared up.
Then the words began to appear, slowly, deliberately, on the mirror, smeared in something red and sticky.
I own your life.
I stood, trembling, tears pouring from my face, knowing somewhere in the depths of me: last night I hadn’t just written about evil.
I would unlock the door.