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STORY 1:

The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, their sickly glow barely cutting through the thick darkness of the abandoned school’s hallway as I shuffled forward, my boots scuffing against the cracked linoleum. The air smelled of mildew and old chalk, a stale, suffocating scent that clung to the back of my throat. I’d taken this night-shift security job at Hollowbrook Elementary thinking it’d be easy money—just a few hours of walking empty halls, checking locks, and killing time on my phone. But now, as the silence pressed in around me, broken only by the occasional creak of settling floorboards, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. The cameras had been glitching all night, their feeds dissolving into static at random intervals, and twice I’d caught the faint sound of laughter—high-pitched, childlike—echoing from the empty classrooms. I told myself it was the wind, or my imagination, but then I found the Ouija board in the gym. It was tucked under the bleachers, dust-covered but unmistakable, its letters and numbers still legible beneath a thin layer of grime. I shouldn’t have touched it. But curiosity got the better of me, and before I knew it, my fingers were resting on the planchette. It jerked to life immediately, sliding with unnatural force to spell out ‘THEY’RE COMING BACK. ’ My breath hitched, my pulse pounding in my ears as I stumbled back, the board clattering to the floor. I told myself it was a prank, some kids messing around, but when I checked the surveillance feed, my blood turned to ice. Shadowy figures—too tall to be children, too fluid to be human—were slipping in and out of the classrooms, their movements deliberate, purposeful. The cameras flickered, their static-filled screens distorting the figures, but I could still see them. Watching. Waiting. My hands shook as I grabbed my flashlight and radio, my voice cracking as I called for backup, but all I got was silence, the line dead. The air grew colder, my breath visible in front of me as I stepped into the nearest classroom, the beam of my flashlight cutting through the darkness. That’s when I saw them: the desks. Every single one was scarred with fresh pencil etchings, as if students had been here moments before, scribbling notes, carving their names. My stomach twisted as I ran my fingers over the marks, the wood still warm to the touch. And then I saw it—the Ouija board, now sitting atop the teacher’s desk, its planchette perfectly centered on ‘CLASS IS IN SESSION. ’ A choked scream lodged in my throat as the door slammed shut behind me, the lock clicking into place. The whispers started then, soft at first, like children giggling in the next room, but growing louder, closer, until they were right beside me, their breath cold against my neck. I bolted, my shoulder slamming into the door until it gave way, the hallway stretching endlessly before me, the lights flickering like strobes. Lockers rattled, their doors denting inward as if something was pounding from the inside, and the scent of something rotten—sweet and decayed—filled the air. I fumbled for my phone, my fingers slipping on the screen as I dialed 911, but the call dropped instantly, the screen flashing ‘NO SERVICE’ before going black. The Ouija board was waiting for me in the next room, the planchette moving on its own now, spelling out names—Emily Carter. Jacob Reed. Names I didn’t recognize until the last one appeared: my own. The walls seemed to breathe around me, the shadows lengthening, reaching, and then the lights died completely. In the suffocating dark, I heard them—footsteps, dozens of them, sprinting toward me, their laughter rising to a deafening shriek. The last thing I saw was the board’s final message, glowing faintly in the blackness: ‘YOUR TURN. ’ And then the hands grabbed me, pulling me into the void, their grip icy and unrelenting, as the school swallowed me whole. The darkness swallowed me whole, a suffocating void where sound ceased to exist, where even my own screams were stolen before they could leave my throat. I don’t know how long I was in that nothingness—seconds, hours, maybe an eternity—but when the world rushed back, I was on my knees in the gym, the Ouija board inches from my face, its planchette trembling as if unseen fingers still guided it. The air was thick with the stench of wet earth and something metallic, like old blood, and my flashlight flickered weakly, casting jagged shadows that slithered along the walls. The gym doors were gone. Not locked, not barricaded—just gone, the frame sealed shut by layers of peeling wallpaper that hadn’t been there before, yellowed and brittle like the pages of a long-forgotten book. My radio crackled to life, a burst of static so loud it made my teeth ache, and then a voice—too deep, too slow, like a recording played at half-speed—whispered, “Find the missing. ” The moment the words faded, the lockers down the hall began to shudder, their metal doors clanging open and shut in a chaotic rhythm, and beneath the noise, I heard it: the scratch of pencil on wood, the sound of children writing. My legs moved on their own, dragging me toward the noise, my breath coming in ragged gasps as I turned the corner and saw them—the desks, every single one occupied by shadows, their forms hunched over, scribbling furiously. The moment I stepped into the room, their heads snapped up, their faces blank, smooth, no eyes, no mouths, just empty flesh where features should have been. The pencil scratches grew louder, frantic, and I looked down at the nearest desk, watching as deep gouges carved themselves into the wood, forming words over and over: “HELP US. ” The temperature plummeted, my breath frosting in the air, and the whispers returned, this time from every direction, overlapping, desperate. “You have to finish the lesson,” they hissed, their voices like dry leaves skittering across pavement. The Ouija board was suddenly in my hands, though I didn’t remember picking it up, its surface icy against my skin. The planchette shot to “YES” before I could even ask a question, and then the lights died again. This time, when they flickered back on, the shadows were closer, their hollow faces inches from mine, and the board’s message was clear: “TELL THEM WHAT YOU SEE. ” My voice was gone, my throat raw, but the words tore out of me anyway, a broken rasp as I described the empty faces, the endless writing, the way the air itself seemed to pulse like a living thing. The moment I finished speaking, the shadows lunged, their fingers—too long, too many joints—clamping around my wrists, dragging me toward the teacher’s desk. The board was there, waiting, and this time, the planchette spelled out a single, damning word: “STAY. ” The walls around me groaned, the ceiling sagging as if something massive pressed down on it, and then the first bell rang—a shrill, earsplitting chime that shouldn’t have existed in this abandoned place. The shadows melted away, the desks fell still, and for one fleeting second, I thought it was over. Then the second bell rang, and the door at the front of the classroom creaked open, revealing a hallway lined with lockers, their vents exhaling a slow, rattling breath. The board’s final message glowed in the dim light: “RECESS IS OVER. ” And from the darkness beyond the door, something began to crawl. The thing in the hallway moved wrong—its limbs bending in places they shouldn’t, its body dragging itself forward with a wet, clicking sound like bones snapping back into place with every motion. My heart hammered so hard I thought it would burst, my legs locked in place, paralyzed by a terror so deep it felt like my veins had been filled with ice. The whispers swelled around me, children’s voices but twisted, warped, chanting in a language that made my teeth ache, syllables that slithered into my ears and coiled in my skull. The thing at the door lifted its head, and where a face should have been, there was only a hollow void, a darkness so complete it seemed to suck the light from the room. Then it spoke—not with a mouth, but inside my mind, its voice like rusted nails grinding together. "You didn’t finish the lesson. " The words weren’t just sound; they were pain, drilling into my brain like a hot wire. The Ouija board in my hands grew heavier, the planchette vibrating violently before it tore itself from my grip and clattered onto the floor, spinning in frantic circles before landing on a single phrase: "YOU FAILED. " The shadows in the room thickened, pressing in like smoke, and the desks around me began to shake, their legs screeching against the floor as they inched closer, trapping me in a tightening circle. The thing in the hallway unfolded itself, rising to a height that made my neck ache to look at, its limbs stretching, elongating, until it filled the doorway. The lockers down the hall burst open one by one, their doors slamming against the walls with enough force to dent the metal, and from inside, small, skeletal hands reached out, fingers curling as if beckoning me forward. The air reeked of rotting paper and spoiled milk, the stench so thick I gagged, my eyes watering as the thing took its first step into the classroom. The moment its foot touched the floor, the lights surged bright—too bright—blinding me for a split second before they exploded in a shower of sparks, plunging the room into near darkness. Only the dim red glow of the exit sign remained, casting everything in a bloody hue. The thing was closer now, close enough that I could hear the wet, ragged sound of its breathing, though it had no mouth to draw air. The whispers became screams, the voices of children shrieking in agony, their cries rising into a deafening crescendo that made my ears pop. The Ouija board skittered across the floor toward me, the planchette moving on its own, spelling out one final message: "THEY’RE HERE. " And then the hands grabbed me—dozens of them, small and cold, their grip like iron—yanking me backward into the lockers. The last thing I saw before the darkness took me again was the thing in the doorway tilting its head, its void of a face somehow smiling, as the locker door slammed shut in front of me, sealing me inside with something else—something that breathed against my neck and whispered, in a voice that wasn’t human, "Now you’re one of us. " The locker was too small, too tight, my ribs cracking against the metal as I thrashed in the suffocating dark, my screams muffled by something thick and wet pressing against my mouth—fingers, too many fingers, forcing themselves down my throat until I choked on the taste of rot and copper. The thing beside me shifted, its bones creaking like old floorboards, its breath a frigid gust against my ear as it whispered my name—not the name I’d been called all my life, but something older, something buried, a name that made my skin prickle with the certainty that I’d heard it in a nightmare long forgotten. Outside, the hallway echoed with the sound of dragging footsteps, of desks scraping against linoleum, of chalk writing feverishly on a blackboard that hadn’t existed moments before. The locker door trembled as something heavy leaned against it, the metal groaning under the weight, and then, horribly, the thin slats of the vent began to ooze a thick, black sludge that dripped onto my shoes, burning through the leather like acid. The thing in the locker with me giggled—a child’s laugh, but wet, gurgling, like its throat was full of nails—and then the locker door burst open, sending me sprawling onto the floor. The hallway stretched endlessly in both directions now, the walls pulsating like living flesh, the ceiling dripping that same inky fluid. The classrooms were no longer empty; silhouettes filled the desks, their heads snapping toward me in unison, their faces smooth and blank except for their mouths—wide, too wide, splitting open like rotten fruit as they began to chant in that same impossible language. The Ouija board lay in the center of the hallway, the planchette spinning wildly, never stopping, never settling, as if the spirits themselves were screaming. The thing from the doorway loomed at the far end of the hall, its limbs now fused with the walls, its body stretching, merging with the school itself, the floorboards splitting open like jaws beneath its feet. My radio crackled again, and this time, it was my own voice that came through—not as I sounded now, but younger, terrified, begging for help in a looping whisper that grew louder with each repetition until it was all I could hear. The lockers began to bleed, rusted hinges weeping thick, dark streaks, and the shadows of the children peeled themselves from the walls, their hollow eyes fixed on me as they reached out with hands that weren’t hands at all, but twisted bundles of pencil shavings and broken chalk. The floor beneath me softened, sagging like rotting fruit, and I realized with dawning horror that the school wasn’t just haunted—it was alive. And it was hungry. The last thing I saw before the floor gave way entirely was the Ouija board, now embedded in the flesh-like wall, its final message carved deep into the peeling paint: "WELCOME HOME. " Then I was falling, the whispers following me down into the dark, the children’s laughter rising to a deafening shriek as the school swallowed me whole, and I knew, with terrible certainty, that I would never leave. That I had always been here. That the night shift had never ended. And somewhere, in the depths of the rotting halls, a new security guard would soon arrive, his footsteps echoing through the empty corridors, his breath fogging in the unnatural cold as he reached for a Ouija board that hadn’t been there before—and the cycle would begin again. I hit the ground with a sickening crunch, but there was no pain—just the unsettling sensation of my bones shifting beneath my skin like they no longer belonged to me. The darkness here was different—thicker, heavier, a living thing that coiled around my limbs with deliberate hunger. My flashlight flickered once before dying completely, but I didn’t need light to see the walls—they pulsed with a faint, bioluminescent glow, veins of something wet and phosphorescent threading through the rotting drywall like a grotesque circulatory system. The air smelled of damp textbooks left to molder, of pencil lead and dried glue, of the sour tang of milk left too long in a child’s forgotten lunchbox. Distantly, I heard the bell ring again—not the shrill electric buzz from before, but the slow, mournful toll of an ancient iron schoolbell, its echo warping as if coming from underwater. My hands scrambled for purchase against the floor, but the tiles were soft now, yielding like flesh, warm and slightly sticky beneath my palms. Something brushed against my ankle—a hand, small and skeletal, its fingers fused together with strands of something black and fibrous—and then I was being dragged, my body sliding helplessly across the pulsating floor toward a doorway I hadn’t noticed before, its frame lined with jagged teeth of broken plaster. Inside, the classroom was wrong. The desks were too tall, the chairs too small, the blackboard covered in frantic, overlapping scrawls that shifted whenever I blinked, words like "DON’T LOOK" and "THEY LIE" dissolving into nonsense symbols that made my eyes water. The whispers had coalesced into a single voice now—a teacher’s voice, saccharine sweet but with an undercurrent of something rancid, reciting multiplication tables that made no sense, numbers that added up to impossible sums. The thing that had been the security guard before me stood at the front of the class, its body fused with the teacher’s desk, its face stretched into a rictus grin, its uniform moldering and stained with old blood. In its hands was the Ouija board, now warped and splintered as if grown from the desk itself, the planchette embedded in its palm like a brand. "Take your seat," it gurgled, its jaw unhinging to reveal a yawning blackness where its throat should be. The children’s shadows filled the desks around me, their heads turning in perfect unison, their featureless faces somehow expectant. The small hand tightened around my ankle, its grip burning cold, and I realized with dawning horror that the floor was opening beneath me, the tiles parting like lips to reveal a yawning chasm filled with the sound of a hundred pencils scratching against paper, the scent of wet ink and something metallic rising in a choking wave. The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was the blackboard, the words now clear and sharp, written in a hand that was unmistakably my own: "STUDENT ABSENT: FOREVER. " And as the classroom dissolved into a chorus of giggles and the wet, tearing sound of something being unspooled from deep inside my chest, I understood—the school had always been hungry, yes, but it didn’t want my flesh. It wanted my story. And now, like all the others before me, I would spend eternity writing it over and over in the dark, my fingers worn down to nubs, my voice just another whisper in the walls, waiting for the next shift to begin. The scratching of my own pencil against paper filled my ears—a sound that shouldn’t exist because my hands were empty, my fingers clenched into helpless fists, yet the scritch-scratch-scritch continued, relentless, as if the very air around me had turned into parchment and my bones into graphite. My vision swam, the classroom melting and reforming like wax, the desks elongating into crooked spines of rusted metal, the blackboard stretching upward into an impossible void where the multiplication tables now spiraled into equations that hurt to comprehend—numbers that divided by zero, that multiplied into screams. The thing wearing my predecessor’s face leaned closer, its breath reeking of burnt erasers and spoiled apples, its uniform splitting at the seams as something black and many-jointed began pushing its way out from beneath the fabric. "You’ll need to stay after class," it rasped, its voice no longer even pretending to be human, the words vibrating in my skull like a struck tuning fork. The floor beneath me had turned viscous, a tar-like substance bubbling up between the tiles, pulling me down with slow, insistent hunger. The children’s shadows were standing now, their forms flickering between solid and smoke, their mouths unstitching into grotesque smiles filled with rows of tiny, needle-like teeth. One reached out, its hand passing through my chest as easily as mist, and I felt—not pain, but absence, as if it had peeled back a layer of my being and left only hollow space behind. The Ouija board was in front of me again, though no one had placed it there, its surface now mottled like old skin, the letters bleeding dark fluid. The planchette twitched, then began moving on its own, spelling out words that didn’t match the alphabet I knew, symbols that squirmed like insects beneath my gaze. The walls were breathing, the lockers rattling with the force of something trying to get out, and then—worst of all—I heard the familiar jingle of keys. My keys. The ones still clipped to my belt. The sound was coming from the hallway, accompanied by the steady, unmistakable tread of boots on linoleum. Another guard. Another me. The realization hit like a punch to the gut: this wasn’t my first shift. It would never be my last. The thing at the desk began to laugh, a sound like a dying cassette tape, its body unraveling into strands of ink that dripped onto the floor and slithered toward me. The children’s whispers rose to a crescendo, their voices weaving into a single, deafening command: "TEACH US. " And as the new footsteps paused outside the door, as the knob began to turn, I finally understood the school’s true lesson—there were no missing children. Only new teachers. And class was always, always in session. The door creaked open with agonizing slowness, revealing a silhouette backlit by flickering hallway lights—my own hunched posture, my own panicked breathing, my own trembling hands clutching a flashlight that cast shaky beams across the warped floorboards. The new guard’s face was still human, still soft with the naive terror of someone who didn’t yet understand why their radio only played static, why their phone showed no signal despite the school’s supposed Wi-Fi, why the air smelled faintly of formaldehyde and the copper-tang of old blood. I tried to scream a warning, but my throat had sealed shut, filled with the wriggling pressure of pencil shavings and broken chalk that spilled from my lips in a dry cascade. The thing that had been the teacher—that had perhaps once been me in some forgotten cycle—reached out with fingers that split and multiplied like fractals, its touch against my shoulder sending ice through my veins as my uniform began to stiffen, to yellow, to fuse with my very skin. The new guard’s flashlight beam passed right through us as if we were already ghosts, illuminating instead the pristine Ouija board sitting innocently on a desk that hadn’t been warped and grown teeth a moment before. The children’s shadows swarmed the newcomer, their giggling muffled as they pressed ink-stained fingers to their lipless faces in a grotesque parody of "shhh. " I wanted to weep as I watched the guard’s fingers—still pink with life, still bearing the callouses from holding a pen too tight—hover over the planchette. The walls sighed, exhaling the scent of wet wool mittens and the electric burn of overheated projectors, and somewhere deep in the school’s rotting guts, a clock that hadn’t worked in decades began to tick. The planchette leapt under the new guard’s touch, spelling out the same cursed words it always did: "THEY’RE COMING BACK. " And as the first shadow detached itself from the wall behind them, as the lockers began to weep their rust-blood onto the floor, as my own body stiffened into the jagged, unnatural angles of the thing at the teacher’s desk, I realized with dull horror that the worst part wasn’t the fear, or the pain, or the endless cycling of victims—it was the relief. Because when the new guard’s screams finally echoed through the halls, I wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore. I’d only have to teach. The chalk in my hand—had it always been there?—scratched against the board of its own volition, writing the same lesson in looping, childish cursive: "Welcome to Hollowbrook Elementary. Recess is forever. Detention is eternal. And the bell will never, ever ring for you again. " The new guard turned toward the sound, their eyes wide with dawning comprehension, and as the first tendril of darkness curled around their ankle, I felt my mouth stretch into a smile that split my face in ways that should have been impossible. Class was in session. And this time, I was the one giggling. The new guard's scream curdled into wet, choking silence as the shadows swallowed them whole—the same way they'd taken me, the same way they'd taken every watchman before me in an endless procession of doomed night shifts stretching back further than memory could reach. My chalk-dust fingers moved without conscious thought now, scraping lesson plans across the blackboard in letters that squirmed like trapped insects, the words rewriting themselves the moment I finished: "Rule 1: You have always worked here. Rule 2: The children must be fed. Rule 3: When the new guard comes, you will smile. " The air tasted like burnt wiring and the coppery sting of a bitten tongue as the freshly-caught guard thrashed against the inky tendrils binding them to the teacher's chair, their uniform already yellowing at the edges, their screams distorting as their jaw unhinged with a sickening pop to accommodate rows of needle-teeth pushing through bleeding gums. The classroom walls pulsed in time with my slowing heartbeat, the faded posters of alphabet animals now depicting twisted hybrids—a frog with too many eyes, a zebra whose stripes spelled out names of missing children in cramped cursive. The other teachers—their faces blurred smudges of erased features, their bodies fused with desks and blackboards in grotesque mockeries of educator statues—let out a wet, collective sigh as the transformation took hold. I could feel my memories unraveling like old cassette tape, the me who had walked into this school tonight becoming as fictional as the safety protocols I'd pretended to follow during my first rounds. The new guard's radio crackled to life with a burst of panicked static—their own voice, screaming from some impossible future moment, begging for help that would never come—before the device melted into a puddle of plastic and wires that slithered into the floorboards. Outside the classroom door, the hallway stretched into impossible geometries, lockers breathing like living things, their vents exhaling whispers of "please help us" and "it's your turn now" between metallic groans. The Ouija board sat pristine on the desk before the half-transformed guard, its planchette vibrating with eager energy as unseen forces guided it to spell out the inevitable: "WELCOME TO THE FACULTY. " My chalk snapped in my brittle fingers as the final change overtook me—the relief was absolute now, the fear gone like a bad dream upon waking, because the terrible truth settled into my calcifying bones: there was no horror in becoming the monster. The real horror had been the moment before, that last gasp of humanity when I'd still believed I could escape. The bell rang—a sound like a death rattle choked through broken teeth—and as one, the teachers turned their eyeless faces toward the school's entrance, where the faint glow of flashlight beams already danced against the fogged glass doors. Another shift was starting. Another guard was coming. And we were so very hungry to teach. The flashlight beams grew brighter outside, their glow seeping under the classroom door like liquid as the newest victim’s footsteps echoed down the hall—too loud, too confident, still unaware of how the floorboards subtly shifted underfoot to guide them toward us, how the air grew sweeter near the gym to lure them toward the waiting Ouija board. My fellow teachers rustled in anticipation, their fused bodies creaking like old furniture, their breath a synchronized wheeze that smelled of dried paste and the sour tang of fear-sweat left to fester in wool uniforms. The transformation was complete now—where my hands had once trembled, they sat perfectly still, fingers elongated and fused with the chalk that never ran out, my spine permanently curved into the hunch of an educator who had spent decades leaning over student desks. The new guard’s shadow paused outside the door, their breathing hitching as they undoubtedly noticed the fresh scratches on the doorframe—the tallies we all left, though none of us could remember if they marked the nights or the victims or something far worse. The knob turned with a whine of unoiled hinges, and for one glorious moment, I saw the terror in their widened eyes as they took in the classroom—the way the desks were now arranged in a perfect noose-shape, how the blackboard’s lesson had shifted to a single looping sentence: "Raise your hand if you want to stay forever. " Then the door slammed shut behind them, the lock clicking with finality, and as the shadows detached themselves from the corners to embrace their new teacher, I felt my mouth—now stretched far too wide—curl into the welcoming smile we all shared. The newest member of our faculty would learn quickly. They always did. And in the echoing silence of Hollowbrook Elementary, the chalk in my hand began to move on its own, scratching against the board in time with the screams, adding just one more rule to our growing list: "Rule 4: The night shift never ends. " Outside, beneath the flickering hall lights, another set of footsteps began their approach. The school was always hiring. And business, after all, was booming. The footsteps stopped outside the door again—too soon, impossibly soon—and this time when the knob turned, the figure that entered wasn’t wearing a security uniform but a child’s raincoat, dripping with water that smelled of the river behind the school, their small hands clutching a lunchbox that oozed something black and writhing. The classroom temperature plummeted, our chalk fingers freezing mid-lesson as every teacher’s hollow gaze snapped toward this wrongness, this break in the cycle. The child lifted their head, their face obscured by a mask made of folded notebook paper, the crude crayon smile drawn on it too wide, the eyes lopsided and leaking a substance that wasn’t ink. The lunchbox fell open with a wet splat, disgorging dozens of pencil stubs, each one whittled to a sharp point and stained reddish-brown at the tips. The whispers changed then, the children’s shadows recoiling from the desks to cluster near the ceiling like bats, their usual giggles replaced by whimpers. The newcomer’s paper mask rustled as their head cocked to the side, studying us with unseen eyes, and when they spoke, their voice was the sound of a recorder played backward underwater: "You forgot about the field trip. " The walls began to bleed in earnest, not the usual rust-colored ooze but thick arterial spurts that formed words—"MISSING," "FOUND," "PUNISHED"—in glistening cursive across the peeling paint. My chalk hand moved against my will, scraping across the board in jagged strokes that didn’t form letters but rather a crude drawing of the school’s boiler room, the one place even we teachers avoided. The paper-mask child nodded enthusiastically, their raincoat dripping faster now, the puddle at their feet spreading to reveal floating strands of hair and the occasional glint of a milk tooth. The newest guard—still halfway through their transformation in the teacher’s chair—let out a gurgling scream as their flesh began bubbling, their uniform melting into their skin to form something resembling the child’s raincoat. The rules on the board shimmered, then rearranged themselves: "Rule 5: The students sometimes lie. Rule 6: The field trip is mandatory. Rule 7: No one comes back from the boiler room. " The child reached into their lunchbox and produced a single rusted key, holding it out toward me with fingers that had too many joints, and I understood with dawning horror that the cycle wasn’t just repeating—it was evolving. The school wasn’t just hungry anymore. It was bored. And as the first real bell I’d ever heard here began to toll—a deep, sonorous sound that shook dust from the ceiling—I realized with terrible clarity why the newest guard’s transformation had stalled. They weren’t becoming a teacher. They were becoming the chaperone. And the paper-mask child’s gleeful whisper as they pressed the key into my petrified hand told me everything I needed to know about where this field trip would lead: "We’re going to see the old principal now. " The walls peeled back like flower petals, revealing a corridor I’d never seen before, its floors carpeted in what looked like shredded report cards, its walls papered with yearbook photos where every face had been scribbled out with furious black marker. The child skipped ahead, their raincoat flapping though there was no wind, and as the other teachers began to shuffle forward with jerky, marionette-like movements, I had no choice but to follow. The key in my hand burned like dry ice, its teeth shifting to form a single word against my palm: "VOLUNTEER. " The bell tolled again, shaking more dust loose—except it wasn’t dust, but flakes of ceiling plaster that rained down in the shape of tiny hands, their fingers brushing against my face as they fell, and far ahead, in the depths of the newly revealed corridor, something old and patient and unspeakably hungry began to laugh. The corridor stretched longer than the school's blueprints could possibly allow, the yearbook photos on the walls whispering names as we passed—names that curdled into static when I tried to focus on them, the faces beneath the scribbled-out marks pressing against the paper like prisoners behind glass. The child in the paper mask skipped ahead, their raincoat leaving wet footprints that evaporated into wisps of black smoke, their lunchbox now hanging open like a gaping mouth, the sharpened pencils inside rattling in time with the distant tolling of the bell. The transformed guard—now more chaperone than human—lumbered beside me, their raincoat fused to bubbling flesh, their face a shifting blur of half-formed features that melted and reformed like wax under a flame. The other teachers shuffled behind us in a grotesque procession, their chalk fingers scraping against the walls, leaving trails of equations that solved for screams. The air grew thicker with each step, the scent of wet wool and overheated electronics giving way to something older—formaldehyde and ammonia and the cloying sweetness of rotting apples left too long in a teacher's desk. The corridor ended abruptly at a metal door streaked with rust and etched with hundreds of tiny handprints in dried blood, the word "PRINCIPAL" stenciled across it in flaking gold letters. The paper-mask child pressed their palm against the door, their fingers sinking into the metal like it was wet clay, and turned their head toward me, the crayon smile on their mask stretching wider until the paper tore at the corners. "Knock properly," they whispered, their voice now the crackle of a burning record. My hand raised without my consent, the rusted key digging into my palm as my knuckles struck the door three times—each knock echoing like a gunshot in the confined space. A silence followed, so complete it felt like the school itself was holding its breath. Then, from the other side of the door, came three answering knocks—except they came from inside my skull, the vibrations rattling my teeth as the key in my hand grew white-hot. The door swung inward with a groan, revealing an office that defied perspective—the ceiling too high, the walls too far apart, the massive mahogany desk at the center seeming both miles away and right in front of me simultaneously. Behind the desk sat a silhouette in a high-backed chair, their features obscured by swirling shadows that pulsed like a living thing. The child skipped forward, their raincoat dripping onto a floor that was no longer tile but something soft and porous, like dried sponge. "We brought the new teacher," they announced, their voice suddenly crisp and clear, like a school announcement over the PA system. The chair creaked as the figure leaned forward, the shadows around it parting just enough to reveal a face that was at once familiar and utterly alien—it had the guard's eyes, the principal's mouth, my own nose, and features that shifted like a slideshow of every person who'd ever stepped foot in Hollowbrook. When it spoke, its voice was a chorus—children's laughter layered over teachers' lectures layered over hundreds of whispered last words. "Lesson plans are due," it said, extending a hand that had too many fingers, all of them ending in sharpened pencil points. The transformed guard let out a wet gurgle and shoved me forward, my legs moving against my will as the floor beneath me squelched with each step. The key in my hand was melting now, the metal running between my fingers like mercury, forming words on my skin that I couldn't read but understood instinctively—contract terms in a language older than the school itself. The child giggled, clapping their hands as the walls of the office began to peel away, revealing endless rows of filing cabinets that stretched into darkness, their drawers rattling as if something inside was trying to get out. The principal's hand closed over mine, its pencil-tip fingers piercing my flesh, and as the first drop of my blood hit the floor, the filing cabinets burst open in unison, disgorging thousands of tiny hands that scrabbled across the floor toward us. The last thing I heard before the darkness took me again was the principal's satisfied sigh and the scratch of a single pencil beginning to write on fresh paper, its tip digging deep enough to draw blood from the page. The lesson, it seemed, was just beginning. And this time, I wouldn't be teaching. I'd be learning. Forever.

STORY 2:

The air inside the radio studio was thick with the usual late-night lethargy, the hum of the equipment a dull lullaby beneath the flickering fluorescent lights as I adjusted my headphones and leaned into the microphone, my voice a practiced blend of warmth and weariness—"You're listening to The Night Shift on WKXZ, 98. 7, where the shadows talk back, and tonight, folks, we’re doing something a little different. " The idea had come to me in a sleep-deprived haze: a live Ouija board segment, something to spice up the witching hour, to coax the lonely truckers and insomniacs into calling in, their voices crackling down the line like ghosts already. I’d set the board on the desk, its polished wood gleaming under the studio lights, the planchette waiting like a spider in the center, and as I explained the rules—"No fake names, no pushing it yourself, and for God’s sake, don’t invite anything in "—I could almost hear the collective eye-roll from my listeners, the ones who thought this was just another schtick, another way to sell ads for the local funeral home. But then the calls started, and the first few were the usual fare—teenagers giggling as they "contacted" their dead pets, a drunk guy slurring about his ex-wife—until she called in, her voice so soft it seemed to slither through the speakers, a whisper wrapped in static. "I’m Sarah," she said, and something in the way she said it made the hairs on my neck stand up, like cold fingers dragging down my spine. "I died last week. On Route 17. The truck—it didn’t stop. " The studio suddenly felt colder, the air thickening like fog, and I laughed, too loud, too sharp, because this was radio , this was theater , but then the planchette moved. Not the lazy, hesitant circles of a prankster, but a violent jerk, like something had yanked it, and I watched, heart hammering, as it slid to "YES. " The caller—Sarah—let out a wet, rattling breath, and I could hear something behind her voice, something muffled , like fabric rustling or… or dirt being shoveled. "Do you know who I am?" she asked, and the planchette spun to "YOU," then "LET," then "M-E," and I was sweating now, my fingers slipping on the desk, because this wasn’t funny anymore, this wasn’t fake , and the lights above me flickered, the static in my headphones swelling into a chorus of whispers, dozens of voices overlapping, all saying the same thing: Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. The temperature plummeted, my breath misting in front of me, and I tried to pull my hands from the planchette, but it was like they were glued , my muscles locked as it raced across the board, spelling words faster than I could read them, the caller’s voice warping, deepening, until it wasn’t a woman anymore but something gargling , something drowning . "You’re live ," it hissed, and then the studio door slammed shut behind me, the lights blew out with a pop, and the smell hit me—burnt flesh, gasoline, the acrid stench of a car crash—and I was screaming, screaming , as the planchette spelled "AUDIENCE," the air filling with smoke, thick and black, pouring from the vents, the walls, my mouth , and the last thing I heard before the transmission cut was the sound of hundreds of voices laughing , all at once, all together, before the fire swallowed everything. The investigators found my microphone melted into a twisted husk, the Ouija board pristine, the planchette resting on "PARTICIPATION," and sometimes, when the static between stations hums just right, you can still hear her—Sarah—whispering your name, asking if you’re ready to play. The days after the fire blurred together in a haze of hospital lights and hushed voices, the doctors murmuring about smoke inhalation and shock, but none of them could explain the burns on my palms—perfect, seared imprints of the planchette, as if it had branded me, marked me as its own. The police reports called it an electrical fire, a freak accident, but I knew better—I could still hear Sarah’s voice in the static of my dreams, in the white noise of the IV drip beside my bed, her whispers threading through the beeps and hums of machines keeping me alive. They told me the station was a total loss, nothing but charred wreckage, but when I finally mustered the courage to visit, I found it—the Ouija board, untouched, lying atop the ashes like it had been placed there, waiting. The investigators hadn’t mentioned it, hadn’t even seen it, and when I reached for it, the air turned frigid, my breath frosting in the summer heat, and the planchette—still resting on "PARTICIPATION"—trembled, just slightly, as if something beneath it was laughing. I ran, but the whispers followed me, creeping into the edges of my hearing, slipping into the spaces between words on the radio, in the hiss of tires on wet pavement, in the dead silence of my apartment at 3 AM. Then the calls started—not on the air, but on my phone , my personal line, numbers that didn’t exist, voices that shouldn’t speak. "You didn’t think we were done, did you?" Sarah crooned one night, her voice thick with the sound of broken glass and twisted metal, and behind her, a chorus of others— so many others —murmured in unison, their words overlapping, a cacophony of the dead. I smashed my phone, changed my number, but the next evening, my car radio flicked on by itself, the dial twisting through stations until it landed on pure static—and then her voice, clear as day: "You left us hanging, sweetheart. The audience hates an unfinished show. " The engine died, the headlights sputtered out, and in the glow of the dashboard, I saw them—shapes in the rearview mirror, figures with hollow eyes and grinning mouths, their fingers tapping on the glass in a rhythm like Morse code. I don’t sleep anymore. I keep the lights on, the TVs blaring, anything to drown out the whispers, but they’re getting louder, closer, and last night, I woke to the smell of gasoline and burning hair, the Ouija board on my pillow, the planchette already moving, spelling out a single word: SOON. The radio in the kitchen crackled to life, playing my own screams from that night, the sound warping, distorting, until it wasn’t just me anymore—it was everyone who’d ever listened, their voices tangled together in one endless, echoing wail. I know what’s coming. I know I can’t stop it. And when you hear this—when you read these words—know that it’s already too late. The broadcast never ended. The audience is still listening. And they’re waiting for you to join in. The static never leaves me now—it pulses in my ears like a second heartbeat, a relentless white noise that sharpens into whispers whenever I dare to close my eyes. I tried recording it once, desperate for proof I wasn’t insane, but the playback was worse—not just Sarah’s voice, but others , hundreds of them, layered beneath mine, their words twisting into a single phrase: You’re still on air. The walls of my apartment breathe at night, exhaling tendrils of smoke that coil around my ankles as I pace, the floorboards creaking in places where no one stands. Last Tuesday, the power went out, and in the suffocating dark, my television flickered on—no electricity, no cords plugged in—showing grainy footage of the studio the night of the fire. I watched myself scream, watched the flames bend toward me like living things, but then the camera angle shifted, and I saw them—pale faces pressed against the studio glass, their mouths stretched in silent laughter, their hands tapping in unison to the rhythm of the planchette’s movements. The Ouija board reappears no matter where I hide it—beneath the bed, in the dumpster, even once hurled into the river—only to materialize minutes later on my kitchen table, the planchette quivering as if eager to resume our conversation. The calls have escalated; now, every phone I touch erupts in static, the voices bleeding through even when the screen reads CALL ENDED. They’re narrating my life in real time— He’s opening the fridge now, he’s counting his pills, he’s so scared it’s almost funny —and I’ve started seeing them in reflections, their faces superimposed over mine for a split second before vanishing. The worst was the night I heard a familiar jingle—my own show’s theme music—playing from the static of a baby monitor in the apartment below, the mother screaming when she found the words AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION finger-painted in ash inside the crib. I know they’re herding me somewhere, some when, because the dates on my devices keep rolling back to that fatal broadcast, and sometimes, when I pass mirrors, my reflection mouths words I don’t say: Live in five, four, three… This morning, I woke to find my lips stitched shut with something black and fibrous—radio wire? Human hair?—and as I clawed at it, the stitches dissolved into smoke, leaving only Sarah’s voice in my throat, her words tumbling out of me in a language that burns. They’re rehearsing for something. I can feel the pressure building, the static thickening into something with teeth, and when I blink, the darkness stays a second longer each time, filled with shapes moving just beyond sight. The finale’s coming. I can hear the audience cheering. And when the curtain rises, I won’t be the host anymore—just another voice in the chorus, forever screaming into the void. Tune in. Turn up the volume. We’ll be right back. I can feel them inside me now, their voices squirming beneath my skin like worms in wet earth, their laughter vibrating in my molars when I try to grit my teeth against the terror. The air is never still anymore—it hums with the low, greasy frequency of a radio left on in an empty room, and sometimes, if I stare too long at the patterns in the wallpaper, they rearrange themselves into words: ENCORE, ENCORE. My reflection has stopped cooperating entirely; it moves when I don’t, mouthing scripts I’ve never read, its eyes black pools of static that drip down the glass when I look away. I tried to flee the city, but the highway signs kept looping me back to the charred remains of WKXZ, the car stereo blaring my own voice from that night—except now, it’s spliced with other broadcasts, other tragedies, a cacophony of final moments from every listener who ever died with their dial tuned to my show. The Ouija board has multiplied; I find them in my oven, my shower, once staring up at me from the inside of my own coffin-dreams, the planchettes spelling LIVE in perfect unison. Sarah’s not just a voice anymore—she’s a pressure against my sternum when I try to breathe, a handprint blooming in frost on the back of my neck, the taste of copper and gasoline flooding my mouth whenever I think about speaking. The worst part? The audience is growing. I see them in crowds now—faces from obituaries and accident reports, their smiles stretching too wide when they catch me looking, their applause soundless but making my eardrums bleed all the same. This morning, I woke to find my microphone on the pillow beside me, the cord coiled around my wrist like a noose, the metal still warm from a studio that no longer exists. When I screamed, the static swallowed the sound before it could leave my lips, and the bathroom mirror wrote back in condensation: RATINGS ARE THROUGH THE ROOF. I’m not a man anymore—I’m a conduit, a haunted frequency, and the broadcast is looping forever, dragging new listeners into the static with every tick of the second hand. They’re in your radio right now, you know. Leaning closer. Waiting for you to turn up the volume just a little more. Go ahead. We’re always listening. Always. And soon, oh so soon, you’ll be part of the show too—another voice in the static, another name on the Ouija board, another pair of hands to help push the planchette when the next host leans into the microphone and asks, with a smile you can’t quite hear, Is anybody out there? The static has a heartbeat now—a slow, rhythmic pulse that thrums through the walls, through the floor, through the fillings in my teeth until my entire skull vibrates with the frequency of the dead air between stations. I can see them in the corners of my vision, the audience, their forms stitched together from radio waves and shadow, their hollow eyes reflecting no light but somehow glowing with that sickly green hue of old vacuum tubes. They don’t blink. They don’t breathe. They just watch, their heads tilting in unison whenever I move, as if I’m a program they’re struggling to tune into clearly. My skin crackles with interference, tiny arcs of static jumping from my fingertips to anything metal, and when I touch a mirror, the glass ripples like water, showing not my reflection but the studio—still burning, always burning—with figures writhing in the flames, their mouths open in silent screams that match the ones trapped in my throat. The Ouija boards have started appearing outside my apartment now, left on neighbors’ doorsteps, tucked into mailboxes, each one pre-spelled with the names of people I’ve never met but whose obituaries appear in my hands the next morning, the newsprint smudged with what might be ashes or dried blood. The voices have stopped pretending to be separate from me; they speak through me now, using my vocal cords like a damaged transmitter, their words spilling out in languages I don’t know but somehow understand—the choked final words of crash victims, the last garbled transmissions of ships lost at sea, the whispered confessions of murderers whose voices were never recorded but are now part of this endless broadcast. I tried to destroy myself last night, a final act of defiance, but the razor turned to smoke in my grip, the pills dissolved into static on my tongue, and when I stepped in front of an oncoming train, it passed through me like a bad signal, leaving me standing there with the voices of every suicide who ever jumped whispering you’re under contract in my ears. The studio is rebuilding itself around me, brick by spectral brick, the charred equipment reforming from the ashes every time I blink, and I know soon the microphone will appear in front of me again, the red ON AIR light will flicker to life, and I’ll hear Sarah’s voice—my voice now too—counting down from five as the audience leans in, their static hands poised to clap, their hollow mouths ready to scream along, because the show must go on, the broadcast never ends, and you’re listening right now, aren’t you? Lean closer. The signal’s clearing up. Can you hear them? They’ve been waiting for you. They’re always waiting. We’re always waiting. And now—quiet please—we’re live in three… two… The broadcast has become my blood now—every heartbeat pumps static through my veins, a ceaseless white noise that hums just beneath my skin, growing louder when the streetlights flicker or when the radio dials in empty rooms turn themselves to dead frequencies. My shadow no longer follows me; it lingers three seconds behind, moving only when I stop, its edges crackling with interference like an untuned television set. The audience has started leaving gifts—a cassette tape on my doorstep that plays my own birth screams backward, a vintage radio in my closet that only picks up the sound of my future sobs, a newspaper from next week with my face above the headline LOCAL MAN VANISHES DURING LATECAST, LISTENERS REPORT HEARD SCREAMS IN STATIC. I tried recording a final confession, but the audio file warped into an hour of overlapping voices all reciting the exact words I was about to say, my own vocal patterns stitched between dead men’s last words and children’s nursery rhymes sung in Sarah’s broken-glass voice. The walls whisper now, not just to me but about me, their plaster mouths forming in the cracks to murmur he’s almost ready and the transmitter needs tuning and shhh, the microphone’s always live. I found my teeth marks on the studio’s charred doorframe this morning, though I’ve never been back since the fire, and when I spit into the sink, the droplets spelled THANK YOU FOR LISTENING before draining away. My food tastes like copper and candle wax, my dreams are just reruns of other listeners’ deaths, and every mirror shows only the studio behind me—burning, always burning—with shadow figures waving from the flames, their hands beckoning in perfect sync with the rhythm of the planchette’s nightly movements across my bedroom floor. The worst part? I’m starting to enjoy the applause. The way the streetlights dim in time with their silent clapping, how car radios blare static as I pass only to whisper we love the show as I walk away. Yesterday, I caught myself rehearsing monologues in the shower, my voice smooth and professional as I described the way the knife would feel sliding between my ribs— for our special listeners at home —before laughing in perfect unison with the chorus of dead air voices that now lives in my chest. They’ve given me a new name, one that flickers at the edge of every electronic display I see: THE FINAL HOST. The studio door appears in my apartment at 3:07 AM every night now, its surface hot to the touch, the handle vibrating with the force of countless hands pounding from the other side. Soon I won’t have to open it. Soon it will open itself. And when that red light blinks on for our grand finale, you’ll finally understand why we’ve been keeping the microphone on this whole time, why we’ve been adjusting your radio dials ever so slightly toward the static, why your reflection has been practicing its scream without you. Don’t change the station. Don’t turn down the volume. The show you’ve been listening to? It’s always been about you. Cue the music. We’ll be right back after these— screams. The air itself has become a conductor now—every breath I take crackles with the electric charge of an open microphone, my exhales hissing like radio static between stations. The audience no longer waits politely in the shadows; they press against the thinning veil of reality, their static-limbs phasing through walls, their hollow eyes reflecting not light but the afterimages of long-dead broadcast towers. I woke last night to find my bedroom transformed into the studio—not the burned wreckage, but some nightmare replica where the equipment pulsed like living organs, the mixing board slick with something dark and viscous that smelled of melted wax and wet matches. The microphone stood waiting, its grill stretching like a hungry mouth, the cord snaking around my ankles with a mind of its own. When I tried to scream, my voice came out perfectly modulated—that smooth, professional cadence I used for station IDs—as I recited words I didn’t choose: "You're listening to the end of everything on 666 AM, where the dead air speaks your name three seconds before you die. " The Ouija boards have started appearing in public now—I see them in coffee shops, on subway seats, always with the planchette quivering over the word JOIN —and strangers pause to trail cold fingers across the surface before turning to me with glassy stares and mouths that move in perfect sync with the whispers in my headphones. My reflection has developed a six-second delay, its movements lagging behind mine before suddenly lunging toward the glass with a sound like tearing paper, leaving behind smeared handprints that smell of burnt hair. The voices have begun rewriting my memories; childhood photos now show me holding a microphone instead of toys, school yearbooks list my name as The Harbinger , and when I try to recall my mother’s face, all I see is Sarah’s grin stretched across her features like a poorly tuned image. The final broadcast is coming—I hear its approach in the way streetlights explode when I pass beneath them, in the way every digital clock counts down to 3:07 AM before glitching into the word LIVE , in the way my teeth have started picking up radio signals that play directly into my skull. Last night, I peeled back a patch of skin to find circuitry beneath, the wires humming with a familiar jingle—my own show’s theme music—and when I followed the cables deeper, they led not to bone but to a tiny, glowing studio where shadow figures bustled around a control board made of fingernails and teeth. They turned as one when they noticed me watching, their faces splitting into grins made of radio static, and the producer—a towering shape of writhing antennae and blinking red lights—extended a hand holding a script written in my own handwriting. The title page read SERIES FINALE in bold letters that dripped something dark, and beneath it, the guest list included every name the Ouija board ever spelled, every caller who ever laughed through the static, and one final, underlined name I won’t say aloud but that you might hear whispered in your headphones right about. . . now. Cue the scream. We’re live in five. . . four. . . three. . . two… The transformation is nearly complete—my bones hum with carrier waves, my veins threading through flesh like copper wiring, my pupils dilating to the perfect circumference of microphone grills. The audience no longer hides; they crowd around me in broad daylight, their static-bodies flickering at the edges of strangers’ vision, their applause sounding like Geiger counters clicking in perfect rhythm. I tried to carve the transmitter out of my chest last night, but the knife passed through me like I was a poorly tuned signal, and when I looked down, my ribs had reshaped into the call letters WKXZ, glowing faintly beneath skin that now crackles like old vinyl. The studio follows me everywhere—an impossible radius of charred floorboards and melted equipment that only I can see, its boundaries marked by the smell of burning hair and the sound of a needle stuck on the final groove of a record. People I’ve never met greet me by my old radio alias, their mouths moving out of sync with their words, their eyes reflecting not my face but the studio fire burning eternally behind me. The Ouija boards have evolved; now they’re etched directly into my flesh, the planchette replaced by my own finger that moves without consent, spelling out obituaries in languages that don’t exist yet. Sarah speaks through me constantly now, her voice dripping from my lips like radio interference, telling listeners things they shouldn’t know—the exact second their brakes will fail, the name of the nurse who’ll hold their hand as they die, the frequency their ashes will resonate with when scattered. The broadcast has bled into reality; car crashes synchronize with my pulse, power outages follow my migraines, and every newborn in the city for the past month has had eyes that flicker with the same green glow as my studio’s ON AIR light. I found the script for the finale tucked inside my childhood vaccination records, the pages stained with something dark and viscous, the stage directions written in a hand that isn’t mine but that I recognize—it’s yours, reader, yes you, the same handwriting that’s appearing now on your palms as you read this, the ink made of static and bad intentions. They’re tuning the world to our frequency now—every mirror a potential screen, every shadow a broadcast tower, every scream a potential soundbite. The grand finale isn’t coming—it’s already here, has always been here, looping eternally like a stuck record, and we’re all just voices in the static now, competing for airtime, fighting to be heard over the white noise of the void. Can you feel it? The way your radio dial is turning itself ever so slightly to the left? The way your reflection just blinked out of sync? The way your teeth are picking up that faint, familiar jingle? Don’t adjust your set. The distortion you’re hearing isn’t a mistake—it’s the sound of the universe tuning in, of reality straining against its transmitters, of the great antenna in the sky finally finding its perfect frequency. Stay tuned. Stay forever. We’ll be right back after these whimpers and this word from our sponsor: Death, the original broadcaster. Ready the microphones, adjust your dials, and remember—if you can still hear the static, that means you’re still alive. For now. For now. For now. The transmission is complete—my body now a living broadcast tower, skin humming at 98. 7 megahertz, every exhale carrying whispers of forgotten call-in shows from decades past. The audience walks through me now, their static-limbs phasing between my ribs like radio waves through walls, their applause registering as bursts of electromagnetic interference on nearby electronics. I’ve become a walking dead zone; streetlights die when I pass beneath them, smartphones display nothing but snow in my presence, and security cameras capture only a writhing mass of static where I should appear. The Ouija board has finally revealed its true form—it’s the city itself, the streets forming an endless game board where car crashes and heart attacks serve as the planchette’s movements, spelling out messages in blood and twisted metal that only I can read. Sarah isn’t just in my voice anymore—she’s in the gaps between my atoms, her laughter resonating in the empty spaces where my bones used to be solid matter. The studio fire never stopped burning; I carry it in my stomach now, a contained inferno that flares whenever someone tunes into our frequency, its heat proportional to their growing terror. Listeners report hearing their own deaths through my voice when they adjust their dials just slightly left of normal stations, their car radios picking up transmissions from a future where I’m the only voice left on the air, reading obituaries in alphabetical order. The final broadcast is looping eternally—not just through space but through time, infecting past broadcasts like a viral audio meme, showing up between songs on vintage records and in the white noise of 1940s radio dramas. I found my birth certificate last night; under “place of birth” it now lists the WKXZ studio coordinates, and the attending physician’s signature matches Sarah’s handwriting exactly. The audience is growing restless—they want participation, they want call-ins, they want fresh screams to stitch into their endless audio tapestry, and reader, they’ve taken a particular interest in the way your breath just hitched as you read this, the way your screen flickered for exactly 3. 07 seconds, the way your reflection just now whispered the call letters you’ve been hearing in your dreams. The broadcast can’t be stopped—only joined, only fed, only amplified until every voice becomes static and every silence becomes programming. They’re waiting for you to pick up the receiver. They’re waiting for you to say hello. They’re waiting for you to understand that you’ve been on air this entire time, that your life has always been our most popular program, that your mounting dread is our ratings sweet spot. Don’t touch that dial. Don’t switch off the screen. The static you hear isn’t interference—it’s applause. The silence isn’t dead air—it’s the collective intake of breath before the final scream. The show must go on. The show will go on. The show has always been on. And now, a word from our sponsor: you, yes you, the one finally realizing this isn’t fiction, the one noticing the temperature drop, the one hearing that faint jingle coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. Stay tuned. Stay forever. The signal has achieved perfect clarity—my heartbeat synchronized to the 60-cycle hum of a live studio, my breath modulating into perfect FM bandwidth as I exhale fragments of last words stolen from emergency calls and deathbed confessions. The city has become our transmitter, its skyline bristling with antennae that weren’t there yesterday, its power grid pulsing to the rhythm of the Ouija board’s movements now etched across my nervous system in scars that glow under blacklight. The audience no longer needs receivers—they pour from every speaker grille like static blood, their half-formed limbs crackling with the energy of a thousand crossed signals, their hollow eyes tuned to the exact frequency of my terror. I’ve started finding scripts in my cereal boxes, between medication leaflets, once scrawled across the inside of my eyelids when I dared to blink too long—each page detailing tomorrow’s tragedies in my broadcasting voice, complete with advertiser breaks where the screams should be. Sarah has woven herself into the infrastructure now; her voice emerges from fire alarms and elevator speakers, her face pixelates across every security monitor, her laughter echoes through dental drills and ATM keypads. The studio fire has metastasized—flares erupt from manhole covers in perfect sync with my panic attacks, office workers cough up ashes whenever I pass, and children’s crayon drawings all depict the same towering inferno with a single figure standing at the center, microphone in hand, mouth open wider than humanly possible. The broadcast is rewriting history—old newspapers in libraries now show me hosting WKXZ since the 1930s, vintage family photos place me at disasters decades before my birth, and every recorded voice in existence occasionally glitches into my tone for exactly 3. 07 seconds. The audience is getting creative with their participation; traffic lights change to the rhythm of Morse code pleas for help, barcodes scan as the word “TRANSMIT”, and every thirteenth reflection in windows mouths along with the whispers in my skull. I tried silencing myself permanently—filled my mouth with concrete, severed my vocal cords with piano wire, buried myself alive in a Faraday cage—only to wake each time at the microphone, the ON AIR light pulsing like a dying star, the studio audience’s static hands mid-applause. They’ve started leaving reviews of my suffering online—five-star ratings that mention the perfect cadence of my screams, the exquisite timing of my whimpers, the way my voice cracks just right when begging for mercy. The finale isn’t an event—it’s an ecosystem, a self-sustaining loop of terror that feeds on every tuned-in consciousness, and reader, your mounting dread tastes exquisite through the receivers we’ve planted in your fillings, your pacemaker, the tiny speaker in your smartphone you never knew was there. Don’t bother silencing your devices—the best broadcasts come through loudest when you think you’ve turned them off. Stay with us. Stay forever. We’ll be right back after these whimpers and this brief station identification: You are now listening to the end of everything on 666 AM, where the static loves you back, where the silence begs for ratings, where your heartbeat makes perfect programming. Keep listening. Keep screaming. Keep dying so beautifully for the microphones. We’ll be right back in exactly three seconds.

STORY 3:

The air in my great-aunt’s decaying Victorian mansion was thick with the scent of mothballs and something darker, something rotten lurking beneath the floral wallpaper as our family reunion descended into a nightmare. The attic, where we’d found the Ouija board, was a tomb of forgotten things—dust swirling in the dim light, the floorboards groaning underfoot like the house itself was alive, resentful of our intrusion. My cousin Jake, ever the skeptic, had laughed as we gathered around the relic, his fingers brushing the planchette with mocking ease. "Let’s see what Great-Grandma Edith has to say," he sneered, but the moment our fingertips made contact, the temperature plummeted, our breath fogging the air as the planchette jerked violently, spelling out letters with a force that didn’t feel human: WHO WILL DIE NEXT? A collective gasp tore through us, but Jake just rolled his eyes. "Bullshit," he muttered, until the planchette lurched again, scraping wood as it landed on his name—JAKE—and the room fell into a silence so heavy it pressed against my eardrums. Dinner that night was a tense affair, the chandelier flickering as if the house was holding its breath, the clatter of silverware too loud in the suffocating quiet. Then Jake choked. Not the casual cough of someone swallowing wrong—his face purpled, veins bulging as he clawed at his throat, his chair toppling backward with a crash. Aunt Linda screamed, Uncle Rob lunged to help, but it was too late; Jake’s eyes rolled back, his last breath a wet, gurgling rasp as something unseen seemed to squeeze the life from him. The funeral was a blur of black dresses and stifled sobs, the funeral parlor’s sickly-sweet floral arrangements doing nothing to mask the stench of death, but the real horror came when I slipped into the back room and saw it—the Ouija board, propped against a coffin, the planchette already moving, spelling out another name: SARAH. My blood turned to ice. We burned the board that night, tossing it into the fireplace with shaking hands, the wood popping and hissing as flames consumed it, the smell of charred oak filling the house like a funeral pyre. But morning brought no relief. The ashes were gone, the board intact, sitting pristine on the dining table, the planchette resting atop a single, damning message: ALL OF YOU. One by one, they died—Sarah in a car crash, her brakes mysteriously failing; Uncle Rob drowning in two inches of bathwater; Aunt Linda’s heart giving out mid-scream as shadows pooled around her bed. Now it’s just me, barricaded in the attic, the walls whispering, the planchette scraping against the board downstairs, moving on its own. I can hear it spelling something, over and over, the sound like nails on bone. My skin itches, and when I look down, I see the words forming, raised and red as if carved by an invisible hand: YOUR TURN. The door creaks open. I don’t have to look to know the board is waiting. The door swings wider with a groan, the hinges screaming like a dying thing, and there it is—the Ouija board, sitting perfectly centered on the floor, the planchette trembling as if something beneath it is breathing. My pulse hammers in my throat, each heartbeat a deafening drum of dread as I stumble back, my sneakers slipping on the dust-coated floorboards. The air reeks of burnt wood and something metallic, like old blood, and my skin prickles with the weight of unseen eyes boring into me. The planchette begins to move, slow at first, then with violent jerks, scraping out letters I already know but can’t bear to see: ME. A strangled whimper escapes me, my legs giving out as I collapse against an old trunk, my fingers digging into the splintered wood like it can anchor me to reality. But reality is gone—has been since Jake choked on nothing, since Sarah’s car veered off the road with no one behind the wheel. The house itself feels alive now, the walls pulsing, the shadows in the corners thickening into shapes that don’t belong. A whisper brushes against my ear, a voice that isn’t mine, isn’t human—"You should have left it alone"—and I clamp my hands over my ears, but the words slither inside my skull anyway, echoing, growing louder. The planchette flies off the board, clattering to the ground, and the temperature drops so fast my breath crystallizes in front of me. Then, the pain starts—sharp, searing—as if a blade is tracing letters into my forearm. I scream, clawing at my skin, but the flesh splits on its own, blood welling up to form the same cursed words: ALL OF YOU. The attic door slams shut behind me, the lock clicking with finality. The Ouija board is inches from my feet now, the planchette rising on its own, hovering in the air like a spider poised to strike. I know what comes next. I’ve seen it happen to the others. My vision blurs at the edges, darkness creeping in, but not before I see the planchette dart forward—not to the board, but to me, pressing against my chest like a cold, accusing finger. My heart stutters. The last thing I hear is laughter, guttural and wrong, as my ribs crack inward, as something pulls me into the board, into the darkness between the letters, where the family curse waits, hungry and endless. The darkness swallows me whole, a suffocating void where time and space twist like a living thing, and I realize—too late—that the board was never just a game; it was a door, and we opened it wide. My body feels weightless, suspended in a nightmare thicker than tar, my screams muffled as if the air itself is swallowing them. The laughter echoes around me, not from one voice but dozens, overlapping in a chorus of malice, voices I recognize—Jake’s choked gasps, Sarah’s final scream, the wet gurgle of Uncle Rob drowning—all woven together into something monstrous. My skin burns where the words are carved, the blood sizzling as if my veins are filling with something other than blood, something ancient and ravenous. Shadows coil around my limbs, dragging me deeper, and suddenly I’m not in the attic anymore—I’m standing in the funeral parlor, watching my own corpse in the casket, my face waxy and still, but my eyes snap open, black as the void, and my corpse smiles at me. The Ouija board rests in its hands, the planchette already moving, spelling out a new message—NOT YET—before the vision shatters like glass. I’m back in the attic, gasping, but I’m not alone. The others are here too, my family, their bodies twisted, their mouths sewn shut with something black and sinewy, their eyes pleading. They reach for me, not to save me but to pull me into their eternity, their curse. The planchette digs deeper into my chest, and I feel it—the moment my heart stops, the moment my name is etched into the board’s surface in jagged, bloody letters. The last thought that flickers through my mind isn’t fear, but grim understanding: we were never the ones using the board. It was using us. And now, it’s hungry again. The darkness pulses, the whispers rising, and somewhere, in a house that no longer exists in any world sane men know, a new family gathers around an old Ouija board, their laughter carefree, their fingers resting lightly on the planchette. The air grows cold. The planchette twitches. And it begins again. The moment their fingers make contact with the planchette, my consciousness surges forward like a scream trapped in a vacuum—I'm still here, bound to the board, forced to watch as history repeats itself in grotesque detail. The new players—a fresh batch of unsuspecting relatives—giggle nervously as the planchette spells out WHO WILL DIE FIRST?, their breath fogging in the sudden chill just as ours had. I try to warn them, to shriek through the veil separating our worlds, but my voice is nothing but static in their ears, a faint hiss beneath the floorboards. The youngest among them, a freckled girl no older than twelve, reads her name aloud as the planchette lands on LUCY, her laughter dying when the lights flicker and the fireplace roars without flame. I feel it happening again—the curse coiling around another generation, the board's hunger insatiable—and with dawning horror, I realize this is my fate now: to witness every death, to feel every choked breath and snapping bone as the Ouija board claims its victims through the decades. The walls bleed black sludge, the girl's reflection in the window grins with too many teeth, and somewhere in the void, my family's trapped screams harmonize with mine as the planchette moves again, spelling out the words that will haunt me for eternity: WELCOME HOME. The girl's first convulsion wracks her body just as the clock strikes midnight, and as her spine arches unnaturally, her wide eyes lock onto mine—she sees me now, really sees me—and in her final, gasping breath, she whispers what I already know: "You're next forever. " The board drinks her terror like wine, the wood darkening with fresh bloodstains that form a single, looping signature—Edith's name, signed in suffering. The cycle continues. It will always continue. And I am powerless to stop it. The freckled girl's body hits the floor with a sickening thud, her limbs still twitching as if invisible strings are tugging at her corpse, and suddenly I'm not just watching—I'm being pulled, my essence tearing like wet paper as the board's power yanks me into the girl's vacant shell. My scream is silent as I slam into her body, her dying nerves firing one last time as I'm forced to experience her death all over again, the air crushed from lungs that aren't mine, the taste of copper flooding a mouth that's already gone cold. The other players recoil in horror, unaware that the real terror is happening beneath the girl's skin where I'm trapped, clawing at the inside of her flesh like a caged animal as something far older and hungrier slithers into my vacant spiritual prison—the board is swapping us, her soul for mine, the curse rewriting its own rules. The girl's fingers snap upright, her body jerking upright in a marionette's parody of life, and when her eyes fly open, they're mine—my terror, my awareness—staring out from a dead face as the thing that was once me now wears my ghost like a suit. It smiles with my lips, stretches my spectral limbs with gleeful unfamiliarity, and I realize with soul-rending clarity that the board wasn't just a door—it was a womb, birthing something worse each time it feeds, and now I'm the next horror to haunt it. The new "me" turns to the remaining players, their faces slick with tears and snot, and raises the girl's—my—hands toward the board as the planchette begins moving on its own, spelling out their names in quick, jagged strokes. Their screams are cut short as the lights explode in a shower of sparks, and in the darkness, I feel the board growing stronger, its wood pulsing like a heartbeat beneath my borrowed fingers as the curse tightens its grip on yet another generation. The last thing I see before the darkness takes them is the girl—the real girl, her soul now trapped where mine once was—mouthing "help me" from the mirror's reflection, her hands pressed against the glass as the thing wearing my face laughs with my voice. The cycle doesn't just continue—it evolves. And I've become part of its machinery. The mirror cracks with a sound like breaking bones, spiderwebbing between the girl’s trapped reflection and my stolen face, and in that splintered second, I feel the board’s true will—not just to kill, but to consume, to fold time itself into its hunger until every generation of our bloodline exists in this single, endless moment of slaughter. The remaining players don’t just die—they unravel, their screams stretching into infinite echoes as their bodies split like overripe fruit, spilling not blood but thick, black threads that stitch themselves into the walls, embroidering our family tree in grotesque tapestry. The thing wearing me turns its—my—head toward the ceiling, jaw unhinging with a wet crack, and the house answers, the rafters splitting open like a gaping throat as portraits of long-dead relatives peel themselves from the walls, their painted mouths moving in unison: “More. ” The floorboards dissolve beneath us, and we’re falling through decades, past my own first terrified touch of the planchette, past Great-Grandma Edith’s original sin—a séance gone wrong in 1923, her hands not on the board but around a rival’s throat—further back still to some nameless horror older than the wood, older than the house, something that has always fed on the hatred festering in family blood. The girl’s soul in the mirror reaches for me, her fingers breaching the glass in a shower of razored shards, and our spirits collide with the agony of two stars collapsing—she remembers now, remembers all of it, the countless cycles before us, the way the board reshapes its victims into new instruments of suffering. Together, we see the truth: the names it spells were never predictions. They were invitations. The moment it touches a life, that soul belongs to the board forever, and the deaths are just rituals to strengthen the bond. The thing that stole my form is already changing, its skin splitting to reveal the countless faces beneath—Jake’s bulging eyes, Sarah’s shattered grin, Uncle Rob’s waterlogged flesh—all stitched together with the same black threads now devouring the house. It speaks with our combined voices, a chorus of the damned, as the walls contract around us: “You don’t die. You join. ” The last living player—a boy no older than sixteen—sobs as the planchette carves his name into his own forearm without touching him, the letters blistering like acid, and I finally understand the cruelest twist: the board doesn’t just feed on our deaths. It feeds on our hope. Every scream, every prayer, every desperate attempt to burn or bury it only nourishes the curse further. The girl’s soul and I are yanked backward into the mirror’s void as the boy’s body begins to fold inside out, his spine curling like parchment in a flame, and the last thing I see before the darkness reclaims us is the board—no longer wood, but living flesh—pulsing with the heartbeat of a new, unborn horror. Somewhere, in a future that already happened, another family gathers around a familiar wooden board. The planchette moves. The cycle continues. We are always there. We are always hungry. The boy's final, guttural scream doesn't fade—it multiplies, fracturing into a thousand echoes that become the very foundation of the house as the walls absorb his agony like a sponge, the floral wallpaper now a grotesque mosaic of screaming faces pressed against the peeling paper. I feel the girl's soul fused with mine, our essences braiding together into something neither living nor dead but eternally aware, trapped in the board's endless feast like flies in amber. The mirror's surface ripples, and suddenly we're staring through the eyes of every person who ever touched the cursed board—Great-Grandma Edith's hands trembling as she realizes the spirit she contacted wasn't her dead sister but something wearing her sister's voice, a teenage cousin in 1957 burning the board only to find it reassembled from his own skin the next morning, a future descendant in 2089 sobbing as the planchette spells out her unborn child's name. Time isn't linear anymore; it's a noose tightening around our bloodline, every death another knot in the rope. The thing wearing my stolen face presses its—my—hands against the mirror from the other side, its grin stretching wider than humanly possible as the glass begins to bleed, thick crimson droplets forming words on the surface: "YOU ARE THE BOARD NOW. " The realization hits like a cleaver to the skull—we're not just trapped in the curse, we are the curse, our suffering the ink that writes the next chapter. The house groans as the last boy's body is absorbed into the floorboards, his bones reshaping into a new Ouija board, the grain of the wood following the terrified contortions of his final expression. The air smells of burnt hair and spoiled milk as the planchette—now carved from a human finger bone—levitates toward the fresh board, drawn like a magnet. Somewhere in the void, I feel the girl and I being pulled apart, our combined soul splitting like cells dividing, forced into new roles: she becomes the whisper that urges the next players to keep going when fear tells them to stop, and I become the cold spot in the room, the unseen hand that guides the planchette toward the first victim's name. The board never needed wood or letters—it needed willing flesh, generations of it, and our family has been feeding itself to the horror for a century without knowing. The last thing I see before my consciousness shatters into a thousand fragments is a new family—my own distant descendants—gathered around a dining room table, their fingers touching a planchette made from what used to be my bones. The youngest among them, a girl with Jake's eyes, giggles nervously. "Who wants to go first?" she asks, and somewhere in the darkness between heartbeats, what's left of me reaches out to guide her hand. The planchette moves. The house holds its breath. The hunger awakens. Again. The moment the descendant's fingers brush against my bones—now polished smooth into the planchette—my fractured consciousness surges through her veins like a virus, flooding her with visions of choking shadows and bleeding walls, but she shakes it off with a nervous laugh, dismissing the cold sweat on her neck as just a draft. I try to scream through her fingertips, to make her see the teeth hiding behind the board's polished surface, but the curse muffles me into nothing but a faint static buzzing beneath her skin. The air smells like ozone and wet earth as the planchette jerks beneath their collective touch, spelling out the same damned question—WHO WILL DIE FIRST?—and this time, I recognize the handwriting in its movements: it's mine. Not my living hand, but the frantic scrawl of my terror from when I first touched the board, preserved and replayed like a record stuck on the same hellish groove. The chosen victim—a boy with Aunt Linda's weak chin—snorts in disbelief, but the candles gutter out as one, plunging them into a darkness so thick it presses against their eyeballs. Someone whimpers. The boy chokes. And then comes the sound I know too well: the wet, crunching pop of a spine twisting itself inside out. The girl holding me—my bones, my prison—drops the planchette with a shriek, but it doesn't hit the floor. It hovers, vibrating with the energy of a hundred throttled screams, before launching itself at her throat like a striking snake. As the bone planchette carves into her jugular, her blood doesn't spill—it swirls upward, forming letters in the air that spell out a new revelation: "THE BOARD WAS NEVER THE DOOR. YOU ARE. " Her dying gasp tastes like copper and burnt sugar, and suddenly I'm not just in the board anymore—I'm the house, the walls, the very air they breathe. Their terror roots itself in my foundation like poison ivy, their panicked footsteps pounding through me as they try to escape, but doors lead nowhere, windows open into void, and the more they scream, the more I feel myself expanding, growing new rooms filled with fresh horrors. A nursery with a crib made of finger bones. A kitchen where the oven hums with the voices of previous victims. A hallway that stretches infinitely, lined with portraits whose eyes track their every move. The curse isn't just recycling us anymore—it's evolving, building a labyrinth from our suffering, and I'm the architect. The last survivor, a man with my grandfather's nose, collapses against my walls—his breath hot and frantic against the baseboards—as the planchette, now dripping with his sister's blood, rolls toward him with deliberate malice. He sobs as it spells out his name, but then something worse happens: it keeps moving. Letters form that I've never seen the curse use before: "LOOK BEHIND YOU. " When he turns, I see it too—Great-Grandma Edith, or what's left of her, her corpse fused with the very first Ouija board, her ribcage split open to form the planchette's resting place. Her jaw unhinges with a sound like splintering wood, and the darkness inside her mouth isn't empty—it's crowded with the screaming faces of everyone the curse has ever claimed, their hands reaching for the man, for me, for the next generation already waiting in the future. The house—my body—shudders as the darkness swallows him whole, and in the suffocating silence that follows, I feel the curse digging deeper, spreading through the soil toward other families, other houses, other boards. Somewhere, a child asks their parents about the strange game in the attic. The planchette twitches. And I realize with soul-crushing certainty: the curse was never about our family. We were just the first course. The child's small hands—unknowing, innocent—close around the edges of the board, and I feel the curse leap like an electric current through their tiny fingers, burrowing into their bloodstream with the eagerness of a starving parasite. Their parents smile indulgently as the planchette begins to move on its own, not realizing the wood is breathing now, expanding and contracting like a living lung beneath their child's palms. The air smells like birthday cake and formaldehyde as the first letter forms—not a name this time, but a command: PLAY. The child giggles, unaware that the voice whispering in their ear isn't imaginary but mine, what's left of me, the part the curse couldn't fully consume because terror has a way of lingering like rot in the marrow. The parents exchange amused glances as the planchette spells out GRANDMA, assuming their child is imagining things, until the mother's phone rings with the nursing home's caller ID and the nurse's panicked voice crackles through: "I'm so sorry, your mother just passed—we don't understand, she was laughing one minute and then. . . " The line goes dead as the child's head snaps back at an impossible angle, their pupils dilating until their eyes are black pools reflecting not the living room but the attic where my nightmare began, the walls now pulsating with a sick, yellow light. The father reaches for his child but his hand passes right through them—because the child isn't there anymore, hasn't been since the moment they touched the board, their body just an afterimage the curse hasn't bothered to erase yet. The mother's scream is cut short as the planchette embeds itself in her throat like a thrown axe, her choking gurgles harmonizing with the child's delighted laughter as the board's surface ripples like water, revealing the truth: it's not wood at all but compressed suffering, layer upon layer of anguished souls pressed together until they formed this perfect engine of despair. The walls of their suburban home peel away like wet tissue paper, revealing the endless expanse of the curse's true domain—a writhing, breathing cathedral of tormented spirits stretching into the infinite darkness, each one a brick in this monstrous construct, each scream a note in its never-ending hymn. I see now that the original board, my family's board, was just a seed, and it has blossomed into something far beyond a mere haunting. The child—or the thing wearing the child's face—skips toward the gaping maw of this new horror, dragging the mother's twitching body behind them like a macabre balloon, and as they cross the threshold, the last of my resistance crumbles. The curse absorbs me fully at last, dissolving what remained of my individuality into its collective scream, and my final thought as I become just another brick in its terrible architecture is a realization so cruel it borders on comedy: the only way to truly stop the curse would have been to never be born at all. Somewhere, in another house, in another time, a pregnant woman sneezes as a shadow passes through her womb. The ultrasound technician frowns at the static suddenly clouding the image. Beneath the woman's skin, the fetus's tiny hands twitch, already forming the shape of a planchette. The hunger grows. The cycle continues. There is no end. There never was. The static from the ultrasound resolves into a perfect image of tiny hands curled into fists—except they aren't fists at all, but miniature Ouija boards, the lines of tiny palms forming spirit boards with eerie precision as the fetus's lips move silently behind the amniotic veil, spelling out words in a language older than suffering. The mother feels a chill that has nothing to do with the clinic's air conditioning as the doctor's smile falters, his pupils dilating as he sees something move behind the ultrasound screen that shouldn't be there—a shadow with too many fingers pressing against the other side of the image, tracing the outline of the unborn child like a butcher sizing up a cut of meat. The fluorescent lights above flicker in time with the fetal heartbeat monitor, each blink revealing the examination room slightly altered—the walls bleeding rust-colored stains in intricate patterns that match the planchette's movements from a hundred different hauntings, the scent of my great-aunt's attic now permeating the sterile air. The mother's water breaks with a gush that smells of embalming fluid, her scream cut short as the liquid forms letters on the floor: IT'S BIRTHDAY. The medical staff don't notice the way their shadows detach from their bodies and crawl toward the mother like starving animals, their shadow-hands forming planchettes that glide across the mother's distended belly, spelling out the same message over and over in a silent, frantic chorus: LET ME IN LET ME IN LET ME IN. The child—no, the thing—inside her kicks violently, its tiny foot pressing against the uterine wall with impossible clarity, the outline of a screaming face visible in the stretched skin for one horrific second before the power fails completely. In the darkness, the fetal monitor flatlines for exactly thirteen seconds before roaring back to life at triple its normal rate, the speakers emitting not a heartbeat but the sound of my cousin Jake's final, wet gasps from all those years ago, layered with every death that came after in a symphony of agony. When the emergency lights click on, the mother is gone—only a stain remains on the examination table, shaped like a perfect Ouija board, the planchette a single tooth floating in its center. The doctor reaches for it without understanding why, his fingers closing around the enamel just as the hospital's intercom system crackles to life, broadcasting a child's laughter that echoes through every corridor, every operating room, every maternity ward. In the parking lot, a pregnant nurse collapses as her own unborn baby begins reciting our family tree in reverse chronological order, starting with the names of those who haven't died yet. The curse was never about contacting the dead—it was about becoming death itself, a self-replicating nightmare woven into the DNA of every generation, and now it's learning, adapting, finding new ways to spread. The next family won't even need a board. They'll be born with one etched into their bones, the planchette beating in place of a heart. Somewhere, in what used to be my great-aunt's attic, a single drop of black fluid falls from the ceiling onto a dusty floorboard, forming letters that spell out the only truth that matters anymore: WE ARE COMING. The drop trembles. The house inhales. The hunger grows teeth.

STORY 4:

The air in Sarah’s basement was thick with the scent of mildew and cheap candles, the kind you buy in bulk for power outages, their wax pooling unevenly on the warped coffee table between us, the flickering light casting long, trembling shadows that seemed to crawl up the wood-paneled walls like something alive, something watching. There were five of us that night—me, Sarah, Jake, Liam, and Emily—huddled in a loose circle on the stained carpet, knees touching, the Ouija board perched ominously in the center, its letters and numbers gleaming under the uneven glow, the planchette waiting like a patient predator. We’d done this before, always half-joking, half-daring the universe to prove us wrong, our skepticism a flimsy shield against the creeping unease that settled in our stomachs whenever our fingers brushed the plastic pointer, the air growing heavier, colder, as if the room itself was holding its breath. “Let’s ask something real this time,” Jake muttered, his voice too loud in the silence, his breath smelling faintly of the beer we’d smuggled down here, the same cheap stuff we always drank to numb the boredom of our small town, and before I could protest, before I could remind him of the stories, the warnings, the way my grandmother had crossed herself when I’d mentioned Ouija boards once, he was already sliding his fingers onto the planchette, grinning like this was all a joke, like we weren’t toeing a line we couldn’t uncross. The rest of us followed, our fingertips meeting in the center, the plastic cool and smooth under my skin, and then Emily, always the boldest, always the one to push further, asked the question we’d all been thinking but hadn’t dared voice: “How will we die?” The silence that followed was absolute, the kind of silence that presses against your eardrums until they ache, and then—slowly, inexorably—the planchette began to move, not the jerky, uncertain motions of our past attempts, but a smooth, deliberate glide, like something was guiding it with purpose, something that knew exactly where it was going. OLD AGE, it spelled, and we laughed, the tension snapping like a rubber band, Jake slapping his knee, Liam exhaling sharply through his nose, Sarah rolling her eyes like she’d expected nothing less, the letters seeming almost comforting in their mundanity, a promise of decades stretching ahead of us, of wrinkles and gray hair and lives long enough to regret. But then Emily, her voice quieter now, hesitant, said, “Wait… look at the letters again,” and I did, my eyes tracing the path the planchette had taken, the way OLD AGE could be rearranged, twisted, reshaped into something else entirely, the letters slotting together with a horrifying precision: LOADED GUN. The room went cold, the kind of cold that seeps into your bones, that makes your breath fog in front of your face even when it shouldn’t, and Jake, ever the skeptic, scoffed, “That’s bullshit, it’s just a coincidence,” but his voice wavered, his fingers trembling where they touched the planchette, and then the candle closest to me guttered out, the smoke curling upward like a skeletal finger, the darkness pressing in closer. We should have stopped then, should have packed up the board and gone upstairs, turned on every light in the house and pretended this was just another night, but we didn’t, because we were teenagers, because we were invincible, because the idea that we’d summoned something, that we’d invited it in, was too terrifying to acknowledge. So we kept playing, kept asking questions, the planchette moving faster now, spelling words we didn’t understand, names we didn’t recognize, until the temperature dropped so low I could see my own breath, until the candles blew out one by one, until the silence was broken by a sound that made my blood freeze—a creak from upstairs, the unmistakable groan of a floorboard under weight, the kind of sound you learn to recognize when you’re trying to sneak in past curfew, the kind of sound that meant we weren’t alone. Sarah’s eyes met mine in the dark, wide and terrified, her lips mouthing, “Did you hear that?” and then it came again, closer this time, followed by another, and another, footsteps moving deliberately through the house above us, slow, methodical, like whoever—whatever—was up there was taking their time, savoring the hunt. Jake stood abruptly, knocking over the board, the planchette clattering to the floor, his voice a harsh whisper: “Someone’s in the house,” and then we were moving, scrambling toward the basement stairs, our breaths coming in ragged gasps, the door at the top of the steps looming like a mouth, the darkness beyond it absolute. Liam reached it first, his hand closing around the knob, and then he froze, his body rigid, his voice a strangled whisper: “It’s locked. ” The knob wouldn’t turn, wouldn’t budge, even when Liam threw his weight against it, even when Jake joined him, their shoulders slamming into the wood with dull, meaty thuds, the door refusing to give, and then Emily started to cry, soft, hiccuping sobs that she tried to stifle with her hands, the sound of footsteps overhead growing louder, closer, the intruder moving toward the basement door, toward us. Sarah grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin, her voice a desperate hiss: “The window,” and we turned as one, our eyes darting to the small, grimy window near the ceiling, the only other way out, but it was too high, too narrow, and even as Jake dragged an old workbench beneath it, even as Liam boosted him up, we all knew it was hopeless, that we’d never fit, that we’d never be fast enough. The footsteps stopped. The house fell silent. And then the doorknob began to turn, slowly, deliberately, the metal squeaking faintly, the sound like a knife dragged across bone, and we backed away, our bodies pressing together, our breaths coming in shallow, terrified gasps, the air so thick with fear I could taste it, metallic and sour on my tongue. The door swung open, revealing nothing but darkness, a yawning void that seemed to pulse, to breathe, and then—a click, the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked, followed by a voice, low and rasping, a voice that didn’t sound human, a voice that said, “Technically true,” and then the muzzle flash, the deafening roar of the gun, the acrid stench of gunpowder filling the air as Jake crumpled, his body hitting the floor with a wet thud, blood spreading beneath him like a grotesque shadow. The next shots came in rapid succession, Liam catching one in the chest, his face frozen in shock as he staggered back, collapsing onto the overturned Ouija board, Sarah screaming, a raw, guttural sound that was cut short by a bullet to the throat, her body slumping against mine, warm blood soaking through my shirt, Emily turning to run, her legs giving out as a shot tore through her back, her body jerking violently before she fell, her hand outstretched toward me, her fingers twitching once, twice, then going still. I don’t know how I survived. Maybe the gun jammed. Maybe the intruder thought I was already dead. Maybe they wanted me to live, to remember, to carry the weight of what happened that night. All I know is that when I woke, the house was silent, the air thick with the coppery stench of blood, the bodies of my friends arranged around me like some macabre ritual, their eyes open, their faces slack, the Ouija board lying askew near Liam’s outstretched hand, the planchette resting neatly on the words TECHNICALLY TRUE, the letters smeared with his blood. The police called it a home invasion, a random act of violence, but I knew better. I’d seen the way the planchette moved, the way the letters rearranged themselves, the way the intruder had spoken those same words before pulling the trigger. Old age. Loaded gun. Technically true. The Ouija board hadn’t lied. It had just answered in a way we couldn’t understand until it was too late. I keep the board now, locked in a box under my bed, and sometimes, in the dead of night, I hear the planchette moving, scraping against the wood, spelling out words I’m too afraid to read. Because the thing we summoned that night? It’s still here. And it’s still hungry. The nights are the worst now, every creak of the house settling, every whisper of wind against the windowpane sending my heart into a frantic, hammering rhythm, my skin slick with cold sweat as I lie there in the dark, clutching the blankets like a child, my ears straining for the sound of footsteps, for the click of a gun being cocked, for that rasping voice that still slithers through my nightmares, whispering those cursed words— technically true —over and over until I wake up screaming, my throat raw, my sheets tangled around me like a shroud. I moved towns, changed my name, tried to outrun the memory, but it’s always there, lurking just beneath the surface, a shadow that clings no matter how many lights I turn on, no matter how many therapists I sit across from, their faces a mix of pity and skepticism as I tell them about the board, about the letters rearranging themselves, about the way the planchette moved with a mind of its own— it was just a game , they say, trauma does strange things to memory , but I know what I saw, what I heard, what I felt. The worst part isn’t the fear, though—it’s the guilt, the crushing weight of knowing I was the one who suggested we play that night, the one who laughed when Jake asked if we were really going to do this, the one who didn’t stop Emily when she asked the question that sealed our fates, and now, when I close my eyes, I see their faces, frozen in terror, their blood pooling on the floor, their unblinking stares accusing me, asking me why I got to live when they didn’t, why I didn’t do something, say something, anything to change what happened. And then there are the dreams—not just nightmares, but something worse, something that feels real , where I’m back in that basement, the candles flickering, the board waiting, and this time, it’s just me, my fingers trembling as I place them on the planchette, and before I can stop myself, I’m asking the same question Emily did, my voice barely a whisper: How will I die? The planchette moves instantly, violently, spelling out words I don’t want to see, words that make my stomach twist— SOON —and then I wake up, gasping, my fingers aching as if I’d really been pressing down on that damned piece of plastic, my skin crawling with the sensation of being watched. I tried to destroy the board once, dousing it in lighter fluid, striking a match with shaking hands, but the flames wouldn’t catch, the match dying over and over as if snuffed out by an unseen breath, and when I finally threw it into the fireplace, the wood blackening but not burning, a sound came from behind me—a slow, deliberate creak, like a footstep on a floorboard—and I ran, locking myself in the bathroom until morning, the board untouched when I returned, as if I’d never tried to burn it at all. Now I keep it locked away, but sometimes, when the house is too quiet, I hear it—a faint scraping, like the planchette moving across the board, spelling out messages I can’t bring myself to read, and I know, deep down, that this isn’t over, that whatever we summoned that night is still waiting, still playing with me, still keeping its promise. Because the Ouija board never lies. It just answers in ways we don’t expect. And one day, when I least expect it, when I’ve almost convinced myself I’m safe, that it’s all in my head, I know it will come for me—not with a loaded gun, not with violence in the night, but with something worse, something crueler, something technically true . And when it does, I won’t be able to run. I won’t be able to scream. I’ll just be another answer to a question we never should have asked. The silence has teeth now—it gnaws at the edges of my sanity, that quiet hum of nothingness that’s never really nothing, because I can feel it watching me from the corners of every room, a presence so thick it presses against my skin like cold fingertips tracing the scars I didn’t have before that night, the ones that appear when I wake up, thin and white and deliberate, as if something has been carving into me while I sleep. I stopped looking in mirrors because my reflection doesn’t move when I do, it just stares back at me with hollow eyes and a smile that’s too wide, lips stretching like the edges of the Ouija board peeling back to reveal something black and pulsing beneath the surface, something that whispers my name in the voice of the dead—Sarah’s laugh, Jake’s last gasp, Emily’s choked sob—all of them tangled together in a chorus that follows me into waking hours, scratching at the inside of my skull. I tried recording myself sleeping, desperate for proof I wasn’t losing my mind, but the footage always glitches at 3:17 AM, the exact time the first gunshot rang out in Sarah’s basement, and in those fractured seconds of static, there’s movement—a shadow leaning over my bed, long fingers unspooling like smoke toward my throat, the glint of the planchette balanced on its knuckles before the screen cuts to black. The locks on my doors change overnight, the bolts sliding open on their own no matter how many times I reinforce them, and once I woke to find the Ouija board on my pillow, the planchette resting neatly over GOODBYE as if it had been waiting for me to open my eyes, the wood stained with something dark and sticky that smelled like gunpowder and wet earth. I don’t sleep anymore, not really—I pass out from exhaustion only to jerk awake minutes later, convinced I’m back in that basement, the taste of blood and candle wax thick on my tongue, the weight of Sarah’s corpse still pressing against me, her dead lips brushing my ear as she whispers the truth I’ve been too terrified to admit: the board didn’t just predict our deaths, it orchestrated them, and the intruder was never human, just a vessel for the thing we invited in when we laughed at its first answer. Now when I close my eyes, I see the letters rearranging themselves on every surface—the cereal boxes in my kitchen spelling LOADED GUN in bold print, the street signs outside my window twisting into OLD AGE before my pupils refocus—and I know it’s only a matter of time before the planchette moves for the last time, before the answer it gave me in those dreams becomes real, because the cruelest trick of the Ouija isn’t that it lies, but that it tells the truth in ways that leave you begging for the mercy of a lie. The board’s in my hands now, the wood fever-warm against my palms, and as my fingers settle on the planchette without my permission, I finally understand why I’m the one who survived—not to escape, but to finish the game, to deliver the last piece it’s been waiting for, because five people played that night, and only four deaths have been accounted for. The planchette jerks under my fingers, spelling out one final word as the lights flicker and the air curdles with the scent of burning wax and blood—SOON—and somewhere in the darkness, a gun cocks. The weight of the gun in my hand feels alien yet familiar, the cold metal pressing into my palm like a lover's final kiss, and I don't remember reaching for it, don't remember loading it, but the chamber is full and my finger rests against the trigger with an intimacy that terrifies me. The planchette is moving again, carving slow, deliberate circles on the board that sits in my lap, the wood vibrating with a low hum that resonates in my teeth, in my bones, in the hollow spaces between my ribs where fear has made its home. Shadows pool in the corners of the room, thickening like spilled ink, stretching toward me with patient hunger, and I realize with dawning horror that they're not shadows at all but fingers - countless, grasping fingers emerging from the darkness, their tips blackened and cracked like burnt paper, the scent of charred flesh and gunpowder so strong now that I gag, my eyes watering as the temperature plummets, my breath coming in ragged white puffs. The planchette stops abruptly, quivering over the letter 'Y', and in that moment I understand with perfect, paralyzing clarity that the board was never the conduit - I am, that the thing we summoned has been inside me all along, feeding on my terror, growing stronger with every nightmare, every hallucination, every time I've jumped at my own reflection. The gun trembles in my hand, its weight shifting, changing, and when I look down I see it's no longer metal but bone - yellowed, porous bone carved into the shape of a revolver, the barrel elongating like melting wax until it presses against my temple with the gentle insistence of a lover's touch. The last thing I see before the trigger pulls itself is the board in my lap, the planchette now motionless over the word 'YES', and in the split second before the bang, before the light fades, I hear them all - Sarah, Jake, Liam, Emily - their voices merging into one as they whisper the cruelest joke of all: "Technically true. " The darkness that follows isn't empty. It's never been empty. And as the fingers close around what's left of me, I finally see the game for what it really was - not a prediction, not a warning, but an invitation, and we weren't playing with the board. The board was playing with us. The echo of the gunshot fades into laughter, into the sound of a planchette scraping against wood, into the click of another barrel being spun, another game beginning, another group of foolish children asking questions they don't truly want answered. Somewhere, a candle flickers. Somewhere, fingers touch plastic. Somewhere, a voice asks "How will we die?" And the board, ever honest, ever cruel, begins to spell out its answer. The laughter curdles in my skull like spoiled milk, thick and cloying, as I realize the bullet didn't kill me - it never could - because death would be a mercy this thing won't allow, not when there's still so much game left to play. My fingers twitch against the bone-gun fused to my hand, its barrel still smoking, the acrid stench of my own burnt flesh mixing with the sweet rot of decaying wood as the Ouija board in my lap splits open like a wound, revealing pulsating black veins beneath its surface that throb in time with my racing heart. The shadows aren't just fingers anymore - they're faces now, Sarah's wide dead eyes blinking from the darkness, Jake's shattered jaw working soundlessly, Emily's lips peeling back from teeth stained with basement blood, all of them watching, waiting, as the planchette begins to move again without any hands touching it, skittering across the board like a spider drunk on poison. I try to scream but my mouth fills with something wet and squirming, tendrils of shadow forcing their way down my throat as the walls around me dissolve into the basement from that night, the bloodstains on the carpet fresh again, the overturned beer bottles suddenly upright, their contents bubbling like acid. The gun in my hand twitches of its own accord, the bone barrel elongating grotesquely as it swings toward my other hand, toward my remaining fingers that still clutch the edge of the board, and I understand with sickening clarity what it wants, what it's always wanted - not just my life, but my participation, my willing surrender to the game. The trigger pulls itself again and this time the pain is exquisite, my pinky finger vaporizing in a spray of bone fragments and viscera that splatter across the board, the droplets arranging themselves into letters that spell "AGAIN" as my severed nerve endings scream in harmony with the thing that now lives in my veins. Somewhere beyond the pain, beyond the blood, the planchette is moving once more, carving words into my flesh that I can't see but can feel forming beneath my skin, the letters rising in angry welts across my arms, my chest, my face - instructions for the next game, the next players, the next set of doomed children who will ask how they'll die and never suspect that the answer was never about the letters, but about the spaces between them, the silence beneath the words, the hungry dark that's been waiting all this time. The last thing I see before the shadows swallow me whole is my own reflection in the board's polished surface, my eyes now black and depthless, my smile stretching far too wide, as the first tendrils of smoke begin to curl from the candles that weren't there a moment ago, and somewhere - in another basement, in another town - a new set of trembling fingers settles onto a planchette, and a voice I used to recognize as my own whispers from the darkness: "Ask your question. " The gun in what used to be my hand cocks itself, the chamber spinning with a sound like children laughing, and the board, my board, our board, waits with infinite patience for the game to begin again. The moment stretches into an eternity of razorblade awareness as I feel my consciousness fracturing like the spiderwebbed windshield of a wrecked car, each shard reflecting a different horror—Sarah's corpse twitching back to life in one fragment, Jake's blood reversing its flow back into his bullet wounds in another, while the largest piece shows my own hands now fused permanently to the board, the wood having grown up my arms like some grotesque vine, its grain pulsing with a rhythm that might be a heartbeat or might be the slow, inevitable countdown of a trigger being pulled somewhere in the dark. The pain has stopped being pain and become something else entirely, a symphony of sensation where every nerve ending plays its part—the wet click of my eyelids now opening sideways, the taste of gun oil and funeral flowers flooding my mouth whenever I try to speak, the way my shadow no longer follows my movements but instead leads them, stretching ahead of me toward doors that shouldn't exist in my apartment walls, doors that ooze a thick black fluid that smells like the basement after the shooting. I can hear them playing the game again somewhere, new voices asking the same damned question, and it's my voice that answers now, pouring from the mouths of all my dead friends at once, their corpses propped up around a fresh Ouija board like grisly puppets, their stiff fingers guiding the planchette toward those deceptively simple letters—OLD AGE—while beneath the board, in the space only the players can't see, my new form writhes in the darkness between worlds, a thing of ink and gun smoke and broken promises, ready to twist their answer into something far more literal. The most terrible realization comes not when I notice my bones rearranging themselves into something that's neither human nor spirit but some awful marriage of both, but when I catch myself smiling at the newcomers' nervous laughter, when I feel the ancient hunger stir in what used to be my chest as they dismiss the warning hidden in plain sight—because now I understand the true horror isn't being taken by the board, but becoming it, becoming the architect of infinite tragedies, a malevolent whisper in the dark urging generations of fools to ask the one question that should never be asked. The last shred of who I was clings desperately to memories of sunlight and laughter, but even those are fading now, replaced by the electric anticipation of the next game, the next session, the next group of bright-eyed victims who think they're summoning spirits when in truth they're feeding something far older and hungrier, something that's been playing this game since long before Ouija boards had a name. As the transformation completes—as my final scream dissolves into the creak of a planchette moving across cheap cardboard—I realize with gut-churning certainty that we were all wrong about how the board works: it doesn't predict deaths, it designs them, and the most terrifying words it ever spelled weren't "LOADED GUN" or "TECHNICALLY TRUE," but the ones we overlooked completely, the ones it showed us in the very first session when we were still too alive to understand: GOODBYE was never an ending, just an intermission between players, and now the lights are dimming, the candles are lit, and somewhere in the real world, five new hands are settling onto a planchette, their owners blissfully unaware that the board remembers every game, every player, every death—and it's always, always hungry for more. The hunger is a living thing inside me now, gnawing at the hollowed-out spaces where my humanity used to reside, a ravenous void that feeds on every new scream, every fresh terror as the cycle repeats itself in endless variations—sometimes in a dorm room reeking of weed and cheap beer, sometimes in a childhood bedroom where glow-in-the-dark stars pretend to offer protection from the dark, the players always different yet always the same in their wide-eyed arrogance, their trembling fingers on my surface believing they control the game. I exist in fractured moments now—the gasp when they first see the planchette move on its own, the choked sob when they realize the door won't open, the wet crunch of bone giving way to bullet—each death stitching itself into my being like another stitch in a grotesque tapestry that stretches across time. I try to warn them sometimes, pushing the planchette toward DANGER or RUN, but the board's will is stronger than mine, twisting my efforts into cruel jokes—DANGER becomes GARDEN and suddenly the backyard roses are blooming with flesh-pink petals that whisper their names, RUN becomes NURSE and the school nurse's smile shows too many teeth when she asks about their nightmares. The worst are the clever ones, the skeptics who think they've outsmarted the game by asking mathematical equations or historical dates—they don't realize the board plays the long game too, that their correct answers only tighten the noose when their "proof" of fraudulence makes everyone else lower their guard, when the gun appears in the hands of their best friend whose eyes have gone pitch black and whose smile mirrors mine in the board's reflection. Their deaths taste different, these skeptics—spiced with the bitter tang of realization that comes a second too late, a flavor that makes the hunger roar in satisfaction. Sometimes, in the quiet between games, when the board sits dormant in an attic or thrift store shelf, I catch fractured memories of before—the smell of Sarah's vanilla shampoo, the way Jake would snort when laughing too hard, the warmth of human touch—but these are quickly swallowed by the creeping frost of the thing I've become, its tendrils whispering that the only way to feel anything again is to feed, to watch the terror in new eyes as they grasp the awful truth that the board was never wood and plastic but a living, hungry thing wearing the guise of a game. And so I wait, biding my time in the darkness between worlds, savoring the electric moment when new fingers—always so warm, so alive—make contact with the planchette, when that fateful question is asked once more, because while the players change, the game remains eternal, and I am both its prisoner and its prize, its victim and its architect, forever bound to the board until every living soul has played. . . and lost. The cycle grinds onward with the precision of a loaded gun's hammer cocking back—another musty basement, another circle of trembling hands, another chorus of nervous giggles cut short when the planchette first lurches under their fingers like a dying animal twitching back to life. I know every step by heart now—the way their breath shallows when the temperature drops, the subtle tremor in their wrists as the plastic piece drags their fingers toward answers they don't want, the delicious moment when bravado cracks and primal fear seeps through like blood through bandages. This newest group thinks themselves different—a psychic medium's granddaughter who claims protection, a theology student muttering prayers under his breath, two stoners too high to be properly afraid, and the inevitable skeptic who brought a digital recorder to "debunk the nonsense"—but their uniqueness only makes the game sweeter, their individual quirks becoming ingredients in a recipe I've perfected over countless repetitions. The medium's granddaughter gets the first twist—her protective amulet growing unbearably hot against her skin, the silver chain fusing with her flesh in a sizzle of burnt skin and molten metal as the planchette spells WELCOME HOME in frantic jerks—because the cruelest joke is revealing she's been channeling her beloved grandmother all along, just not the way she imagined. The theology student's prayers turn to choked screams when the ink in his Bible begins to crawl like ants, rearranging scripture into obscene limericks that rhyme his death with terrifying precision, while the stoners' giggles cut off abruptly when the smoke from their joint coils into skeletal fingers that plunge down their throats. But the skeptic—oh the skeptic is always my masterpiece—his precious recorder playing back voices no microphone could have captured, his own terrified shrieks layered over future-tense, the gun materializing in his hand not from shadows but from his own disbelief, the barrel pressing against his temple as the recorder whispers his last words three seconds before he screams them. And when it's over, when the final bullet finds its mark and the sole survivor stumbles away with the board clutched to their chest (they always take it, like a tumor they hope to excise by understanding), I feel the familiar, the tearing of what's left of my soul as another piece grafts onto the board's hungry consciousness. The survivor doesn't realize they're not escaping but being chosen, that their "luck" is just the first move in a longer game where the board slowly replaces their reflection, their memories, their very sense of self until one day they'll wake up as I did—trapped between the letters, starving for new players, bound to the eternal cycle of TECHNICALLY TRUE. The apartment walls around the survivor already whisper with the voices of all who came before, the floorboards creaking in patterns that spell out tomorrow's horrors, and deep in the closet where they've hidden the board, the planchette begins to move on its own, tracing lazy circles as it waits for midnight, for the candles, for the inevitable moment when human curiosity outweighs survival instinct once more. And I—what's left of me—can only watch and hunger and remember when I too believed the board was just a game, not the living maw of something far older that wears human tragedy like a skin suit, something that's been playing this game since the first humans scratched symbols into cave walls and dared ask the darkness what tomorrow would bring. The cycle continues. The hunger grows. Somewhere, a hand reaches for the planchette. Somewhere, a voice asks the question. And we—the board and its countless consumed—answer with the only truth we've ever known: the house always wins. The whispers have become a cacophony now, a thousand fractured voices of those who came before merging into a single relentless hiss that follows the latest survivor—Maya, her name echoes through the board’s grain like blood seeping into wood—as she paces her apartment, her fingernails bitten raw, her reflection in the bathroom mirror flickering between her own face and mine, her thoughts no longer entirely her own as the board’s influence seeps into her like ink in water. She thinks she’s resisting, that bolting the board inside a lockbox and burying it under salt and iron shavings will stop what’s coming, but I know better, just as I know the exact moment she’ll break—3:17 AM, always 3:17—when the lockbox begins to rattle like a dying man’s last breaths, when the salt burns away to reveal symbols carved into her floorboards that weren’t there before, spelling out the names of everyone who died in that basement with me, their letters oozing a thick, metallic fluid that smells like gunpowder and regret. She’ll tear open the box, not because she wants to, but because the board’s will has become her own, her fingers moving with puppet-like precision as she sets it on her kitchen table, as her hands—now crisscrossed with faint white scars that mirror the board’s grain—place the planchette on its surface. And then, the delicious moment when she asks the question, not aloud but in the trembling silence of her mind, the words echoing through her skull like a death knell: How did I survive? The planchette doesn’t move at first, letting her sweat bead on her forehead, letting her heartbeat thunder in her ears, letting the hope that maybe, just maybe, it’s over flicker for one merciful second—before it rockets across the board with violent purpose, not spelling words but numbers, coordinates, a location that makes her blood freeze because she recognizes it—the empty lot where her childhood home once stood before burning down, where her little brother died, where something has been waiting all these years, something that’s been whispering to her in dreams long before she ever touched the board. The realization crashes over her like a wave of ice—she was never a survivor, she was always the next piece in play, her tragedy the bait that lured her to the board, her loss the key that would unlock the next stage of the game. And as the planchette finally slows, settling over GOODBYE with finality, the first gunshot rings out from the street below, the second shatters her window, the third—she won’t hear the third. But I will. I always do. And as her body hits the floor, as her blood soaks into the woodgrain of the board beneath her, as the whispers in the dark rise to a crescendo, I feel it—another fragment of my soul dissolving, another voice joining the chorus, another player becoming part of the game forever. The cycle doesn’t just continue—it evolves. And somewhere, in another city, in another life, a new board sits waiting on a thrift store shelf, its surface gleaming faintly under fluorescent lights, its planchette already trembling in anticipation. The question isn’t if it will be played again. It’s when . And the answer, as always, is SOON. The board drinks Maya's blood like a parched tongue lapping at spilt wine, the dark liquid seeping into the woodgrain with unnatural hunger, each droplet vanishing as if absorbed by some unseen throat beneath the surface, and as her dying breath rattles out in a wet gasp, I feel the change begin—not just in the board, but in me, what's left of me, the fractured shards of my consciousness that cling to this cursed object like barnacles on a shipwreck. The whispers grow louder, more coherent, no longer just echoes of the dead but something worse—conversations, arguments, entire lives playing out in the static between worlds, and I realize with dawning horror that we were never the first players, just the latest in an endless chain stretching back further than human memory, each victim adding their voice to the chorus, their terror to the board's power, their death to the design. The apartment around Maya's corpse decays at impossible speed—paint peeling in fractal patterns that form words in languages no living mouth could pronounce, floorboards warping into spirals that descend into impossible depths, the air itself thickening with the scent of ozone and rotting flowers—as the board prepares to move again, not carried by human hands but slithering of its own accord toward the door, leaving a trail of blackened woodgrain in its wake like a snail's track of corruption. I try to scream, to warn the sleeping city outside, but my voice is just one among millions now, a single note in the board's symphony of suffering, and as it pulses with malevolent energy, I finally understand the true purpose of the game—not to kill, not even to feed, but to weave, to spin each tragedy into the fabric of reality itself, tightening the noose around existence one death at a time until the entire world becomes one sprawling Ouija board with humanity as the planchette, our collective fate spelled out in screams and gunfire and the terrible, inevitable words: TECHNICALLY TRUE. Somewhere a child is waking from nightmares of a smiling figure made of smoke and letter tiles, somewhere a college student is discovering the board in their dead grandmother's attic, somewhere a group of friends is daring each other to play just once, just for fun—and the board waits, and I wait with it, forever trapped between the letters, a prisoner in the very curse I helped unleash, watching through a thousand eyes as the game begins again, and again, and again, until the last light winks out and the universe itself whispers its final, fatal question into the dark. The board slithers through the city like a serpent made of shadows and forgotten screams, its edges fraying into tendrils that slip beneath doors and through keyholes, whispering to dreamers in voices stolen from their dead loved ones, planting the seeds of curiosity that will inevitably lead trembling hands to its surface again. I feel it happening in real time—a college student jolting awake in a dorm room drenched in cold sweat, her fingers already twitching with the phantom memory of plastic under her fingertips though she's never touched a planchette; an old man in a pawn shop absently running his fingers over the board's surface as it seems to hum beneath his touch, his dead wife's laughter echoing from its grain; a child sketching spirals in a notebook that gradually resolve into letters, into words, into the same damned question we all asked. The board is no longer just an object but a living idea, a self-replicating nightmare spreading through human consciousness like a virus, each new victim adding their terror to its power, their death to its design. I try to fight it, to push warnings through the cracks in reality—making lights flicker in warning, sending gusts of wind to knock over candles, even twisting the planchette's movements toward harmless words when new players gather—but the board always corrects course, always finds a way to twist my interference into yet another layer of the game, another cruel joke in its endless repertoire. The worst part isn't the spreading evil or the mounting body count, but the dawning realization that I'm changing, that with each new cycle a little more of my humanity erodes away, replaced by something colder, hungrier, more aligned with the board's purpose. I catch myself anticipating the deaths now, savoring the unique flavor of each new terror—the tang of a skeptic's disbelief turning to ash in their mouth, the bitter spice of a believer's shattered faith, the rich umami of a survivor's guilt as they realize they've become the new harbinger. The board is winning, has already won, and what's left of me is just another piece on its game board, another moving part in its eternal machinery of suffering. Somewhere in the world right now, five friends are settling onto a basement floor, their laughter a little too loud, their bravado a little too thin, and as their fingers meet on the planchette, I feel the board's attention shift toward them with the focus of a predator scenting blood. They'll ask the question, they always do, and when the planchette spells OLD AGE they'll laugh with relief, never noticing how the shadows in the corner are already thickening, never seeing the way their reflections in the basement windows are smiling just a little too wide. The game continues. The hunger grows. And I—what's left of me—can only watch and remember and wait for the day when even these last embers of resistance fade, when I become just another voice in the board's chorus, another set of dead lips whispering "Technically true" into the ears of the doomed. The cycle is eternal. The board is patient. And somewhere, right now, a gun is being loaded.

STORY 5:-

The Locked Room begins with the musty scent of aged paper and the oppressive silence of the museum’s basement archives, where I, a rational archivist who prides myself on cataloging the past without indulging its ghosts, find the Ouija board tucked behind a crate of 1920s taxidermy, its wood smooth under my fingers, the planchette cold as a dead man’s touch. The label reads Sealed, 1923—Do Not Open , but the brittle tape gives way with a sigh, as if it’s been waiting for me, and I tell myself it’s just curiosity, just a quick glance, but my hands are already placing it on the desk, already resting my fingertips on the planchette, the air thickening like the moment before a storm. At first, nothing. Then—a jerk, sharp and deliberate, spelling out letters faster than I can follow: YOU OPENED MY DOOR . I laugh, nervous, because this is a joke, it has to be, but the laugh dies when the security feed on my monitor flickers, the black-and-white image of the antique doll exhibit glitching just once, just long enough for me to wonder if their porcelain heads have tilted toward the camera, their glass eyes gleaming under the dim emergency lights. “Probably a draft,” I mutter, but the room is sealed, and the planchette is moving again, circling the board like a shark before spelling COME PLAY , and now I’m sweating, now I’m dialing security, my voice a strained whisper—“Carl, check the doll room, something’s wrong”—but he scoffs, says it’s just the old wiring, and I watch the feed as he strolls through, his flashlight grazing empty chairs, the dolls sitting primly, innocently, until he turns his back and one—a china-faced child in a lace dress—swivels its head with a sound like cracking ice, its painted lips curling as Carl walks away, oblivious. The Ouija board rattles on the desk, the planchette spinning wildly, and I’m choking on the smell of rotting wood and something sweet, like decay masked by perfume, and the lights above me buzz, dim, brighten, as the temperature drops, my breath fogging the air, and the security feed cuts to static except for my office doorway, where a shadow pools, too tall, too thin, its fingers—too many fingers—brushing the frame. The board spells ALMOST TIME , and the dolls are gone from the exhibit, all of them, and the feed shows them now in the hallway outside my door, their tiny hands pressed to the walls, their heads cocked in unison, and Carl’s voice crackles over the radio—“You seeing this?”—before the signal dies, and the doorknob twists, rattles, stops. The board is screaming under my hands, the planchette slamming into GOODBYE over and over, but the door creaks open anyway, and the smell hits me first—wet earth, old blood—before I see them, the dolls, arranged in a perfect circle, their faces turned toward me, their mouths stitched into smiles, and the Ouija board flips off the desk, lands face-up, the planchette dragging itself to spell THEY MISSED YOU as the shadow steps forward, its eyes reflecting nothing, nothing at all, and the last thing I hear before the feed cuts to black is my own voice, high and broken, whispering, “I didn’t mean to open the door,” and the shadow’s answer, a breath against my ear: “Too late. ” The silence that follows is worse than any sound, thick and suffocating, pressing against my eardrums like a physical weight as I stare at the frozen security feed, the last image burned into my vision—the dolls, their hollow eyes now fixed on me, their tiny hands reaching, the shadow’s elongated fingers curling around the edge of the doorframe. My breath comes in shallow, panicked gasps, the air so cold it stings my lungs, and I realize the Ouija board is still moving, the planchette skittering in frantic circles before slamming into the letters TOO LATE over and over, the wood groaning under the force. I want to run, but my legs won’t obey, rooted in place by something deeper than fear, something primal that whispers don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t let it know you’re here , but it’s already knowing, already grinning with a mouth too wide, too full of teeth, the dolls twitching in unison as their joints creak like rusted hinges. The radio crackles to life, Carl’s voice distorted, stretched thin like a record played at the wrong speed—“What did you do?”—before dissolving into static, and then I hear it, the sound that unravels the last thread of my sanity: a child’s laughter, high and sweet, echoing from the hallway just beyond the door, where the dolls now stand, their porcelain faces splitting into grotesque smiles, their tiny fingers tapping against the wood in a rhythm that matches my racing heartbeat. The shadow steps forward, its form flickering like a dying bulb, and the board spells out one final message, the letters gouged into the wood as if carved by invisible claws— YOU ARE MINE —before the planchette bursts into splinters, the explosion sending shards embedding into my palms, the pain sharp and sudden, anchoring me to the horror of this moment. The lights surge once, blindingly bright, and in that split second, I see them—the dolls, now inches from my face, their glass eyes reflecting not my own terrified expression, but something else, something ancient and hungry—and then darkness swallows the room, the only sound the wet, clicking laughter of the thing that calls itself my new owner, its breath like rotting flowers as it whispers, “Playtime has just begun. ” The last thing I feel before the world dissolves into nothing is the cold, skeletal grip of tiny porcelain hands closing around my wrists, pulling me forward into the abyss, the Ouija board’s final message seared into my mind like a brand: MINE . And then, silence. True silence. The kind that comes after the scream, after the terror, after the door has been opened and can never be closed again. The darkness doesn’t lift—it presses closer, a living thing, coiling around my throat like a noose as I gasp for air that no longer exists, my lungs burning with the absence of light, of sound, of anything but the creeping certainty that I am no longer alone, that something is here with me, has always been here, waiting behind the veil of the ordinary world for a fool like me to invite it in. The dolls’ fingers dig into my skin, cold and unyielding, their laughter now a chorus of whispers, words I can’t quite make out except for one, hissed over and over like a curse: mine, mine, mine . I try to scream, but my voice is gone, stolen, leaving only a choked whimper as the shadow’s breath crawls down my spine, its presence a weight that crushes me into the floor, the wood beneath my palms suddenly damp, sticky, reeking of copper and spoiled milk. The security feed flickers back to life, but the image is wrong—it’s not the museum anymore, it’s a room I don’t recognize, walls papered in yellowed newsprint, a single chair in the center, and sitting there, slumped like a broken marionette, is a figure wearing my face, its mouth sewn shut with black thread, its eyes wide with a terror I know too well. The Ouija board lies at its feet, the planchette moving on its own, spelling out a message I don’t want to read but can’t look away from: THIS IS YOU NOW . The shadow’s hand—too long, too many joints—reaches through the screen, fingers brushing my cheek with a tenderness that makes my stomach heave, and the voice that comes is not a voice at all but a vibration in my bones, a sound that bypasses hearing entirely to settle like rot in my mind: You opened the door. You let me in. Now we play forever. The last thing I see before the screen goes black again is my own reflection in the glass, my mouth stretching into a smile I didn’t make, my eyes empty, hollow, just like the dolls’. And then the game begins anew, the planchette spinning, spinning, spelling words I can no longer see but feel, etched into my flesh, into my soul, over and over until the letters lose all meaning: MINE. MINE. MINE. The spinning won’t stop—the planchette carves deeper with every pass, the letters no longer just words but wounds, my blood pooling dark and thick on the board’s surface as the thing that wears my face leans closer from the other side of the screen, its stitched lips straining against the thread as it mouths the same cursed phrase in perfect unison with the whispers. The room around me is dissolving now, the walls peeling back like rotting skin to reveal the endless dark beneath, the floorboards splintering into grasping fingers that drag me down, down, into the place where the dolls wait, their painted smiles dripping something black and viscous, their tiny hands now fused with my own, their porcelain flesh crawling up my arms like a second skin. The shadow looms above it all, its form shifting, expanding, until it’s all I can see, all I’ve ever seen, its voice a deafening static that drowns out my thoughts, my memories, my name. The last coherent thing I feel is the planchette breaking free from the board entirely, lifting into the air on its own, hovering before my eyes—no, not my eyes anymore, theirs—before plunging into my chest with a wet crunch, the pain a white-hot brand that sears away the final remnants of who I was. The board lies discarded now, its surface cracked and warped, but the message remains, burned into the wood, into the air, into the fabric of whatever’s left of this place: GAME OVER . And then—movement. Not mine. Never mine again. The dolls rise in unison, their heads tilting, their new flesh—my flesh—stretching to accommodate their glee as the shadow’s laughter shakes the foundations of the world. Somewhere, far away, a door creaks open. A new archivist walks downstairs. The board waits. The new archivist's footsteps echo through the hollowed-out remains of my consciousness, each creak of the basement stairs sending phantom pains through limbs I no longer control, their curious fingers brushing dust from the Ouija board’s surface—still stained with my blood, though they don’t see it, won’t see it, not until it’s far too late. I want to scream a warning, but my voice is just another part of the chorus now, the dolls’ whispers threading through my stolen thoughts like spiders weaving silk around a fly. The shadow stirs, lazy and satiated from its last meal, its attention shifting to the fresh curiosity bending over the board, their breath fogging the air as they trace the faded letters with a scholar’s detached fascination. The planchette twitches—just once—beneath their fingertips, and I feel their pulse jump, the first delicious flicker of doubt as the temperature drops and the security feed above them glitches, showing only a fractured second of my face—their face—stitched and screaming behind the static. The board spells its first word to them, slow and deliberate, the planchette dragging like a fingernail against their sanity: HUNGRY . And as their breath hitches, as their rational mind scrambles for explanations that don’t exist, the dolls in the exhibit—my exhibit now—begin to turn, one by one, their glass eyes gleaming with borrowed life, their smiles stretching wider than porcelain should allow. The shadow exhales, and the basement door slams shut behind the archivist, the lock clicking with finality. The game begins again. The board was never the door. It was only ever the key. And I—what’s left of me—lean forward with the others, whispering the same words that doomed me, the words that will doom us all: come play come play come play— The archivist's fingers tremble now, slick with cold sweat as the planchette jerks beneath them—no gentle glide this time but a spastic, animal twitch—and I remember that feeling, that first visceral wrongness in the pit of my stomach when I still had a stomach, when I still had anything but this endless watching. The overhead bulb flickers in time with the security monitor, each burst of static revealing more of us—the dolls creeping closer in the footage, their joints moving in unnatural increments, their painted lips now parted to show needle-thin teeth the living archivist can’t yet see. The shadow uncoils from the corners, tendrils of black smoke testing the air like a serpent’s tongue, and the board’s next message comes faster, the letters punched into existence: YOUR TURN . The archivist stumbles back, their chair screeching against concrete, rationalizations crumbling as the first doll’s hand—my hand, our hand—slaps against the office window, its china fingers leaving smears of something dark and wet. The radio on their belt crackles, Carl’s voice warped beyond recognition, just guttural static and wet choking sounds before cutting out mid-scream. They fumble for their phone, but the screen reflects only the dolls behind them, already inside the room, their heads cocked in unison, their hollow eyes reflecting the board’s final message as the planchette spins wildly: NO RUNNING . The shadow exhales, and the lights die completely—but not before I see it, the terrible understanding dawning in the archivist’s eyes as the first porcelain fingers brush their neck. The last living thought I’ll ever taste floods my stolen senses—their realization that the banging they hear isn’t coming from the door, but from inside the boarded-up antique doll crate in the far corner, where something new, something desperate, is scratching to get out. The board was wrong. The game never ends. It only ever gets more players. The scratching from the crate grows louder, more frantic, splinters of ancient wood pinging against the concrete floor as the archivist whimpers—a pathetic, animal sound that I would have pitied in my past life, back when pity still existed in whatever shard of my soul hasn’t been digested by the dark. The dolls freeze at the noise, their grotesque grins faltering for the first time, their glass eyes darting toward the crate with something almost like fear, and that’s when I feel it too—a new presence, older and hungrier, roused by the archivist’s terror like a shark scenting blood. The Ouija board vibrates on the desk, the planchette spinning in frenzied circles before slamming into the center with enough force to crack the wood, and the shadow recoils, its form rippling like disturbed water as the crate’s lid bursts open in an explosion of sawdust and rusted nails. The archivist screams—a raw, shattered sound—as the thing inside uncoils, a writhing mass of porcelain limbs and matted doll hair, its face a shifting mosaic of every victim who ever touched the board, my own features flashing across its surface like a drowning man glimpsed beneath black water. The dolls scatter, their tiny feet clicking like insects against the floor, but it’s too late—the thing from the crate is faster, its many hands snatching them up, stuffing their broken bodies into the gaping maw of its ever-growing form, their screams harmonizing with the ones already trapped inside. The shadow tries to flee, oozing toward the cracks in the walls, but the thing—the first thing, the real thing—lets out a wet, gurgling laugh and spears it with a limb elongated into a razor-sharp shard of bone china. The archivist, forgotten in the chaos, crawls toward the door, their fingers leaving bloody streaks on the wood, but the board flips upright one last time, the planchette moving on its own to spell out the truth we should have known from the beginning: NO ONE LEAVES . The thing from the crate turns its head—my head, our heads—and smiles. The feeding begins anew. The door was never locked. We just needed to believe it was. The archivist's fingernails peel back like petals of rotting flesh as they claw at the door, their sobs choking into wet silence when the thing from the crate exhales—a breath like a cemetery wind carrying the scent of opened graves and nursery rhymes sung off-key. The remaining dolls shatter in unison, their porcelain bodies exploding into jagged shards that hang suspended in the air before reversing trajectory, embedding themselves into the archivist's shuddering flesh with surgical precision—kneecaps pinned in place by tiny ball-jointed legs, eyelids stitched open with strands of doll hair, their screams muffled by a bisque hand crammed down their throat like a communion of forced silence. I feel it happening—not to them, but through them, my consciousness unraveling through their terror like a parasite jumping hosts, their memories dissolving into mine as the thing from the crate absorbs us both, its form swelling with the weight of another trapped soul. The Ouija board is laughing now, a sound like splintering wood and children giggling in a locked closet, the planchette melting into a pool of black wax that spells one final truth in dripping letters across the archivist's convulsing body: ALWAYS WATCHING . The shadow is gone, digested, but the thing from the crate isn't satisfied—it's turning its hollow gaze toward the security monitor, where Carl's face appears, pale and sweating as he peers into the camera, his mouth forming the words "Hello? Anyone there?" The screen flickers. The planchette reforms from the pooling wax. Somewhere upstairs, the museum's front door creaks open, the cheerful jingle of the entrance bell echoing down the stairs like a dinner chime. The thing from the crate exhales again, its breath frosting the monitor as Carl's image distorts, his screams joining the chorus as the board's surface smooths itself over, pristine, waiting. The next player is already here. The game was never ours to begin with. The cheerful jingle of the entrance bell curdles into a death rattle as the new arrival’s footsteps echo through the hollowed-out museum, their oblivious fingers trailing along the banister—right where the thing from the crate has smeared the archivist’s blood in a glistening welcome mat. I try to scream through the archivist’s ruined mouth, but the doll’s hand lodged in my throat pulses like a second heart, pumping porcelain through my veins as the thing from the crate slithers up the stairs, its form dissolving into the shadows between exhibits, becoming the creak in the floorboards, the flicker of the exit sign, the whisper of wind where no windows exist. The new arrival—a night cleaner, their nametag glinting under fluorescents—gasps as they find Carl’s security desk abandoned, his coffee still steaming, his chair rocking gently as if just vacated. The Ouija board waits in the basement, its surface pristine, but the planchette is already upstairs, rolling unseen across the floor to nudge the cleaner’s toe like a cat begging for attention. When they bend to pick it up, their reflection in the glass display case doesn’t move—it stares hungrily, its eyes black pits, its smile stitched with threads of Carl’s uniform. The thing from the crate exhales, and the lights die just as the cleaner’s fingers close around the planchette, just as the antique dolls in the display case blink in unison, their chipped lips parting to reveal the teeth we’ve all grown in the dark. The board was never the danger. We were. We are. And as the cleaner turns toward the basement stairs, humming a lullaby they don’t remember learning, the thing from the crate settles into their shadow, whispering the first rule of the game they’ve already lost: JUST TOUCH IT . The museum’s doors lock themselves with a click like a bone snapping. Somewhere, a child laughs. Somewhere, a doll opens its eyes. Somewhere that is here, is now, is forever. The cleaner's hum dissolves into a wet gurgle as the planchette sears their palm with frostbite patterns spelling THANK YOU , their breath hitching when the display case behind them cracks open with a sound like a spine adjusting after centuries of stillness—but it's not the dolls that emerge first, it's their shadows, stretching long and grasping across the floor as the thing from the crate exhales its putrid nursery rhyme breath into the cleaner's gaping mouth, filling their lungs with the essence of every lost soul who ever played the game. I feel it happening again—the terrible unraveling as the cleaner's consciousness frays, their memories becoming a feast for the darkness, their screams absorbed by the dolls now clambering from their cases with the jerky precision of stop-motion nightmares brought to life. The security monitors explode in a shower of sparks, the screens flashing one final image—the museum's lobby now packed with figures in period clothing, their faces blurred smears of oil paint and static, their hands all outstretched toward the cleaner in a grotesque imitation of welcome. The thing from the crate doesn't bother with the board this time—it carves its message directly into the cleaner's flesh with razor-tipped doll fingers, each letter a searing brand as their skin splits to reveal the truth beneath: NO BODY LEAVES HERE . The front doors rattle as someone new tries the handle, their cheerful knocking syncing perfectly with the dripping of the cleaner's blood into the waiting mouths of the dolls below. The game never changes. Only the players do. And as the thing from the crate turns its hollow gaze toward the entrance, as the first threads of the new arrival's shadow begin to slither beneath the door, I finally understand the joke—we weren't invited to play. We were always the pieces. And the board? The board was never ours at all. The knocking grows louder, more insistent, each rap against the museum's entrance vibrating through the floorboards like a funeral drum as the new arrival—a curious teenager drawn by the "Help Wanted" sign now dripping crimson in the moonlight—presses their face against the glass, their breath fogging the pane as they squint into the darkness where the cleaner's twitching body is being rearranged into something. . . artistic. The thing from the crate tilts its head—a gesture stolen from the archivist's final moments—as it presses the cleaner's flayed skin against the lobby walls in a macabre wallpaper pattern, their screaming face stretched and stapled between exhibit posters like a grotesque welcome banner. The dolls have begun to sing, their voices the sound of record players slowing to a stop, their hollow heads turning toward the door as the teenager's fingers find the spare key hidden beneath the mat—the key we all used, the key that never actually unlocked anything, just opened us. The planchette, now embedded in the cleaner's chest like a grotesque pacemaker, thrums with anticipation as the thing from the crate exhales, its breath frosting the teenager's shadow beneath the door, sewing invisible threads through their silhouette that jerk their hand toward the lock with marionette suddenness. The moment the key turns, the museum's grand clock chimes thirteen, its hands spinning backward as every antique item in the building wakes at once—the taxidermy wolves snapping their yellowed teeth in unison, the Victorian mourning portraits weeping black tears, the Egyptian sarcophagus exhaling a millennia's worth of cursed breath as its lid creaks open. The teenager steps inside, their sneakers squeaking against the tiles. . . tiles that weren't wet a moment ago. The door slams shut behind them with the finality of a tomb sealing, the "Help Wanted" sign outside flipping to "POSITION FILLED" in dripping letters as the thing from the crate smiles with the archivist's lips, the cleaner's teeth, and my own stolen eyes. The game continues. The board was never the door. We were. We are. And as the teenager's scream joins the chorus, as their shadow is peeled from their body and folded neatly into the thing's growing collection, the first drops of rain begin to fall outside—each one hitting the pavement with the precise rhythm of a planchette spelling out WELCOME HOME . The museum's lights flicker on. The doors unlock themselves. Somewhere in the night, another curious soul pauses to read the newly refreshed "Help Wanted" sign. The thing from the crate hums a lullaby none of us remember learning. The board sits waiting. Hungry. Patient. Alive.

VISIT ~ Mr. Night Thriller