“Are you sure you don’t want to play with me?” he asked.
“No, Bradley, I don’t. I don’t ever want to play with you again.”
That was a very long time ago. I’ve lost count of how many days, how many years. But every day, Bradley comes back and asks if I want to play with him, and every day I tell him no, and every day he just shrugs and grins and disappears.
I’ll never play with Bradley again. I won’t let him have the satisfaction, even if I’m trapped down here forever.
THE CREEPING WOOD
I’d been sick for days, stuck in bed with a dry, scratchy cough and aches through my whole body. I’d never felt anything like this before. Every breath I took felt like rubbing broken glass over my tongue and throat. There was a pain deep in my chest, as if something was lodged in there, but no matter how hard I coughed, all that came out were faint puffs of dust.
I was staying at my friend’s beach house. She was coming to join me in a week, and we were going to spend our vacation together, but now all I wanted to do was to get home. There’s something so much easier about being sick at home: you know where the blankets are, and you know the medicine cabinet will have that same old bottle of cough syrup you’ve been working on since you were a kid. When you’re sick somewhere new, when everything is unfamiliar, it hurts just a little bit more.
When I got to her house I’d felt fine. In fact, I was so happy to be on vacation that I had more energy than I’d had in months. The air at the beach was strange, and the light was confusing, but at least it wasn’t the city. Everything here was open and free.
My first day, I’d taken a walk up into the hills to get a better view of the whole little town. There wasn’t much to see aside from the woods and the ocean. There was a lighthouse at the very end of the beach that looked older than any building I’d ever seen, but that was all. Standing there, taking it all in I’d felt peaceful.
I felt the wind whip past me, through the wispy trees. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
That was when the coughing first started.
It was just a tickle at first, like I had something tiny stuck in my throat. I drank hot water and tried to find anything in the house close to tea that might dislodge it or soothe it. There was nothing there that made me feel better. That first night I got almost no sleep, and when I awoke the next morning the skin on my neck felt so tight I thought it might snap.
Since then I’ve been falling in and out of consciousness and I’m not even sure what day it is anymore. I can’t remember the last time I was able to eat anything. My throat is closed up so tight that I can barely swallow. When I can summon the energy to get a glass of water, I just have to let it run down the back of my tongue and try my best not to choke.
I hope it’s been a week. I hope my friend gets here soon.
* * *
—
I heard a car pulling into the driveway and rolling underneath the house. Then I fell asleep again. It must have just been for a second, because I missed the footsteps on the stairs outside but heard the door handle turning. When I opened my eyes again, she was standing over me looking worried.
I tried to say something to her, to tell her not to come too close because I was sick, but I’m not sure if I was making words at all. It feels like my mouth is stretched and cracking. My tongue feels dry, as if I haven’t closed my mouth in days.
I opened my eyes again and she was standing over me with tweezers from the bathroom. Long and sharp. I tried to tell her no, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel anything anymore except that tiny tickle in the back of my throat, the one that had never gone away, the one that felt like something dry and hard was wriggling on the very back of my tongue.
I saw the tweezers come out of my mouth. They were wet, and the drips were staining the white sheets.
When I woke up later it was dark outside and my friend was sitting on the edge of my bed. She looked tired, as if she’d been working for hours. Her hands were patchy and red, and she was sweating. On the floor around her feet were curling, thin pieces of wood, like tiny, rough models of veins, delicately sticking up into the air, all of them as wet as the tweezers.
* * *
—
The Creeping Wood. That’s what she called it. Apparently the locals know not to go too near it. It’s a dry, wispy tree that can catch in your throat and take root. The warm, dark, damp parts of your mouth and the deep grooves around your tonsils are perfect places for it to feed and grow.
She said she was lucky she found me when she did, as I was just about completely taken over by it. She said people usually know to pull out the very first piece as soon as they feel it.
I apologized, but she said she was just happy I was okay and that we could still have a nice time together for the week.
We finished our breakfast. She was having toast; I was just slowly sipping on chilled milk to soothe my throat. She said she would go and clean up the pieces of wood that were all over the bedroom floor. I insisted that she’d done enough, and I left her to do the dishes.
I examined each piece as I put it into a big garbage bag. They were like a puzzle, each fragment the shape of a wall of my mouth and throat. The wood had grown perfectly to match the texture of my cheeks and the underside of my tongue. In their own way, they were beautiful.
They took up more room than I thought they could, two full bags in total. When I carried them down the stairs, she told me to go and put them in the fire pit. She said it was the only way to be rid of them completely. She said I had to make sure that we burned every piece.
* * *
—
We burned the wood. We stayed up late drinking hot chocolate by the fire and talking about life and everything. It was so good to have a friend with me. I was so lucky she had arrived in time.
It was just before sunrise that I finally went up to bed. All the wood was burned up and gone, all except the most beautiful piece, the one that had been right in the very back of my throat. It was shiny and smooth and creased and cracked and it had been a part of me. I couldn’t put it in the fire.
Looking at it, seeing how perfect, how unique it was, I couldn’t understand why she was so scared of it.
* * *
—
It opened its eyes for the first time this morning.
RATTLE AND CLICK
If you’re in the woods at night and you hear a click, click, click, then there’s probably no need to be afraid. That’s just the man with the eyeballs in his pocket.
If you’re in the woods at night and you hear the rattling of bones in the trees, then it’s important that you stay very still and don’t make a sound. That rattling means the Bone Man is near.
Don’t worry, the Bone Man can’t see you. The man with the eyeballs in his pocket has made sure of that. He plucked the eyes from the Bone Man’s skull and dried them out ‘til they looked like walnuts, then put them in his coat pocket for safe keeping. Now he wanders through the woods at night, letting the eyeballs click together as they roll around his big pocket. Click, click, click. He has to make just enough sound for the Bone Man to follow so that he doesn’t stumble out of the woods and come after the rest of us.
The Bone Man would grab you with his long bony fingers and drag you back into the trees. He’d string you up by your hair. He hates hair because he doesn’t have any of his own.
He’d wiggle his bony fingers underneath your skin and peel it off in sheets, letting it stretch and snap and wrap around his cold, undead arms.
He’d pull out your tongue and hold it between his teeth, not knowing how hard he can press down before it gives way and falls in two. The more pieces of you he took, the angrier he’d become as he remembered how much he missed having these things himself.
But the part he’d take last would be your eyes. He watched as everything was stripped from him and he would want you
to feel it all just the same.
But, luckily for you, he’d much rather have his own eyes than yours, so he won’t be chasing you or stumbling out of the woods. He’ll just be rattling around in the trees, listening for the click, click, click of the man with the eyeballs in his pocket. We’re so lucky that man is keeping us safe.
TATTLE TALE
When there was just two of us, Will and me, we didn’t have to share a room. Then Mom and Dad had Jennifer, and suddenly we did. But when Jennifer turned three and Mom and Dad had Max, things started to get really crowded. Then Connor was born. One bedroom for the baby and one for all four of us. And that’s how it was for the next five years.
With so many kids in such a small place, things were always noisy and Mom was always stressed out and mad. We got into trouble for everything, because you just can’t be a kid and have fun when there’s no room.
Actually, not all of us were getting into trouble. Connor never got in trouble, because Connor was the baby of the family and Connor was always the one telling tales. “Mom!” she’d yell. “Jason’s climbing on the couch again!” And Mom would come in and see me climbing on the couch and I’d be sent off to my room. Not my room, our room, the room for everyone but Connor because Connor was the baby.
“Mom! Will’s eating ice cream before dinner!”
Mom would come in and catch Will with a spoon in his mouth and a blueberry chip on his chin and send him to the little room as well.
“Mom! Maxine is drawing on the walls!”
“Mom! Jennifer’s pulling leaves off the houseplant!”
Every day she’d scream for Mom and every day we’d all end up in that room, because Mom was tired and stressed and needed “just a little bit of peace and quiet.”
We all hated Connor.
Eventually things got so bad that Mom couldn’t take it anymore, so Dad took some time off work to help out. For the next little while they spent all their time together at the table, talking and fighting and crying and figuring out what to do.
* * *
—
It was a tough decision—we needed to get out of that house, we needed more space. To get a bigger place, we needed to get out of the city. So, we moved to this little town by the beach where they could afford a house with lots of bedrooms and plenty of space for the seven of us.
What none of us expected was that the house we moved to would be haunted.
It was our first night there and Will heard a whisper coming from under his pillow. He got scared and asked if he could sleep in my room.
Then, just before we fell asleep, the window shade started rattling and banging, even though the air was perfectly still. We went to Jennifer’s room, and she said we could come in if we slept on the floor.
“Stop walking around and go to sleep,” she told us. But we weren’t walking, we were laying down. We all stayed still and listened to the clumsy little footsteps, right up until they got to the edge of Jennifer’s bed. Then we ran to Maxine’s room to hide. Maxine didn’t believe that there was a ghost, but she was the youngest, besides Connor, so she had to do what we said.
We thought we’d be safe if it was all four of us together. We’d dealt with scarier things than this.
Mom must have heard us because a few seconds after she opened the door and told us we all had to go back to our own rooms. She was very upset that we were all together like that, again, after they had gone through so much trouble to move to a new bigger house.
The same thing happened the second night. Rattling windows, footsteps, muffled sounds from under our pillows, and we all ended up in the same room. And again, Mom heard us, and came in yelling, sending us back to our separate beds.
The third night we made a plan: we would all sneak very quietly into Max’s room right after lights out, before any ghosts had a chance to make a sound. But, as soon as we were all together, Mom and Dad both came in, they were…not even angry, they almost seemed scared as they dragged us by our arms to our own rooms.
* * *
—
We told them about the ghosts, we told them we were frightened, we told them we were just trying to stay safe, but they didn’t believe us and they wouldn’t budge. No matter what, we were not to be in the same room.
We had to prove that the ghosts were real, so we borrowed Dad’s tape recorder and set it up in the hallway between all the rooms, so it would hear all of it.
One by one we crept past it and into Max’s room and closed the door. Mom and Dad burst in and dragged us out. But now we could show them, we could play the tape of the banging and the muffled voice and the footsteps. In the morning we got together and listened to the tape and realized how Mom and Dad always knew when we’d left our rooms.
Connor was tattling on us.
The recording went like this: There was the sound of a muffled voice, almost like a dull scream from under a pillow, then Will’s feet creeping by. There was the sound of the banging window shades, then my socks on the wooden floor. There was the sound of clumsy little footsteps, too many to be just one person, then the delicate steps of Jennifer coming down the hall. Then there was a voice, a voice we all knew but had thought we’d never hear again.
“Mom! They all got up out of bed!”
We all thought that a ghost stayed in the house where the person died. We had no idea they could follow you somewhere new. Maybe because Connor was the baby, she never learned the rules. But there she was, still telling tales on us, even after we’d made our plan to creep from our bedroom into hers, along the fire escape and in her window. We’d stumbled in the dark, our clumsy feet moving toward her bed. We’d all held the pillow together to make sure she could never tattle on us again. It’s so hard to believe that it still didn’t work.
THE RUMBLE
No one is going to come looking for me once I’m gone. That’s the scariest part of all of this. I wish I’d never come to Black Sand Beach. I hope whoever is talking outside comes in soon. I just want someone to know I was here.
I’d heard so many stories about this place when I was growing up, but I never believed any of them, I’m still not sure if I do. All those stories seem so tame compared to what I’ve seen since I got here.
We’re all scared of the same things: loud noises, things jumping out at us, really anything big that can give us a shock. But Black Sand Beach has taught me that these are just for show. These things are distractions. Dangerous distractions, sure, but distractions nonetheless.
Since I got here I’ve seen so many things that I can’t explain, creatures that make no sense, monsters that ooze and reshape themselves in front of me, animals with mouths in their stomachs and black slime pouring from their eyes. Some of these things have chased me, some have even almost caught me; all of them have tried to kill me, but those I’ve gotten used to.
The thing that scares me more is The Rumble.
If you’ve ever put a seashell up to your ear, you know the sound. A hissing echo that people say is the sound of the ocean. But which ocean? I’ve heard waves slap on sand and water splash against itself. I’ve even heard the sloppy sound of breathing as the tide pulls in and out, but that sound from inside the seashell, that rushing, all-consuming hiss, that’s not like any ocean I’d ever heard.
Until I got here.
Seashells are pointy and hard. They’re armor. Somewhere along the way we started thinking they were pretty, and we put them in our bathrooms for decoration. We got it wrong. Seashells are warnings—that’s why they’re filled with that sound. We should see those sharp, hard shells and hear that roaring hiss, and we should know that that’s the ocean to stay away from. That’s the ocean at Black Sand Beach. That’s an ocean full of darkness and terror.
That sound is The Rumble, and it’s here all the time, you just have to listen for it. Once you hear it, it never leaves you.
The stories I’d been told wer
e about a little town by the beach, with houses and stores and even a lovely little diner. There were people in those stories who lived here, or vacationed here. I don’t know if those stories were real, if the people all went away, if the buildings all went away, or if they were all just made up to scare people off. Are all the stories of Black Sand Beach just seashells, armor made of sound to keep people at a distance? I don’t know.
If anyone had ever lived here, they’re gone now. Maybe something terrible happened. Maybe a lot of terrible things happened. When I got here, all I found were two houses: one made of old real estate signs and sheet metal and one swaying on poles. I broke into the one on higher ground, it seemed safer. Some nights I think I hear things from the other house, but it could just be animals or creatures from the woods who have gotten in looking for food.
I realized this morning that I have no idea how long I’ve been here. Days have passed, maybe weeks, but everything feels like it just happened and also happened a lifetime ago. Did that green sheep chase me through the woods yesterday, or last month? Did I see the jellyfish swimming across the sand, feasting on the fallen cows on Tuesday, or last year? I don’t know anymore. I think the true evil of this place, the thing that the shells are warning us about, has been feeding on me.
Maybe the monsters are drawn to it. Maybe the monsters are made by it. Maybe the monsters used to be something else and were changed by it, corrupted by it. Whatever’s happening at this place, that creeping darkness is responsible, I know it. I just wish I hadn’t fed it.
I’d noticed it so often, the way some of the shadows here seemed a little too dark, how light seemed to just miss some places. There was too much darkness at Black Sand Beach. Once I even kicked up some sand while I was out walking on the beach and darkness oozed out, like a black fog that wriggled away into the air.
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