The Tall Dog of Barrow Heights | Part 2

Part 2. The house without sleep. My coffin hisses open with a wave of steam. I stumble forward onto my hands and knees, wretching onto the hersus floor. "Jesus, June," Shirley steps over me, her blonde hair and a bun. "I couldn't hold it in for five more seconds." Kent shakes his head as he passes. "Aunt's on this one dying tonight." "A hundred fucking percent!" Bishop Stephenson. She's marching past me with a glare, Ellison following behind, rolling his eyes. Elvarez crouches down and on my back. "Don't listen to those pin-day-holes. First time riding is always a trip. You'll get used to dying eventually." I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, throat burning. "Dying?" "Sure. That's why only pales can ride the hersus. Does something when it bunches through dimensions, kills us more or less. Pops our hearts, shuts down our brains, the whole deal." He extends his arm, and I watch as the armor flows over his skin like liquid bone, spreading from his elbow down to his fingertips, coating his entire hand and living white carapace. Then it pulses, once, twice, like a heartbeat. "The suits keep us alive," Elvarez continues, "pump our hearts while we're flatlined. They keep the blood moving, oxygen flowing. Probably where the name comes from, actually. Pale. Ha. Like a corpse. Get it." He grins behind his half-formed faceplate. Stephenson barks. "Charlie, team. Form the fuck up before I die of old age." "Assust, you know." Elvarez gives me a friendly jab in the shoulder. "Come on. Finish puking outside." I follow him down the rear ramp, boots hitting gravel. The five of us fan out into formation in front of the bishop, a Victorian mansion looms before us. It's three stories of rotting grandeur, all sharp angles and sagging gables. It sways in the windless night, timber-growning like it's breathing. On all sides, a forest, gnarled trees, presses in. Their branches twisted into arthritic claws that scrape at the sky. "Nice of you to finally join us," Stephenson says, voice sharper than a scalpel. "Alvarez, get this rickie's head out of his ass. This isn't the cubicle farm he's used to. This is the real deal." Elvarez throws a crisp salute that somehow still starts to cast. "By the end of the night, his suit will be twenty pounds lighter, ma'am." A ripple of quiet laughter moves through sixth division. It's a known phenomenon. The more trauma a pale experience is while wearing their armor, the deeper it bonds. The suit drinks in your pain, your fear, your brush with death, and in exchange, it fits better. Moves smoother, becomes a true second skin. My armor feels like I'm wearing a concrete straight jacket. Elvarez leans close, whispering, "About earlier, you can relax, Compa. Protocol 13 just means the inquisitor bailed. Usually happens after the entity already killed its targets. So there's no one left to save. We're just clean up. Scorched earth policy. Think Rambo meets Ghostbusters." I glance back at the mansion, stomach twisting. "So the family's already dead? Bingo!" Elvarez chuckles. "No civilians to evacuate. No witnesses to gaslight. We just burn the whole thing down and call it a night. Something funny, Elvarez." The bishops suddenly right there, jamming a finger against Elvarez's chest. She's fast, silent. Her armor bond must be next level. "No, ma'am. This isn't a normal protocol for their team." She hisses, close enough that her forehead nearly touches his nose. "It's a real one, Jackass, as in there's a dead inquisitor behind those doors." The blood drains from his face. Around us, the rest of sixth division goes rigid, haunted. My throat closes up. "But I thought that inquisitors never die." Stevenson wheels on me. Grey eyes flat in merciless. "That's exactly what protocol 13 was designed for. Propaganda. Moral control. To convince the rest of the order's worker bees that inquisitors are some kind of mythical heroes, unlikeable James Bond motherfuckers who always save the day." "She's that's closer." "But they're not. They bleed just as red as any of us." She turns back toward the mansion, addressing the squad. "Our mission is to recover inquisitor Torson's red book, but whatever's inside that house isn't just another paranormal cluster of fuck. It's a Class V. A cosmic goddamn nightmare. In other words?" She racks a rifle, the sound echoes across the clearing, like a death knell. "It's more than capable of killing every single one of you." She glances back, eyes boring into mind. "Some more easily than others." "You're perspiring, Mr. June." The memory shatters. I'm back in Agnes Miller's apartment, but her voice has changed. It's no longer the beleaguered cadence of a woman on death's door. It's warping into something inhuman, like a scream shoved into a blender full of broken glass. She rises from her chair. Her forehead, bald just like something's pushing from the inside. Her eyes do the same, pupils dilating until they're all black, scleras stretching tight. I bring the revolver up. Agnes's evolution halted at Class IV. Shade. Dangerous. Sure. But manageable. I've got six rounds. Four to guarantee a kill, plus two to spare if things go sideways. Four years as an inquisitor, dozens of cases, and I have never, not once in my career, seen that warning. To say it's rare would be an understatement. An entity dissolution means one of two things. Either the entity has become unstable and is falling apart at the seams, or alert, cosmic distortion detected, entity merging with environment. God fucking damn it. Agnes's body inflates like a pus-filled blister. The apartment throbs, her stomach flops over the table, then pulls it into her. Her skull flattens against the ceiling, absorbing the hanging lights, and her torso claims the crooked picture frames lining the wall. Target parameters indecipherable, immediate retreat recommended. Agnes! A shout. Finger hovering over the trigger. Tell me I'd open the basement. If Florence is down there, I will bring her back. You have my word. Her head swivels down, eyes narrowing. The motion is unnervingly smooth, like a turret tracking a target. "You think you're a letterman if I can trade?" Her voice booms, vibrating to the floorboards, through the walls, through my bones. The blackened apartment windows crack, spider webs racing across the glass. "This is the only way I must deliver the final offering, one by sacrifice." Her mass shifts forward, medical equipment sparking as it's absorbed into her expanding form. "Can I won't let you, but anyone else stand in the way of that." So much for diplomacy, I let the bullet fly. The first round catches her center mass, white lightning arcs across her surface, arcane sigils flaring bright enough to leave after images. She snarls. I fire again. Her second bullet, punches between her eyes, more lightning, more screaming. She stumbles backward, arms windmilling, eyes flashing like dying stars. I line up the third shot. A pipe flashes out from the wall. It coils around my throat like a python, yanking me backward off my feet. My spine slams against the hallway wall. She's merged with the building, every pipe, every beam, every nail driven into rotting wood is under her control, and all I've got is a sick shooter and a pocket watch. The pipe tightens. I can't breathe. I twist my jaw sideways, angling my head to create a gap, and wrench myself free before the coil can fully constrict. I hit the floor hard, gasping, scrambling backward on my hands and heels, as more pipes tear free from the walls, rusted iron tentacles whipping through the air, seeking anything they can grab. I roll left. My pipe slams into the floor where my head was a second ago. Roll right. Another cracks against the wall, leaving a crater in the plaster. But they're slow. You can see the wind up, the way the walls buckle slightly before a pipe tears free, the way the floor trembles before something erupts from below. I can work with that. Fump. Fump. Agnes rumbles toward me. Enormous now. The desk is visible beneath her skin like a jagged tumor. The coil of a telephone receiver hangs from her mouth like a tongue. When she speaks, I hear the mechanical click, click, click, click, have a rotary dial spinning inside her throat. Your kind are willing to have a bang all of a sudden I've had operated over the years. All the sacrifice I gave to see my system again. You'll leave it all to melt in your eyes as what you're doing. She's too big. Too wide. Agnes fills the entire hallway now, a living barricade of absorbed matter blocking the stairwell. And my only escape route. I'm trapped. She's forcing me backwards, step by step, down the sprawling corridor toward the elevator shaft. For the rusted bars and the ten-story drops waiting behind them, I set another bullet free. It hits her throat. Her blob-like body, now SUV-sized flickers as the arcane round works its magic. Three bullets down, three left. Most of the time, entity dissolution proves more annoying than dangerous. It means your target is escaping, diffusing into its environment, spreading itself so thin you can't land a killing blow. Ever try shooting a skyscraper to death doesn't work. The entity just bleeds into the building until there's nothing left to kill. But Agnes is doing the opposite. Pulling barrow heights into her, fusing with the tower, absorbing its mass, channeling its power directly against me. Which may makes her stronger, yes. But also a much, much bigger target. My thumb cocks the hammer. She's class four. One more bullet should do the trick. I lift the gun. A pipe screams through the air. I duck. The iron rod whistles past my air and slams into the wall behind me, splitting the wood. Before I can reset, the hallway rolls like a ship in a storm. Floorboards buckling into waves. I stagger, trying to stay upright. Doors fly open on both sides of the corridor. The bad-ending specters come pouring out in droves. A woman clutching fistfuls of her own hair. Scout bleeding. A man sobbing. She deserved it. She deserved it. Like a mantra, more behind them. Shadows with knives, baseball bats, with hands twisted into claws and worse. They rush me. I throw myself backward, kneeling, ducking under a knife slash, sidestepping the swing of a bath. The woman lunges at me. Nails raking for my eyes, and I twist away. Lose my footing on the rolling floor, before catching myself against the wall. Meanwhile, Agnes keeps coming. Thump, thump, thump. As she passes beneath the flickering fluorescent lights, she absorbs them, pulling the fixtures down into her mass. Her eyes flare with stolen electricity, pupil strobing like live wires. My father cursed and has killed me. She bellows, voice echoing from a hundred absorbed surfaces. Did I have healing yet? The man with the bats wings it by head. Pelene back, but not far enough. The aluminum clips my shoulder, jolting paint down my arm, but I'm already wheeling, deflecting the momentum, and catching the bat under my armpit before yanking him forward. He sumbles into me, off balance. I spin, driving my elbow into a skull. He drops like a puppet with cut strings. I pivot toward the woman, too slow. Her blade cuts across my cheek, a line of white hot pain followed by a warm trickle of blood running down my jaw. Mine may be. She shrieks, wide-eyed and trembling. All this racket, you linked him crying. Behind her, I hear it, the groan of tortured metal. The pop, pop, pop of bolts, sheering free as pipes tear from the walls. The woman swings again. I catch her wrist, mid-arc, fingers closing like a vise. I activate them, stop crying. Tears streamed down her face. Her expression twisted between grief and rage. All because of you and your argument. The pipes erupt from the walls like spears, a dozen of them, all at once, ripping through plaster and wood and launching toward me. I dive sideways, the pipes burst through the woman's torso and explode out her back in a spray of shadow and dissolving matter. She stumbles forward, her body dissipating into black smoke. The man does the same, pierced, shattered, gone. They were never real. Just prophecies, ghosts of a future I have to prevent. My back slams against cold steel, the elevator gate. No more left to run. I told you not to come. Agnes moans and her voice is everywhere now. I sent you the floor plans. Showed you there was no basement, tried to ward your way. You lied? I spit blood dripping from my chin. Yes, to prevent a far worse truth. She raises what used to be her arm. It's not a massive fused, dry wall and severed wiring, crackling with electricity. The forest of pipes scattered across the hallway, coil like serpents, reorienting. Their jagged ends all turning toward me. And now you'll die for a safe reason. The pipes launch. I bring them revolver up. The fourth bullet catches her dead center, right where her distended, jowling head meets her bloated torso. White lightning explodes across her form, racing through every absorbed surface, every piece of stolen matter. The pipes freeze mid-flight, then collapse, clattering to the floor. Agnes's colossal body flickers. Her mouth gapes. A sound escapes that's half gasp, half whimper. There's still time, Agnes. I keep the gun trained on her, even as the cursed rounds unmake her from the inside out. Time to do the right thing. To find some small redemption. The basement. How do I access it? But she's not listening to me anymore. Her eyes are unfocused. Her voice breaking. The building wide resonance collapsing back into the trembling rasp of a dying old woman. Florence. She whispers. I'm sorry. I tried. I did all I could to save you, but-- The words choke off. Forgive me, sister. Tears run down her face and glowing rivulets. What have I done? What have I become? A deafening crack splits the air. Agnes's body is crumbling, but she's not dissolving fast enough. The building she absorbed is anchoring her, prolonging the process, keeping her tethered to reality, even as the arcane rounds try to unmake her. Her lips move. It's all done. Then I hear it, whistling. The same melody threading through Tyler's bedroom pipes. Cheerful, terrible. Agnes's eyes flutter. Her massive form shudders, then collapses. Dust rains from the ceiling, light fixture swing on their cables. But she's smiling. She wheezes, voice fade. Yes. If you release her, I will send you the final offering. My blood runs cold. The tall dog. It's negotiating with her, and she's bargaining back. Even as she's dying, she's making one last deal with the thing that's been puppeteering her for 90 years. Agnes, listen to me. Her head snaps up, vertebrae cracking like gunfire, as her neck bends at an impossible angle to bring her face level with mine. "Please," I grit my teeth, "tell me how to find the tall dog." The trembling, tear-street expression splits into a smile, manic, ecstatic, victorious. "Only the dead visit the tall dog." She whispers gleefully. She throws out her arm, the building quakes. "I fire. The fifth bullet skips across her skull, a glancing blow that tears away the top of her head in a flash of white lightning. It's enough." Her form stutters, the way the absorbed matter begins separating, furniture and fixtures pushing back through her skin as the magic unravels her. At last, the old hag is dead, a keel over, hands on knees. I'm exhausted, bleeding, and still catching my breath when something behind me grounds. "Ah, give me a fucking break," I turn, facing the elevator gate as its jaws slide open. My brow furrows. Then the building lurches. The hallway tilts 90 degrees, and suddenly I'm hanging, fingers white-knuckled on the gate's edge, legs dangling over the gaping throat of the ten-story elevator shaft. "Promise me, you'll come back," Tyler's voice echoes through my skull, small and frightened. My left hand slips, one finger loses its grip, then another. "Dad, I need you. They're fighting in the store again, I'm scared." Abigail's voice joins his, 13 years old, alone in our old apartment, trying so hard to be brave. "Where are you? You said you'd be home tonight. You'll never keep your promises!" The accusation hits like a knife between the ribs, because she's right. I never did, not when it mattered, not when she needed me most, but this time is different. My grip tightens, something pale bubbles beneath my jacket, flowing over my hands, giving me extra purchase. I snarrel like an animal, raw and desperate, and pull. One elbow gets over the edge, then another. My legs kick against empty air, finding nothing, but my core is engaged now, screaming as I haul myself up, inch by agonizing inch. "Hold on, child!" I grit through clenched teeth, getting my chest over the threshold, my hips next. "For once in my goddamn life, I'm keeping my promise!" But in the hallway, Agnes' disintegrating corpse whispers the last words it'll ever speak. "I promise, comes first!" The elevator gate slams shut, and I throw myself backward, narrowly avoiding the steel jaws tearing off my arms. The wind screams past my ears, tearing it my clothes. My jacket snaps like a flag in a hurricane, fabric rippling as my body accelerates toward terminal velocity. "I'm falling! Ten stories!" And all I can think about is her. Abigail, how she was right, hauled my life I failed to keep my promises, letting the people down who needed me the most. And now I'm doing it again, dying as I lived. If you're into horror with a heavy dose of sci-fi, classified experiments, and things humanity was never meant to understand, check out my other podcast, The SCP Experience. Each episode pulls you into the hidden world of the SCP Foundation, where dangerous anomalies are studied, contained, and sometimes unleashed. These aren't just scary stories, they're classified nightmares. Be sure to listen now, or search for the SCP Experience wherever you get your podcasts. Bishop Stevenson leads the five of us up the Bramble-Swallowed driveway. According to the briefing, this estate used to be the kind of place you'd see on a magazine cover. But that was before the entity arrived, keeping the family up for three months straight before digesting them. Before it killed inquisitor Torson. In full immersion, armor extended over every inch of exposed skin, including our faces. It's like marching alongside five featureless white mannequins. Stevenson's voice crackles through the armor's psychic link. He advised Torson's pocket watch indicated the house itself may be alive, and to the environment merger. Treat every surface as hostile. Kent doesn't miss a beat. Sounds like Ellison's condo. The squad chuckles. I try not to throw up. Alvarez nudges my shoulder. Let's see, I'm spiraling, my heart's hammering, my ribs, and I'm thinking about Abby back at home waiting for me to walk through the door with her birthday cake. I'm here instead on my first mission as a pale about to reach a house that killed an inquisitor first class, and inquisitor, the best of the best, dead. "Yeah," my voice cracks, "never matter." The house looms larger with every step. It twists as we approach, the board's warping, angles shifting in ways that make my eyes hurt. The structure creaks and groans like it's breathing. The windows tilt, pain's catching the moonlight following our movement. We fan out into position, Allison and Kent peeling off toward the back entrance, Alva Reza and I moving left toward a ground floor window, Stevenson and Shirley taking the front door. Kent's voice filters through the armors, psychic link. "Careful it's watching us." Shirley snorts, "Tiger's a haunted house will be a beeping tomb." Scattered laughter crackles through the team, "Save the stand up for June's funeral." Steven cuts in, voice flattened cold, "We've got work to do." Alva Reza, June first floor sweep, Allison Kent clear the top floor, purely and I take the second. The wide support of either team needs extraction, priority is Torson's red book, pocket watch is a bonus. Leave the body. Roger that. Allison confirms, "He and Kent surge forward in sync, disappearing around the house." Alva Reza and I move toward our window. Stevenson and Shirley are already at the front door, stacking up for reach. We pass them, boots crunching on dry dirt, and Alva Reza presses his back against the outer wall beside the window frame. I mirror him on the opposite side, my rifle shakes in my hands. Alva Reza looks completely relaxed, deep breaths journal, he whispers, "They help, really?" He shrugs and smashes the window. Glass explodes inward, tinkling across the hardwood floor and said, "Don't know, but that's what the manual says." I can't see his face behind the white mask, but I can hear the grin in his voice. Stevenson responds, "He vaults through the window. My heart stops. For three seconds, there's nothing but silence in my pulse, hammering in my ears. Then I'll clear journal." I exhale hard and follow him through, landing in a crouch on broken glass. Alva Reza is already moving deeper into the house, and the way he moves is like watching a ghost, soundless, fluid. His boots barely touch the floor, while mine creak and groan with every step. He pass through a den, a library, a dining room. Everything looks normal, no overturned furniture, no blood spatters, not even a crooked picture frame on the wall. It's making my skin crawl. "Eerie, isn't it?" Alva res mutters, sweeping his rifle across the empty dining table. "Almost too quiet." I open my mouth to respond. Another voice cuts through the calm. "Listen, Bishop. It's Bravo Team. We found Dorsen. Third floor, into the hall. Private study. Dors open." Stevenson's voice crackles through. "All position Bravo, Shirley and I are in road for Rebecca." Stevenson's tone sharpens. "Charlie Squad, give her the first floor exit. Things are quiet. But don't let that fool you, and Alison." A beat. "Bratnet Red Book." Silence. "I'm not sure that's necessary. Why the fuck not?" "Because." Ellison voice waivers, confused, unsettled. "Because Dorsen isn't dead." "What do you mean she isn't?" The scream that erupts through the calm isn't human. It's piercing. A shriek that carved straight into my brain, vibrating through my skull like a lobotomy drill. I collapse, hands flying to my head. But the sound is inside me, inescapable. My armor rives. It feels back from my face, retreating down my neck, bubbling and shuddering like it's an agony. Beside me, Alvarez drops to one knee. His armor doing the same, recoiling, afraid. The scream cuts off. Silence rushes back in, thick and suffocating. "Jesus." He asks. "Ear still ringing." "What the hell is that?" Alvarez doesn't answer. I look over. He's staring up at the ceiling, toward the third floor. With an expression I've never seen on his face before. His armor crawls back up his neck to cover his face. He bolts for the stairs. "Alvarez." I scramble to my feet. "The armor has a free acting like that since Gilton." He calls back without stopping. "Stay here." Gilton, the pale-eyed replaced. The one who got torn apart by a class IV entity. The one whose coffin I'm using. "Are you saying?" But I stop. I know the answer. Ellison is dead, and we're next. I hit the bottom of the elevator shaft like a meteor strike. The impact detonates the concrete, a shockwave of dust and debris exploding outward. Pain erupts along my spine, white-hot and binding, and for several seconds I can't breathe, can't move, can't do anything but lie there gasping like a fish on dry land. My lungs finally unlock. I drag in a ragged breath, and another, the world spinning as I force myself upright. My hand goes to my neck instinctively, checking for damage, and I feel it there. My armor, hardened into a rigid shell across the back of my skull and down my spine, a protective exoskeleton that absorbed the impact and kept me from turning into human mulch. It shudders at my touch, trembling, exhausted. "Thank you," I whisper. The armor bubbles in response, then slowly recedes, crawling back down my neck, and disappearing beneath my collar, back into hiding, back into waiting. I stand, legs shaking, and tuck at my jacket. Dust cascades off the fabric in great clouds. "I call." Eyes finding my worst nightmare. It's lying on the ground a few feet away, barrel bent at a sick angle, a fissure running through the steel. My revolver must have landed on it during the fall. Shit. And I still had another bullet left. Now, it's useless. I shove the gun into my jacket with a bitter sigh, arming myself instead with my flashlight. A dark, particulate cloud shifts in swirls in the light, stirred by air currents. I crouch down and scoop some up between two fingers, bring it to my nose. It smells accurate, burnt, like the aftermath of a fire. "Ashes," I murmur. The elevator shaft is full of ashes, a low-brow echoes for my right. I wheel around, flashlight cutting through the dark, there, a narrow brick cord or leading out from the base of the shaft, ancient, crumbling, the kind of passage that shouldn't exist according to any architectural blueprint, and at the far end, barely visible in the distance is an angry red ember. "You're inquisitive," the voice skitters like insects across my eardrums, each syllable wrong and broken and stitched together. My pocket watch convulses against my chest, violent and urgent. I pull it out with shaking hands, to display flickers, struggling to process what it's detecting, then it stabilizes. Classics entity detected, ruined tier threat, mass evacuation recommended. I swallow hard. Seems I found the basement. Trouble is, I'm on arm now. A rat trapped in a box without so much as teeth to chew its way out. I try to check on my backup request, but the watch goes fuzzy. The ink blossoms across it in occult sigils, now flat, pouring back into numbering behind the glass. I give it a smack, but it's like the damn things gone dead. Critical failure. Temporal interference detected. Great. So the tall dog's secret layer is so far removed from base reality that not even the watch can get a message through. Quick inventory. I've lost my gun, and on my sole means of communication, and judging from the flickering, my flashlight is hanging on by a thread. Brilliant, June, you're a real professional. I study the angry ember flickering past the narrow corridor. Seems the only way out is through. I press forward, shoulders brushing brick on both sides, cobwebs stretch across the passage like silk-trip wires, catching on my face, sticking to my lips. The floor is thick with ash that puffs up with every step, coating my shoes, and making my throat itch. I press my hand over my mouth trying not to cough. That's when I notice them, curled papers nailed into the bricks, drawings. If they're like the ones in the stairwell, only the sunny green backgrounds are gone. These are rendered entirely in black, the heavy, violent scribbles suggesting darkness, save for the pink triangle. I recognize the dress immediately, Florence, but in this drawing, she's not smiling. She's being dragged away. A larger stick figure, labeled in shaky letters as "Daddy has one hand wrapped around her arm, pulling her down into shadow. My gut twists, poor kid, but I need to keep moving. It's narrow here, tight enough I have to turn sideways just to squeeze through. My bare hand brushes against a drawing, the world tilts." Quality peels away in layers as the two-dimensional space expands, wraps around me, swallows me whole. All at once, I'm ripped away, out of myself, and into Florence's worst nightmare. Something is wrong with this one. The crayon world I entered before was bright, pastel, the lines shimmered, and the animation stuttered, whimsical, almost making you forget you were inside a broken girl's artwork. This isn't that. The lines shake as if the paper itself has a fever. Everything is black crayon on white, rendered in heavy, violent strokes that gouge the paper and left grooves I can feel beneath my shoes. I'm standing outside Barrow Heights, but the building isn't the cheerful brown rectangle from before. It's a jagged mass, barely distinguishable from the black sky behind it. The windows are holes, the front door is a mouth. Florence's stick figure jolts into motion all wrong. Frames are missing. In the alley, then she's at the front door, then she's inside, the in between ripped out like pages from a flip book. Her father moves the same way, jerking forward and sickening jumps. Speech bubbles appear and dissolve, summer empty. Some contain words that have been scribbled over. It's as if Florence started to write something and then thought better of it. One bubble floating near the prostitute's head reads only "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha." I follow them down the dead end stairwell. The animation lurches. Mr. Hollis shoves the janitor's locker aside. Removes bricks from the wall. The prostitute crawls through. He follows. Florence scrambles down the stairs after them, crawling into the shaft. On the wall beside the janitor's locker, there's a calendar. Someone circled a date in red crayon. The only color in the entire drawing. Vivid as blood. May 2nd, 1936. My stomach drops. This is it. The last day anyone saw Florence Hollis alive. These aren't just scary stories. They're classified nightmares. Click here to listen now or search for the SCP Experience wherever you get your podcasts. The corridor snaps back into focus. I'm standing in three dimensions again. Gasping. One hand. Steading myself against the brick. I shake off the disorientation and keep moving, shimmying sideways through the narrow passage, until it finally opens up into a boiler room. Ancient machinery fills the space, rusted hulks of equipment that probably haven't run in decades. Pipes snake across the ceiling, dripping condensation, and there, at the far end of the room, casting everything in hellish red light. A furnace. Steel-graded. Glowing. Something hangs from the front of it. A pair of overalls scorched black, barely holding together. I step closer, the flashlight beam cutting through the gloom. My jaw clenches. Those overalls are small. Child-sized. This is how it disposes of them, I realize, while rising in my throat. The tall dog burns its victims. Turns them to ash. No bodies, no evidence. Just smoke up the chimney, and ash is in the elevator shaft. I sweep my flashlight across the rest of the basement. It's massive. Far larger than I'd imagined. Probably spanning the entire footprint of barrow heights. Multiple doors line the walls, leading to god knows where. I inch forward, mind racing. The pale squad should be close, assuming they're on schedule. And they always are. They'll be arriving topside in 30 minutes, maybe less. But my watch is dead. I have no way to tell them how to access the basement. The only entrance I know leads to the stairwell on the far side of the building. Opposite, the elevator shaft, and by the time I cross this labyrinth. A door creaks open to my left. I pause. Nothing comes out. It's an invitation. That, or a trap. My gut says to keep moving. To avoid the tall dog, to find the exit. To get topside before the pales arrive. And I lose my window to finish this monster before it finishes Tyler. But I catch the copper plaque mounted above the door. Mr. Frederick Hollis, Building Manager, my breath hitches. So this is it. This is where he ran his operation. Out of sight, buried beneath the castle he designed. A shadow landlord presiding over his underground kingdom. I drift inside, and the office has become a tomb. Cobwebs draped from the ceiling like funeral shrouds. The air smells of rust and decay and something that's been sitting undisturbed for decades. And there, slumped over the desk, like he fell asleep and never woke up. Is Mr. Hollis. Or what's left of him. The dry air has mummified him. Skin pulled tight over bone. Lips peeled back from yellow teeth and a permanent grimace. He's still wearing his brown suit, fabric faded and moth eaten. A boulder hat sits a skew on his skull, perched above empty eye sockets. One hand rests on an open ledger. The other is tucked inside his jacket, clutching his chest. I step closer. The ledger is leather bound. Pages yellowed and brittle. It looks like a standard building log filled with maintenance records. Tenant complaints, financial notes, and a dozen other forms. But the handwriting gets looser as I flip through. More erratic. The entries shift from professional observations to personal confessions. It's a journal. April 1933. Today was a great day. We broke ground on the apartment's foundations and the doc prescribed new medication for my heart. Swared will prevent another episode. Charlene, my beloved, was relieved. The girls were too. Though Florence was still too young to understand what a heart attack even meant. Just asked it if it tasted like bananas. I couldn't help but laugh. She keeps me young. June 1933. A lunatic showed up at the construction site today. Claimed to be some kind of shaman. But tribal elder, he said. Told me this land is cursed. Said his people buried something here centuries ago. Something evil. A dog man. Whatever the hell that means. I told him to get gone. But he was frantic, kept insisting that if we keep digging, we'll unearth it. That there'll be blood on my hands. Had to call the cops. The card in him off. Hopefully to an asylum where he can get some help. August 1933. One of the workers found something today. Ceramic sphere. Buried about 20 feet down. Idiot cracked it open before I could stop him thinking there was treasure inside. All he found was an old piece of leather. A few of the guys claimed they saw markings. Some kind of tribal drawing. A wool feeding a child. But the ink bled off into the dirt before they could find me. Convenient. I told him to save the ghost stories for the woods. December 1934. The basement is finished. Head of schedule, no less. I gave the crew a holiday bonus to celebrate. None of them cared. They had their heads down, still muttering about the damn drawing. I told them they'd better get their heads out of their ass as over Christmas break, or they could find a new job. Next week, not a single one of them showed up for work. The wives haven't seen them either. The police have no leads. It's like they've vanished into thin air. Pricks had to hire an entirely new crew. The delay is costing me a fortune. To top it off, my hard medication stopped working. Had to double the dose just to get through the day. January 1935. The new crew doesn't know about the basement. I've decided to keep it that way. At first, I told myself it was practical. They need to focus on the upper floors. No point distracting them. But the truth is, I like having a space that's just mine. Away from Charlene's nagging. Away from the girl's constant arguing. I've been spending more and more time down here. Just me and the furnace. It's peaceful. Quiet. I think I'll keep it a secret a while longer. November 1935. Construction is complete. Haven't heard from that shaman again. He's probably dead. Or locked up. Either way, I find myself thinking about him sometimes. About what he said. This place being built on a burial site. Being a grave for something ancient. I like the idea so much. I named the building after it. Barrow Heights. Clever, isn't it? I flipped the page sharply. Jaclynch. Mr. Hollis ignored every warning. Dismissed the shaman. Name the building after the very thing he was told to fear. "You idiot!" I hiss. "You damned arrogant fool!" And then he had the nerve to. "Inclusive June?" I freeze. That voice. I know that voice. I spin. Flashlight sweeping the room. Tyler? Where are you? His voice is tinny, distant. In my room, the total latest thing, what? The pipes. He's speaking through the pipes. Are you safe? Yes. The word comes back thin and metallic. I press my forehead against the pipe. Feeling the cold bite into my skin. Trying to think. The watch is dead weight in my pocket. Temporal interference, reducing it to an expensive clock. My revolver is a wreck. Everything depends on the pale's finding this basement. And that depends on them. Learning how to reach a space that isn't supposed to exist. Which means everything depends on a 10-year-old boy. Listen carefully, Tyler. I need you to do something for me. I pause. Choosing my words the way I choose. Foot holds on a cliff. My colleagues are on their way. They'll be coming in through the back. The door by the dumpsters. The one you use for taking out the trash. I need you to meet them there. And give them a message for me, okay? What message? That the basement entrance is at the bottom of the stairwell. There are loose bricks behind the janitor's locker. A hollow point in the wall. They'll need to pull them out to get through. Can you remember that? His voice splinters. Why can't you tell the room? I close my eyes and inhale. The pipe is frigid against my skull. You're still coming back, right? You promised you already. I want to lie the way I lied to Abigail. Telling him I'm keeping that promise no matter what. But the situation has changed. Tyler, my voice comes out harder than I intend. This is important work. It's a grown-ups job. But I'm asking you because you're the only person who can do it. So tell me, can you be my partner in this or not? Silence. Then a sound like a boy swallowing a mouthful of nails. Yes, sir. Good. Now get going. Adore creeks. Then, bare feet. pattern against carpet, growing fainter until the pipes swallowed the sound. entirely. I exhale. It feels like the first breath I've taken in minutes. I turn back to the journal, searching for answers. Mr. Hollis wrote compulsively in the months following his discovery of the basement, and the entries read like a man walking downhill with his eyes shut. Each step a little faster, a little less controlled. He writes about arguments with his wife, how the appetites that started as restlessness became something cooler, how the prostitutes came after the cruelty, and the violence came after the prostitutes, and how each new threshold made the last one feel as mundane as brushing his teeth. And Julie found the only thing left that could make him feel anything at all. July 1935 Brought her into the basement and strangled her with the cord from the work lamp. It took longer than I expected. She fought. I hadn't anticipated how much I'd enjoy the fighting. Afterward, the reality of what I'd done landed, a dead woman in my building, the rot would start within days, the smell would climb the pipes, seep through the floorboards, someone would notice. But then the furnace coughed, ash spat from behind the grating, and the iron door swung open on its own, the heat rolling across my face like a breath, and I understood then that I'd been chosen, that this basement wasn't a crawl space beneath my castle, but a temple, and I, it's ordained keeper. I've even stopped taking the pills. A man sustained by God's hand has no use for a pharmacist's. November 1935 The bipes have begun whistling, I've tightened every coupling, replaced every gasket, still they whistle. None of the whores mention it, I'm beginning to think only I can hear it. January 1936 The whistling won't stop. It seems to come from everywhere at once. The walls, the floor, the fillings in my teeth, I've torn apart half the plumbing and found nothing. No blockage, no leak, the pipes are clean, and yet they sing, and the more I listen, the more I like the song. May 2nd, 1936 Florence followed me to the basement. The damn girl saw everything, the dead woman, the bone saw, the way the whores eyeballs melt and when I tossed her head in the furnace, I've locked Florence in a storage locker. I'll need to think about how to proceed. May 2nd, 1936 Evening I've told Charlene that Florence and I are taking a camping trip upstate, a father-daughter bonding experience, Agnes begged to come, I told her no. Charlene didn't think it was wise for me to be in the wilderness with a heart-like mind. She's right. It's been murmuring again, skipping, pounding, almost like it's trying to outrun something I can't see. Your classified nightmares, click here to listen now, or search for the SCP Experience wherever you get your podcasts. May 5th, 1936 It's been three days, Florence won't speak to me, but she speaks to something else. She says it's angry at me, that it's going to make me pay for what I've done. I gave the brat crayons, I thought it might calmer, might give her something to fixate on besides the voices in her head, but every drawing is the same, me standing over a woman's body, and beside me a dog with arms like dead branches, smiling. May 7th, I told her the truth today, I told her that God's patience has limits, that her tears are an insult, that she could stop crying and come home with me, and never speak of what she'd seen, or she could stay here, forever. She looked at me with her mother's eyes, and said the dog had already decided what would happen, that it had been deciding for a long time, I might have to kill her after all. I'll say the current took her while she was swimming in the river, that I tried to save her but my heart. The entry ends mid sentence, the final words disintegrating into a seismic scribble. The pen stroke dragging off the edge of the page, I looked down at Mr. Hollis. One mummified armist long across the desk, the fountain pen still loosely cradled between his remaining fingers, the other hand is buried beneath his collar, clawed against his sternum. His heart, it must have given out. I run my thumb across the journal's edge, and a fine layer of his skin comes away on my fingers like candle wax. His pen hand is missing most of its fingers, they've been snapped off at the first knuckle, something took them, something that needed new wax for its crayons. I wipe my fingers on Mr. Hollis's brown lapel, trying not to think about a creature hunched over a piece of paper in the dark, with the corpse wax finger, teaching itself to draw by copying the artwork of a six year old girl, it let starve to death. The whistling curls beneath the office door, like a kettle left screaming on an empty stove. It's for me, taunting, goading, impatient are we, a mutter dropping the journal. I inch outside, flashlight catching the rusted husks of machines I couldn't name. My hand goes to my hip on instinct, fingers finding the warped barrel. The cracked grip, right, my revolver is dead weight. The whistle pulls me toward the far wall, where a steel door sits recessed between two dead boilers. The copper plaque reads, "Storage, the knob burns cold against my palm. I push through, the room beyond is full of wire mesh cages, floor to ceiling, stretching deeper than my light can reach. Tenant storage, built for the residents of Barrow Heights, never used. The cages split my flashlight, each one throwing a lattice of wire across the next, the geometry multiplying until the darkness ahead looks cross hatched. I move forward. The path zigzags deliberately, funneling me deeper into amaze, there's no sound, no whistling, no dripping. It's the loudest silence I've ever heard." Agnes believed her sister was alive down here, said she'd even spoken to her, "I'm not sure what'll be worse, finding Florence dead, or finding our alive, locked away and rotting in this dungeon for the better part of a century." "Florence!" I hiss softly, no answer. The cages are identical, empty. I'm starting to think the storage room is a dead end when my light catches something that isn't wire or rust. Color, a scrap of faded pink, 30 feet ahead, inside a cage on the left. I break into a jaw, the beam bouncing, my hand finds the wire mesh, grips it. Florence, there she is, sitting against the back wall. Her big dress has collapsed into a rumpled nest around a frame too small to belong to anyone over seven. Her skull rests in the cradle of her own lap, tilted slightly, as though she'd fallen asleep leaning against the bars and gravity had done the rest. Her father's body had the furnace to mummify it. Where his didn't, whatever Agnes heard speaking to her, it wasn't Florence. I crouch, pressing my forehead against the cold wire. "I'm sorry kid, it's all like an offer." Around Florence's remains, scattered like fallen leaves are drawings, dozens of them. The paper has yellowed to the color of week T, the edges curl inward, but with vivid crayon lines. It's the same uncertain, trembling style from the stairwell, but these are different. There's no color at all. It's just black crayon, pressed so hard it gouged the paper, and in every single one, looming behind something, a pipe, a boiler, the bars of the cage itself, is the same shape, tall, hunched. I reached the gap between the cage, my fingers brush a drawing in the far corner, one that's been placed apart from the others, face down, as though Florence herself had turned it over, as though she couldn't bear to look at it. My skin brushes the paper, and the basement lurches, the wire, the concrete, the bones, all of it falls away, and something worse rises in its place.