Summer 2011, Norman, Oklahoma, United States of America

The sun is shining, cicadas are singing, and kids can be heard nearby happily yelling as they swing in the playground or get sprayed by water in the splash pad. Off in the distance, the sounds of skateboard wheels on concrete and wood can be heard from the skatepark, mixed in with the sounds of passing traffic. Within a gazebo sat a young woman looking at her smartphone’s text messages. Her eyes were focused on the last few near the bottom of her screen.

---

Rachel

“1 PM at Andrews Park sound good to you?”

Jessie

“Yeah :)”

Rachel

“Good! We’ll solve the Mystery of the Flood Control Channels yet! >:3c See you then!”

---

“She said 1 PM, I was right” the young woman in the gazebo muttered to herself as she looked at her phone’s clock reading 1:30. The inside of the gazebo was shaded, but nevertheless the heat was starting to make her sweat. “If I’m going to sweat, then I want it to at least be because I’m exploring” she thought. She tied her brown hair into a ponytail and from there used a clawed pink hairclip to turn it into a bun. “I hope she isn’t staying in bed all day again.”

“Sorry I’m late, Jessie!” yelled another young woman approaching the gazebo, her red bob cut hair shining in the sun. She walked inside the gazebo and smiled at the sitting girl, then they gave each other a hug. “My dad moved the flashlights into the garage; took me forever to find them in there! He has enough spare parts and tools and stuff in there that he could run a pawn shop, I swear. Anyways, here ya go” she said while handing over a large yellow and black flashlight.

“A flashlight? Why would we need flashlights?” questioned Jessie

“Because there’s tunnels along the route, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to trip and fall into some stagnant rainwater sitting underground since, like, April just because I couldn’t see a big branch or something on the ground.”

“Its hot enough right now that that almost sounds like a good idea” joked Jessie.

“I came prepared for that too” replied Rachel as she pulled out two chilled Gatorades from her backpack.

“Thanks. A toast:” she dramatically raised her Gatorade bottle, “to finding out where the channels lead!”

“Cheers!” said the redhead as they both bonked their bottles together.

They walked over to the stone bridge crossing the channel nearby the library and, instead of crossing the bridge, went to the left of it and dropped down three feet or so down into the channel.

“Left or right?” asked Rachel

“Always go left, I say” said Jessie.

“Left it is!”

They proceeded onwards through the channel as it snaked its way out of the park. They had passed underneath three bridges and underneath the train tracks bordering the park on the east when they hit a dead end. The smell of death hit their noses.

“Is this the end already?” asked Jessie a little disappointed. “There’s nothing here but some dirt and a..” she leaned in for a closer look while plugging her nose “...a dead possum with black splotches on its tail.”

“Maybe for this part, but I know for a fact there’s more to explore. Lets go back to the stone bridge and keep going right instead.” replied Rachel.

“Sure. Hopefully we find something cool, and not just some roadkill.” said Jessie turning around, relishing the fresher air.

Behind their backs, the black splotches on the tail faded away.

Backtracking, they continued on as the canal left the park and started turning south.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better today, Rach” said Jessie.

“The sun is helping a lot” smiled Rachel, although Jessie thought she was forcing it a bit. “I’m sorry I bailed on you before. I just couldn’t get out of bed because everything...everything felt dumb. I felt dumb, my parents were dumb, and I kept asking what was the point of getting up when it felt like nothing good would happen?” she said with increasing energy. “Oh god here I go again I’m sorry you probably asked because you’re mad about me bailing and now here I go ruining the fun cause I won’t stop whining and-”

“Woah, Rachel, slow down. I’m not mad at you, and you’re not ruining it. I was just saying I’m glad you’re here, ok? Besides, its not the first time its happened. Now c’mon, we have places to go and channels to see.”

“Ok...sorry”

“You don’t need to apologize.”

“Sorry.”

Jessie sighed internally

After some time silently walking and ducking underneath a couple of small bridges, Rachel thought out loud “I wonder when they do it?”

“When who do what?” asked Jessie

“You saw all of that graffiti underneath the bridges, right? I wonder when they were made?” said Rachel as she placed her thumb and pointer finger along her chin and jaw questioningly.

“Probably not in the middle of the day, it’d be pretty obvious.”

“But we’re down here in the middle of the day and no ones said anything to us. Maybe we’ll run into someone making some more.”

“Ugh, I hope not” grimaced Jessie “they might be high on Oxycontin and, like, shoot us or something.”

“You listen to your aunt from Brookhaven too much” Rachel said shaking her head. “Graffiti makers are artists (said in a faux French accent), not murderers. The only thing they’re killing is the game.” she giggled

“At any rate, I would bet they probably come in the middle of the night to make sure they’re all alone.” Jessie shuddered and finished with “I’d be so creeped out down there in the dark by myself.”

They went underneath W Daws Street and emerged within the shade of trees. They continued their Shire-like walk through the channel, hearing lawns being mowed and kids playing basketball as they passed through the neighborhood. They ducked underneath W Tonhawa Street and shortly after crossed the street underground to the western side of N Lahoma Ave where they encountered their longest tunnel so far, the channel underneath W Grey Street. Rachel turned her flashlight on and Jessie said “Wow, you were right, that’s a lot darker than I thought it’d be” as she turned hers on. The lights reflected weakly against the small puddles of standing water amidst the silty mud lining the bottom. A large tree branch had lodged itself between the walls.

“What’d I tell ya?” said Rachel as she began entering the tunnel.

They walked carefully, making sure to not slip, as they lifted their legs up and over the big branch. Just as Jessie had put her last foot over the other side of the branch, something moved to the right of her. “AH!” Jessie yelled as she jumped forward and looked back.

A brown rat scurried from the tips of the branch to the trunk and from there down off and away from the girls.

“Oh geez” sighed Jessie in relief “Just a rat.”

Making it past the branch, they entered the blazing sun once more as the channel widened. With nothing but asphalt, buildings, and open skies surrounding it, the floor here was bone dry. Heat mirages could be seen to the left and right of the girls from the road just above them.

“Looks like we’ve made it to Main Street.” said Rachel, wiping her forehead. “C’mon, I bet it will sound real cool underneath there with all of that traffic above us.”

They had entered the tunnel, which was even longer than the previous. A few scattered rocks and bricks could be seen on the ground. It was slightly muddy, but not as much as what had gathered previously due to the branch. The metallic wind noise of passing traffic was muffled somewhat, but supplemented with a sort of bass note due to hearing the weight on the ground. The tunnel was dark, but a light could be seen at the distant end of the tunnel.

And so the girls walked.

And walked.

And walked.

And walked.

The sounds of traffic got quieter and quieter until eventually disappearing entirely.

“This is so weird” Rachel said “We should’ve made it to the end by now.”

“It seems like the light isn’t getting any closer. And what happened to all the traffic? Its only like 2:00.” added Jessie.

“I don’t like this...” said Rachel in a quieter and scared voice.

They continued to walk for what felt like another five minutes.

“Maybe we should turn back?” asked Rachel

“Yeah, I think we should; we must have accidentally stumbled into the sewers or- or something. Lets retrace our steps and find the channel aga-” something moved in the corner of her eye and they both heard a breathing sound.

Jessie turned her flashlight quickly to the right and saw nothing but a wall with some graffiti on it.

“Whew, thought I saw something. Probably another rat.” she said releasing the breath she had subconsciously holding.

Invisible in the dark, the flashlight revealed a sentence written in a soft, rounded black font. It read “I’ve heeded the words of the gate to Inferno.”

“Weird.” proclaimed Rachel. “Its hardly an art piece at all. And what does it even mean?”

“Inferno..Inferno..where have I heard that before...?” thought out loud Jessie before bringing her right fist on her left palm. “The Divine Comedy! I had to study it in my AP Lit class.”

“This doesn’t seem very comedic to me, Jess.” said Rachel

“Comedy back then meant..well that’s not important. Inferno is what Dante called Hell, and the gate to Hell had a long message inscribed on it, talking about how God built Hell eons and eons ago and blah blah blah, and it ended with the famous line ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter here.’”

“Oh, ok, maybe some emo kid in that same class came and wrote this dow-” she stopped as she and Jessie held their breath in fear.

The graffiti just took a breath.

The letters lifted up and outward as a deep breath could be heard from the wall. The letters were no longer flat against the surface, but extending off the wall like moss. It held there for a couple of minutes until the letters moved back to their original position as the sound of breathing out could be heard.

“What-what the hell?” Jessie said in fear. “Am I seeing things?”

“I saw it too” replied Rachel quietly. “I must be dreaming.”

Rachel approached the graffiti with her right hand extended to touch it.

It was the last thing she chose to do of her own free will.

The second her hand made contact with the letters, she stiffened up like a board and stood there absolutely still.

“Rachel!? What’s wrong?!” yelled Jessie as she approached.

Still standing stiffly, Rachel didn’t utter a single sound as dark splotches started forming on the side of her neck. They eventually formed a copy of the graffiti on the wall.

When it was done, Rachel dropped her hand limply to her side and starred at the wall with a thousand-yard stare. Then she started getting closer to the wall.

She pressed her whole body against the graffiti. And then slipped through the wall like water.

Jessie stood there in shock for a few seconds, trying to comprehend what she just saw. She snapped out of it and yelled “RACHEL! RACHEL WHERE ARE YOU?!?” She darted her head and flashlight left and right, desperately hoping to see that she had just stepped aside. All that was seen was the darkness, the damp, Rachel’s flashlight, and that ever taunting distant light. She started to cry and walked towards the graffiti. She moved as if to support herself against the wall, but her hand kept going. She was shocked out of her tears, fear growing in her, as she fell through the wall. Her own flashlight fell to the ground in a clatter.

Everything was bathed in the blue light of twilight. That was the first thing she noticed when she got up. The second thing was that the floor wasn’t concrete anymore, but worn and decrepit linoleum. Jessie stood up and looked around. In every direction except behind her was a seemingly endless warehouse. Open pallet shelves lined aisles at least 60 feet high. The choking to death shade of blue light came from nowhere but reached everywhere. Forklifts and hooks set in the ceiling were scattered about, looking somehow off from this distance. She continued to scan her surroundings when she saw movement in the distance. Focusing her eyes, she saw it was Rachel, walking slowly but already a good distance away.

“RACHEL!” Jessie yelled as she started running towards her. Catching up, she got in front of Rachel and put her hands on her shoulders. “Rachel, c’mon, the exit’s this way!” Rachel kept walking, and Jessie tightened her grip. “Rachel, what’s wrong? Let’s go!” Rachel grabbed Jessie’s hands and twisted them both painfully away. “OWOWOWOW RACHEL WHAT THE HELL?!”

“Get out of my way” said Rachel quietly and in monotone. “It calls me.” She let go of Jessie and continued walking.

“What are you talking about? What calls you? I don’t hear anything.” said Jessie confused

Rachel didn’t answer but continued on walking like nothing had happened. Jessie followed to give her hands and wrists time to stop hurting.

Mechanical noises could be heard in the direction that Rachel walked and Jessie followed. Everything was getting dirtier and rustier the further they walked. Jessie pleaded the whole time for Rachel to stop and turn around, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. At the next intersection of aisles ahead, Jessie noticed something to the side. Reaching it, she looked closer and was shocked and confused.

A headstone was there, bursting out of the cracked linoleum like a bamboo shoot.

There was writing on it, but Rachel never stopped walking so didn’t get the chance to read it before darting back to Rachel’s side.

From that point on, the headstones continued to be a common sight. Sometimes they burst from the floor, sometimes they leaned against the pillars of the shelves where plots of dirt and spider lilies were. One of them was even suspended mid-air by bungee cords and hooks. Bile-yellow liquid that smelled of milk left in the sun for days dripped from the cords and hooks.

Furthermore, the shelves themselves were no longer quite empty. Empty pallets had begun to fill the spaces. The pallets themselves ranged from freshly cut wood to rotting and waterlogged. Most were made of wood, but some were made of the same type of stone as the headstones, cruelly and harshly cut, and some were hairy and breathing. Stacked on top of the more disgusting pallets were headstone templates, open fridges full of rotting ground beef, and sections of drywall with bullet holes and blood splatters on them.

Jessie had gagged through these sights, finally vomiting after passing under the dripping headstone, but Rachel continued to walk on nonchalantly. The mechanical noises were much louder now and Jessie was quite scared at this point. She tried again to physically stop Rachel. She held onto her legs, begging her to stop. Jessie was squeezing hard and had shut her eyes. After a few seconds of this struggle, she heard soft fluttering, then felt a sharp stab in her right hand. She screamed as she let go and opened her eyes. Flapping in place next to her was a crow that somehow was existing at a lower frame rate than her and the reality she knew. The crow’s incredibly sharp and black beak, now partially scarlet tipped, burst out of the nose of an angry theater mask that was as much of the crow’s self as its feathers and wings.

“WORTHLESS!” the crow yelled as it stabbed Jessie’s other hand.

She yelped and got up, covering her head from the flapping crow around her. The crow only left when she let Rachel get 10 paces ahead of her.

From there, the crow flew off and came to rest on a rafter of the ceiling nearby. Other crows could be seen ahead resting on the shelves and headstones, every one of them glaring with their horrible masks.

Every time Jessie got any closer to Rachel, another crow would divebomb her. With every attack came the yelling of some hurtful thing, from short sentences like “Your parents didn’t want you!” and “Kill yourself!” to single word slurs and other obscenities.

Rachel walked, Jessie followed, and the crows watched on as they made it to the source of the mechanical noises. The forklifts and hooks were operating on their own, moving back and forth in an endless scurry of moving cargo. The hooks in the ceiling moved along their tracks as they hauled large glass boxes of dirt six feet tall and 12 feet long from top shelf to top shelf. One of the hooks snapped wetly as a glass box dropped violently to the floor. Instead of shattering into a million pieces however, the glass box stamped its way through the floor, carving out a large square hole within the linoleum. Above, the hook dripped blood and marrow from the snapped bone within. The top of the glass box, just barely above ground level, swung open on a hinge. A forklift approached slowly with a heavy load. Jessie saw that no one was in the driver’s seat of the forklift, but she guessed how it moved. Within the cooling grills for the engine, flesh and teeth could be seen. The forklift lowered the rotting pallet directly on top of the dirt and backed away. On top of the pallet was a dirty coffin. The coffin and pallet shook violently before being sucked straight down into the dirt. The door of the glass box closed on its own and sank a little, becoming flush with the ground. Banging noises could be heard within the box as traffic continued.

Rachel marched through all of this traffic like she owned the place, only stopping for a moment to look straight down at one of the many glass boxes in the ground along the path. Jessie had a much harder time avoiding the forklifts and hooks, fearing getting ran over or crushed from above by the dirt or sucked in and buried alive.

While headstones and terrible things in the shelves and glass graves still lined the path, the mechanical work was at this point a good distance behind them. All that could be heard at this point was more beating of wings, and the occasional sob.

Jessie at this point had given up on stopping Rachel, but hoped against hope that she was simply going towards another exit. She didn’t let herself think about how unlikely this was, otherwise she’d start screaming and never stop. Jessie looked ahead and saw something she hadn’t seen since she first entered: a wall. A wall as wide as far as the eye could see was ahead of her. In the center of her point of view was something tall moving back and forth alongside some tall things she couldn’t make out from this distance. Rachel stopped, then broke into a run straight towards the end.

Jessie ran after her, keeping her distance in fear of the masked crows, until Rachel had stopped just 20 yards away. Jessie had seen so many horrible things already, but this broke her. Above all else, she would be seeing this in her nightmares for years to come. Before her was a ten foot tall armless humanoid with corpse-white skin made of paper but with a head of pitch black. Its back was to her as it shuffled along in the same lowered frame rate as the terrible crows. Surrounding the thing were mirrors as tall as it was, arranged in an octagon. The thing approached a mirror on the left corner, stopped, and started to sob. Construction paper tears fell to the ground. It turned around and Jessie’s bladder emptied as she stared and was stared at. The thing had crumpled balls of paper for eyes, a mouth glued on, and a terrible circular mass of black thorns bursting out of its chest. The thorns writhed and moved. Some of the vines reached around and whipped the thing on the back, some were weaving in and out of the paper like thread in a seam, but most were tangled amongst the others, shaking as if in anger. The only part of the torso not covered by the thorns was a small cutout where the thing’s grey and torn anatomically correct heart sat on the outside. Even as the thing got closer to the girls, the crows would divebomb the heart, piercing it with their beaks while they yelled their horrible words.

“I’m here” announced Rachel to the thing. She raised her arms. “Take me. Feed on me.”

“RACHEL NO!” Jessie yelled as she charged ahead to stop Rachel one last time. She didn’t get far before a whole murder of crows descended on her and started fiercely tearing at her. She screamed and tried to shield herself from the crows as she watched through bloodied feathers and angry masks Rachel walk closer to the thing. She stopped just before it, and lightning quick, was lifted into the air by the black thorns wrapping around her arms and legs. Blood was starting to get into Jessie’s eyes as she watched her get brought slowly within the writhing mass of thorns. The blood and birds blocked her from seeing what happened next, but she heard terrible wet ripping noises from where the thing was. The birds flew off to rest, and Rachel was gone.

The monster had turned its horrible gaze once again on Jessie, and Jessie ran. She could hardly see, but she ran towards the mechanical noises. She ran and ran, dodging divebombs and forklifts. Her lungs felt like they were being shredded into bits, but she kept running until she ran right to the wall where she had first entered. The wall was solid. Jessie fell hard on the ground, dazed. Unseen by her, the blood she had left on the wall had started to get absorbed, and the wall itself got thinner. Jessie got up and, having not seen this, started to panic. She pounded on the wall again and again, begging to be let out. Blood from her hands and head flicked onto the wall again and again, getting absorbed. She slammed her hands one last time and then, on the next swing, fell out. The graffiti behind her sighed contently.

She emerged from the tunnel bleeding, broken, and alone. The warm and sunny summer day mocked her.

She told her parents what happened.

And Rachel was gone.

She told the police what happened even as they scolded her for wasting their time.

And Rachel was gone.

She helped Rachel’s parents post missing person flyers around town.

And Rachel was still gone.

No one had believed Jessie’s story of warehouses and paper monsters. Jessie herself would start to doubt it, weeks later. But her scars and nightmares reminded her of its terrible truth. The official story was that Jessie and Rachel had gone exploring and Rachel got kidnapped. Jessie, they assumed, was stabbed when trying to stop it.

But Jessie knew better.

Winter 2011 Norman, Oklahoma, United States of America

In the cold and unforgiving night that came much too early, a Creek girl from Alcott Middle School snuck out of her house. She walked the streets alone, holding a strange green gem in her hand, using it like a compass. Following its living pulses, she descended into the cold and dark flood channels. Her shoes did almost nothing to stop the cold from the water seeping into her bones. She entered the tunnel and stood before the graffiti Jessie and Rachel had read half a year ago. With a flash of green light, she stood there in a green and frilled Catholic school uniform, holding a long wooden staff that ended in a curved war club. She stepped into the graffiti.

Three hours later, she stood in the tunnel again. The graffiti was gone. She had a few cuts on her forehead and legs. With another flash of light her weapon disappeared and she returned to her normal clothes.

No one, not even her parents, knew she was out there.

No one knew the horrors she faced regularly.

No one knew how close she came to death.

And she never knew what happened to Jessie and Rachel.