The smell hits me first. I don’t even have time to freak out over the feeling of straw poking at my back or the sight of the crumbling walls before me as I start retching, the stench of blood overwhelming. I am not usually a squeamish guy, but the scent of blood is as thick as a miasma. It takes me a second to compose myself before I stand up and survey my surroundings.

I have to pinch myself a few times to make sure I’m not still dreaming. Not only have my surroundings so drastically changed, even the nice pajamas I was wearing have transformed into some sort of long wool dressing gown. It’s so scratchy I felt like I could break out in hives any minute. With bare feet I step onto the rough wooden floor, wincing as it creaks under my weight.

“Please hold on long enough for me to get out of here,” I pray aloud, trying to be as light on my feet as possible. I run to the closet first, opening to find that my clothes have disappeared as well, leaving only my cell phone on the rotting wood.

“Thank god for little miracles,” I mutter.

I grip the phone like a lifeline and walk through the open threshold where the door used to be. As soon as I cross the threshold the screams start again, so loud it makes my ears ring. Splinters of wood rain down from the ceiling. My heart races a mile a minute as I run out of the room down the stairs. The stairs crumble with every step. By the time I am at the foot of the stairs they are nothing more than sawdust on the floor.

My stomach is in knots now. I try to breathe deeply in and out, just like my therapist would have told me, but it’s no use. My breaths come in short bursts as the screaming starts again. It’s even louder here, echoing all around me.

Though I am hyperventilating my mind begins to compartmentalize. The screaming is the biggest priority right now. I know for sure we are the only ones in the house, otherwise I would have heard someone before. After all, a parish house isn’t that big. Could someone have come in during this weird… transformation? I shake my head at the thought. Logically, the only one who could be screaming right now is Father Finnian.

“Where are you, Father?” I shout desperately when the screams stop.

I run desperately into the dining room, and freeze when I take in the scene before me.

Food is molded and covered in dust, bread black with age and fruit crawling with maggots. The beautiful art is torn and dusty, yet the candles still flicker with eerie light. There are only two complete chairs now, the rest lie in splinters, forming a circle around the table.

The same table I ate from last night.

The thought makes my skin crawl. Still, I pass the dining room and head into a dilapidated kitchen. The screams are especially loud here, and now I can make out high-pitched giggles. My stomach is churning with fear and I want to run away. I remember my dream though, the voice that I heard just before I woke up, and I take another step forward instead. The screams are the loudest here, the loudest behind the only door that seems intact in the whole house.

Cold sweat breaks out on my back as I grip the cold brass knob, turn it, then open the door. Abruptly, the laughter stops. The screams die down into whimpering sobs, and find myself walking down a set of steep stairs.

At least I know where stench of blood is coming from now.

That scent, of blood and rotting flesh and every foul thing imaginable, is truly unbearable. Every step I take is slow as a snail, every inch closer to the horrors I know await me down in the basement. The fear practically paralyzes me, but I force myself to more. The screams and giggles are replaced by whispering and scurrying, as though a thousand rats are desperately trying to scamper away from me.

It feels as though I am walking forever before my feet finally touch the bottom of the abyss. There are candles here, sitting in little holders on the floor, just enough to illuminate the gruesome scene before me.

As soon as I take a good look at the creatures again, they start giggling. There are three of them in total, standing over the broken, bloody body at their feet. Their skin is leathery and gray, covered in bright splashes of blood from the body in front of them. I want to scream but no sound passes my gaping mouth.

I look down at the man, at Father Finnian, whose chest rises and falls with shuddering breaths. His hair is long now, and matted with blood and dirt. Chapped bloodless lips soundlessly speak, as though he is uttering a prayer, or perhaps a warning. He is so thin I can see the outline of his bones, and not even a bit of cloth covers him.

The creatures laugh louder. To my immense surprise, the one in the middle abruptly stops laughing. He must be the leader. When he stops the other two immediately shut their mouths. After a brief moment, he turns to me and begins to speak.

“Little man, why don’t you go back to your vehicle and pretend you never saw anything.”

The creature’s voice is gruff and carries a note of warning. I stay, paralyzed, at the foot of the steps and stare dumbly at the battered body of the man who was so kind to me mere ago. Though my body is frozen my mind runs a mile a minute. I keep hearing that voice in my dream telling me to save him, to save that man. How, though? I’m just a carpenter, just a guy who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Alyssa has always been the brave, outgoing one of the family.

I take a step forward. The creatures frown, but instead of advancing towards me they back away. I take another step forward, and they take another step back. The creatures start mumbling amongst themselves, but I don’t pay them any attention. My heart hammers in my chest as I kneel beside Father Finnian. I try not to vomit as the stench of blood and bodily fluids wafts over me, stronger than ever before.

The priest’s lips move again but still no sound comes out. I gingerly take him in my arms. For a moment I close my eyes, waiting for the creatures to attack.

Instead, I feel a gust of warm wind sweep past me. I open my eyes and see my car beside me, with nothing else but barren fields all around. Not even the church remains, though the weight of Father Finnian was still heavy in my arms.

At least I know I’m not delusional

My clothes are normal again too, albeit torn and covered in grime. The dim light of early morning snaps me out of my shock. I jump to action, unlocking my car, opening the backseat door and shoving Father Finnian in as gently and quickly as I could. I jump into the driver’s seat and turn on the car, not even bothering to wonder why I suddenly have a full tank of gas now.

All that matters now is getting to Alyssa’s place as fast as possible.

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I floor it, not bothering to look at the speedometer, and pulled my phone out of my pocket. Oh, shit. Somehow, I’d missed 50 calls and 20 texts from Alyssa and my parents. I called Alyssa first, because if I didn’t, she would probably skin me when I get to her place. The phone does not even finish one ring before she picks up.

“Joe you little fucking asshole what’s wrong with you!? No calls in two days, two fucking days! Mom and dad were ready to report you missing!” Alyssa’s voice is panicked and angry. My head swims.

“Two days?” I ask in return. “I have only been gone for one night.”

There is a pause. When Alyssa speaks again, she sounds worried.

“Joe what the hell happened?”

“It’s too much to explain right now. I’m coming to your house and bringing someone with me. You’re going to need your med kit.” I speak slowly, trying to stop my voice from shaking. Father Finnian groans in the backseat, so loud I am sure she can hear it.

“Okay okay, bring ‘im into the kitchen when you get here. You know the drill.” Alyssa hangs up abruptly after that, and I focus on getting to her place as fast as I physically can without crashing.

Many people would probably ask me why the hell I would bring a critically injured person to my sister’s place instead of the hospital. Truth be told, my sister is basically a one-man hospital. Before Alyssa retired, she’d gone through two missions with special forces as a medic. Her wealth of knowledge is astounding, and most of the people on the little cul-de-sac where she lived went to her for advice despite the occasional oddities that would have otherwise made her a pariah.

Every once in a while, Father Finian would groan, or try to speak, from the backseat. My back is steeped in cold sweat as I drive, feeling guilty somehow, as if I had smuggled the priest away rather than rescued him.

When the creatures appear in front of the car I almost had a heart attack. The sun is fully in the sky now, and those strange things are just… standing there in broad daylight.

It just doesn’t seem natural. The few times I’ve gone to church my priest has always said creatures like that belong in the dark, that they have no place in the light.

I guess he was wrong.

They disappear the next second, as though a figment of my imagination, yet when I look in the review mirror, I could still see smoke rising from the places they had stood, and black sears, like hoofprints, on the road. My heart hammers but I do not stop driving until I see Alyssa’s long driveway come into view.

Alyssa’s house is the easiest one to find on the cul-de-sac, for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, the moment Alyssa had moved in she painted the entire exterior of the house a gaudy violet, with the window frames and doors done in black. Second was the giant pride flag hanging on a flagpole near the house, always waving in the wind. I pull in next to Alyssa’s army green Jeep just as she runs through the door, still dressed in pajamas.

She opens the passenger side door as I get out of the car, and quickly orders me to carry his legs.

“I knew I shoulda snagged a stretcher too,” she mutters as we lug him into the house. Alyssa, true to her word, has already divested the kitchen table of its acorn-themed tablecloth and plethora of knickknacks, leaving just the smooth mahogany to place Father Finnian on.

“Do you need help?” I ask quietly as she starts getting to work, grabbing several towels and a basin of hot water that she prepared, along with sterile solution and other tools I can’t even begin to name.

“Not right now, I just need you to sit down in that chair over there,” she says, pointing to a chair in the far corner of the kitchen, “and tell me exactly what happened. Don’t leave out anything, this dude looks like he’s been through hell and back.”

I sit down, taking a deep breath to compose myself. I take in the familiar scent of lavender which always seems to permeate the air in her house. Somehow, just being in a familiar place again makes me a little calmer.

I tell Alyssa everything, from losing gas to the weird creatures. She listens as she works, occasionally nodding, occasionally muttering under her breath. When I finish the story, I feel as though a hundred pounds had been lifted from my shoulders. With a sigh, I leaned back in the chair and try not to watch my sister sew up a particularly deep cut.

As Alyssa works exhaustion finally sets in, and I drift off into a blessedly dreamless sleep.

I awake to my shoulder being violently slapped.

“Gee thanks sis, I really needed that after my near-death experience,” I mumble through a yawn. Alyssa just laughs. She looks invigorated; she always does after a job well-done.

“Well I just spent almost two hours patching up mr. magic here-“

“It’s Father Finnian, actually,” I interject.

“Whatever, the point is I just finished patching him up. If I didn’t know you, bro, I would have said you were on a bad acid trip. The wounds on this guy were weird though, and so was his clothing. I’ve never seen hand-spun wool clothing on anyone before. It confirms the shit you said.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it,” I say, trying to ignore the chills that suddenly wrack my body. I was hoping for Alyssa to prove me wrong, not for her to agree with me wholeheartedly.

“Yes, but until he wakes up, we won’t get any answers. I hope Father Finnian doesn’t mind being wearing your spare clothes for now, because his are totally unsalvageable.”

I shrug my shoulders. “Where did you put him?”

“In your room,” Alyssa replies nonchalantly.

Alyssa’s house has three bedrooms: her room, a guest bedroom, and my guest bedroom. I have stayed at her house often enough for deliveries that I had my own bedroom. In fact, we often joked that one day I should just move to the cul-de-sac.

“I’m going to go sit next to him. I would hate to wake up alone in an unfamiliar place,” I say quickly, and leave Alyssa to clean up the bloody kitchen. I really don’t think I can stomach the stench of any more blood. Alyssa just waves me away as she cleans .

I walk through the wood paneled living room with its floral couches, up the stairs, and into the hallway covered with posters of vintage actresses. My bedroom is the last door on the left, the dark door currently flung wide open to let in some air. I walk in, quietly as I can, trying not to wake Father Finnian.

The priest lays on the bed, face calm, chest rising and falling. After Alyssa had cleaned him up, I finally recognize that lovely regal face again, dark hair laying around him in curls. Occasionally his thin lips move, as though he’s trying to say something.

I move to the dark nightstand, pouring him a glass of water from the jug on the nightstand for when he woke up, just to occupy myself. I place the back of my hand against his forehead, as if to double check that he doesn’t have a fever.

Father Finnian was quite lucky, in retrospect. He had suffered so many injuries at the hands of those weird creatures, yet all he needed was a few stiches and a lot of bandaging.

Around twenty minutes later, as I am zoning out out, Alyssa creeps into the room.

“Come on bro,” she whispered, “I gotta ask you something.”

I quickly leave the room with Alyssa, and we head back downstairs, this time to the living room. She’d burnt some incense to get rid of the smell of blood, and the tv is on for some white noise. As we sit down on the plush sofas, she turns to me with a look of the utmost seriousness.

“Joseph, what are you going to do with that guy?”

“What do you mean?”

“He could be into some real serious shit, this could be human trafficking or Area 51 stuff I don’t know,” Alyssa replies, throwing her hands into the air.

“I don’t think it’s either of those. I really don’t know. I was just going to wait until he woke up and ask him what happened,” I say.

“Okay, but we have to proceed carefully you know,” Alyssa sighs. I nodded, then throw my arm around my older sister.

“Come on ‘Lyss, we’ll be fine. I’m sure it’s nothing too weird,” I laugh. Alyssa joins in, and the moment of tension snaps like an elastic band.

“I’m glad to see you still have a good head on your shoulders Joseph, now go watch over your Mr. Mystery,” Alyssa teases.

“I thought he was Mr. Magic?”

“Nah, Mr. Mystery sounds so much better, don’t you think?”