You showed the thing in the crawlspace mercy the first day because you were tired. You thought it might just be poking around, and it would leave. But the next day it came back before you went to bed. You went downstairs with your gun because you’re not in the mood to deal with a rabies shot. When you saw two children huddled together you were thankful you don’t practice the ‘shoot at anything that moves’ etiquette that is so prevalent in the backwoods town you’ve found yourself in. The children were not afraid of you, or your gun, they were afraid you would make them go home. It was late in the night, after not one, but two cups of hot chocolate that they finally told you why. The next night they came back, but you were gone. You were in their house now, but no one would ever find any evidence of that, you know how to be careful. Their father knew how to be careful too, but not careful enough not to fall down the stairs. They came back only once, to tell you that you’re their hero. You told them that you’re no hero, but sometimes, it takes a bad man to do the right thing. They left you alone after that, the only thing going bump in the night at either of your houses now, is: The Podcast Inside Your House.

I found this letter on the side of the road covered in stains that looked to be either wine or blood. After reading it, it may be both. I’m sure it’s just a joke, it has to be. I cleared up some of the typos, but other than that I’ve left it exactly as I found it. It took me forever to type it up, the handwriting was terrible. Again, I'm sure it’s just some kind of prank, but I’d like for it to get to who it was meant to reach. So Destiny; if you're out there, I hope you find this.

Dear Destiny,

I hope this letter finds you. I hope I get a chance to mail it before this all catches up to me.

I want to start with something I never liked saying to you: you were right. You were right about everything. Back in college when you’d drag me to all of those old rotting places searching for something, and I told you there was nothing to find, I was wrong. 

I miss those days. You had all that silly equipment you’d bring with you. There was that big funnel thing, that admittedly did make every little sound into something scary. You had all those different gadgets meant to sense different things, always acronyms I could never remember. We’d sit up all night and listen to the old creaks and groans that live in every building, and you’d record them and play them back on something that beeped or lit up and swear that you could hear voices. You wanted so badly to find something impossible, something bigger than us. 

It was the same way at church. You tried them all out, and when you couldn’t drag anyone else along I’d come with you. You were so sure that if you looked hard enough you could find the right one.

I never wanted to believe in either one; ghosts or gods, but now I’m writing to you because I finally saw something impossible. I caught a glimpse into the world beyond us, something unexplainable and horrible. I don’t know if what I found is closer to the ghosts, or the gods that you were always looking for, but it was not of this world. 

There are a lot of things in my line of work that I wish I could unsee. You always tried to pry about that. You said it was because you wanted to be there for me as a friend and I’ve always known that wasn’t the whole truth. You’ve got a morbid streak, and you want to hear about bad things, dark things. 

So I guess I’ll get to it. I’m sure you’ve seen it on the news by now, and god I hope you’re watching from back home, and you didn’t come out here again to find me. Please don’t do anything stupid. 

First off, I know it was your idea to go to the rave, but any thoughts you’re having about this being somehow your fault need to stop right now. You’re my friend because you get me out of my damn shell when I’m just laying around the house being miserable. No one could have possibly predicted what happened there. 

I thought about staying home when you said you were sick. Both because I wouldn’t get another chance to see you before you left town, and because going to a rave alone sounded like a lot. I wasn’t sure they’d even let me in, without you I just look like an undercover cop. But you were right, I needed badly to get out of the damn house. I’ve been alone with my thoughts too much lately. 

I wore that stupid outfit you picked out for me. I know in this letter that I’m telling you that you were right about a lot of things, but I’m not going to budge on the hot preacher outfit being a bit much. I felt silly getting dressed up without you, but hell, we’re getting old, and we’ve only got a few more years of doing stupid stuff like this. A few more years if I get out of this one anyway. 

To my complete surprise, they let me in, but with the caveat that I take their own special version of communion. To get inside I had to eat a communion wafer with a cross printed on it. I later found out it was laced with acid and molly, not a lot of either one, but enough to feel something. I also had to take a little cup of wine to wash it down. It was fed to me by a girl in a short skirt with too many necklaces, and supervising the whole thing were a man and woman dressed up as a priest and a nun, and the nun had an even shorter skirt than the door girl. They checked to make sure I drank the wine before letting me in. The wine was laced with something too, but we’ll get to that later. 

The church must have just been abandoned because aside from the complete lack of furniture and one broken window, it looked like it could still be in service. I don’t know much about architecture, or religion, but it was a beautiful place. It felt old, with lots of stone near the bottom of the walls and stained glass near the top. I’ve never felt any kind of spiritual calling, but when you would drag me to different churches back in the day, I do remember feeling something at the old ones, if only a sense of awe at the place itself. This was the very best of them. Looking up at the ceiling and seeing the rib-like beams crisscrossing in arches across the top and seeing the tiniest details that were poured into every space of the stained glass windows, I did feel that same sense of awe. I could see how being in such a place could bring about a sense of something beyond what we know. 

After the drugs kicked in I was certain there was a God, and that he was there with us at that rave. Also, I hate to burst your bubble Destiny, but about half the girls there had the same idea as you, to dress up as slutty nuns. It was scary and exciting and strange all at once. I don’t know how potent the doses they gave me were but I wasn’t outright hallucinating, at least I don’t think so. But the blinking lights and deafening music overpowered everything and I’d have to stare a bit to figure out exactly who or what I was looking at as the night wore on. It was like I was seeing things but not understanding them, but a handful of sights before it all went bad did stick with me. I remember two guys also decked out in preacher gear made out up at the altar. A girl in a neon green dress danced with me, and when she brushed against me it felt otherworldly. I’d catch myself forgetting where I was, and who I was until I thought about it very hard. But then I stopped doing that and just let loose. There was wine everywhere and I had my fill of that too. 

As the night grew late, my memories were even more sparse. I remember lying down in a pile of other people and looking up at the ceiling, saying things that we all thought were profound, revelations about life and the meaning of it all.  I remember the girl in the green dress coming over to try and get me to dance with her, and telling her I couldn’t get up. She laid down with us too, and I remember looking around and seeing practically no one dancing anymore. She kissed me, I remember that, and I remember feeling more at peace than I’ve ever felt in my life. 

Then it all went black. 

I woke up to a slaughter. I remember hearing the screams before I opened my eyes, realizing what I was hearing, and thinking for only a moment about just keeping my eyes closed. But the drugs were wearing off enough that I knew that wasn’t an option. 

I saw the ceiling first, different than the one I’d been looking at when I passed out, and this one was staying still, I was sobering up. I opened my eyes just a bit and moved my head slowly to take in what was happening, having enough presence of mind to pretend I was still sleeping. 

I took in the horrors of the room slowly, trying not to give myself away. My first assessment was my hands, which had been chained to a cement table. On either side of me, there were two more tables, and I wondered what the fuck they had been built for, it felt like a morgue. I soon realized they were not the only modifications to the room though. Built into the walls were a dozen or so metal hooks, and chained to those hooks were the people who hadn't been lucky enough to get tables of their own. It looked like we were in the church's basement, the stonework on the walls looked the same, but there were no windows down here. 

The screaming, crying, and coppery smell in the air prepared me for something bad, but what I saw down there was something you could never truly be prepared for. As I slowly scanned the room, I realized who was responsible. It was the door girl, the priest, and the nun who had drugged us. Well, we knew they were drugging us, I guess we just didn’t know what kind. They were the only ones not tied up, and they were working their way down the line of people chained to the far wall. To their right, the people chained up were bloody and limp. Bloody enough that I wasn’t sure they’d ever move again. To their left, those who had woken up were struggling and yelling. The person they were working on in the middle had not woken up. The nun held up a bloodied bowl, while the priest lifted up the shirt of the unconscious man. There was something drawn on his stomach but I couldn’t make out what. The door girl grabbed the man’s hand, and started talking, and over the sobbing in the room I tried to make out what she was saying but it was lost in the misery. Then the priest produced a knife and lifted it up as the nun moved the bowl closer, and the priest stabbed the man in his stomach. Mercifully, he did not wake up as the priest carved a hole in his abdomen, and then reached inside. I couldn’t see what he pulled out of him, but the bloody mess spilled out over the lip of the bowl. When he stopped pulling, the nun rose up and walked to the edge of the room, then through a hallway and into another part of the basement. She returned with the bowl empty, as the priest and door girl moved to the next in line. 

The next person up was awake, and my adrenaline spiked even further when I realized it was the girl in the green dress. I gave up on any pretense of sleep then, and started yanking at the chains on my arms. I also started looking around the rest of the room, trying to pinpoint the exits so I’d be ready if I did get free. When I arched my back to try and see behind me, I realized that the trio had another accomplice. Behind me was an altar boy. Well, someone dressed like one anyway, but he was far too tall to be a child. Unlike the other three, this one had taken care to cover his face, and he had some kind of oily burlap cloth covering his head. 

He’d been drawing on the stomach of a girl chained up on the wall behind me, and I looked over just as he was lowering her shirt, so I couldn’t see what it was. When he saw me looking at him he came over to me next. As he approached, the girl in the green dress started screaming from across the room, but I didn’t look at her, instead, I focused on the task of trying to make out anything about this man to be able to identify him later. I tried to make out any defining features, squinting to see if I could see anything under the burlap sack, but all I could see were the strange stains in the front. The sack looked old, and the oily stains were concentrated over the mouth nose, and eyes, like he’d been leaking fluid onto it. As he lifted up my shirt I looked at his hands, but he was wearing white gloves. The red and white robes covered every inch of his body, so I can’t tell you anything about him, other than he was maybe my height. 

The altar man started feeling around on my stomach like he was looking for something. He turned his face up to the ceiling and started moving his hands slower, then stopped. He then scribbled on my stomach with a marker, and I craned my neck to look down and see what he’d drawn. It was a pair of eyes. 

With that, he moved on to the next person. The priest, the nun, and the girl in the skirt were making their way through the room quickly now, becoming more efficient as they went. I struggled openly against the chains, just like everyone else who hadn’t been sliced open yet. It was storming outside, and though the drugs had mostly worn off, every time the thunder clapped I would find myself disoriented, the room looking fuzzy and strange. I remember thinking then that maybe this was all just some horrible dream or some kind of hallucination. I closed my eyes for just a second, willing myself to wake up if I could, but when I opened them I was still looking at the same dirty ceiling. 

They were closer to me now, the holy trinity, and as they approached their next victim, I tried to get a glimpse at what they’d drawn on him. It looked like a mouth and several long thin curved sticks. I wondered then if they were drawing what they were going to take from us, and I continued my useless struggle with a renewed effort, realizing my eyes might be on the line. But just like with the others, they cut open his stomach, and his face was left untouched. Out of some morbid sense of curiosity, I watched what they pulled out. It was a bloody mess like the others, but this time I spotted them pulling out what looked almost like bones. But I didn’t hear any cracking, and certainly, the knife they were using would not be strong enough to saw through his ribs. 

The nun brought her offering to the back room, which also looked to be the way out, but I started to think that maybe I was planning my escape in vain. 

I’ve never been quite honest with you about my life Destiny. After college, those years we drifted apart for a while, I did a lot of things I’m not proud of. I’ve also never been quite honest with you about what I do for work. I’m not going to tell you now in case this letter falls into the wrong hands. But I’ll tell you this much. This was not the first time I’ve been convinced I was going to die. I’m telling you all of this by letter because I’ve destroyed my phone, and it’s not the first time I've had to do that either. I’ve lied to you about a lot of things, certain scars I couldn’t explain, and why I’m really traveling to the places I’m traveling to. I’m telling you this because I want you to worry less about me. 

I’d wondered many times in my life if I was going to die young, and as the screams in the room died out one by one I started to accept that this might be the end. I listened to the thunder outside, and I wondered if there was anything waiting for me on the other side, or if this was it. Was the building we were in a monument to nothing? I wasn’t sure if I was more afraid of nothing, or something, because if there was something, I wasn’t sure if I would be going to the bad place or the good. 

When your parents named you Destiny I think they doomed you to become the type of girl who collects crystals and asks about horoscopes on the first date. The word itself is something you’ve always believed in too, and after what happened, I think I might as well. I wonder too, if you were spared in some cosmic way. After all, you were supposed to be at the rave with me. Maybe you do have someone looking out for you. I can say for certain that I now firmly believe that I have someone looking out for me. There’s no other way for me to explain what happened next. 

As the priest, the nun, and the door girl moved closer to me I could finally make out what the door girl was saying as she held the hands of the dying. She was praying. I didn’t look up to see how many more people there were before me. I just closed my eyes and listened to the storm outside, overpowering the screams of those still breathing. 

The thunder had been growing louder all night, and finally, there was a boom so loud it shook the whole building and the lights went out. I was sure the church got struck because I felt the table below me snap and shake. The crack from the thunder was so loud my ears were ringing. I moved around to try and see in the darkness when I felt the chains below me shift. Something was digging into my back now too. I shuffled around and quickly realized the table under me had cracked. 

I didn’t waste any time. The table had cracked in half and started to fall open, which let me slip the chains out of the middle. My arms were still shackled, but I wasn’t tied to the table anymore. 

I know what you’re thinking, I should have tried to save everyone else. But I’m not that kind of person. I was outnumbered and drunk and I went straight for the exit as quietly as I could. I heard the priest and the nun whispering now, but they didn’t have any reason to assume anyone had gotten free. 

I went into the hallway the nun had been disappearing to and spotted the stairs right away. But leading to the right was a trail of blood and I don’t know why but I followed it. I still can’t explain why, it was like I wasn’t in charge of my own feet, which wanted very much to run upstairs and get out of that hellhole. But I was dragged into the room, the room where the nun had been dumping buckets of viscera, and inside I saw something equally horrible and miraculous. 

There was a large table in there, shaped like a cross, and in the middle was what was left of a man. They’d lit candles all around the room, so I could unfortunately see everything. I stepped closer, willed by that invisible force. I remember thinking at first that he was being dissected. He only had one leg and one arm, and his torso looked like it was cut open. He was missing random bits of flesh and bone in the middle and his face was a mess. He didn’t have any eyes or ears, and his long hair was matted with blood. 

I looked around the small room for the pile of guts that the nun must have been putting somewhere, but I didn’t see anything. It didn’t make sense, I was certain she’d been coming in here, the blood led in here, and judging by what they’d taken from this man too, there should have been a whole pile of offal somewhere. 

But there was nothing in the room except the man. I don’t know how long I was in there, held in that dreamlike state, but I started to look closer at him, and to my horror, I saw his torso rise and fall. He was still alive.

Inside his abdomen I could see exposed ribs and guts, I had no idea how he could lose so much blood and still be alive. I looked closer at his injuries and it was hard to tell what kind of knife had inflicted them. I couldn't see any cut marks or anything, it was like, on the parts that were missing, his skin and organs had simply fallen off. Then, I noticed something even stranger. On his right side, where things had been carved away to reveal the inside, it looked like one of his rib bones was moving. My gaze locked in and I watched as it shifted back inside him, moving of its own accord before snapping into place. I noticed then too, that the blood being pumped out of him on the parts that were missing was sort of flowing back in, like it was moving around to go back inside his body as soon as it left. 

I looked up at his face then and noticed the neat ring of blood around his mouth, absent of any injury. Like it had been cut off and re-attached. 

He grabbed me then, with his one arm and I saw as it clasped my hand that there was a hole running neatly through the center. I didn’t cry out, though it took all my willpower, and he pulled me close to his eyeless face. Then he spoke in a voice that made me feel at ease despite the horrifying face that it came from. It was a voice that sounded strangely familiar. He told me “My child, you have to stop them.” 

Then he let me go and the strange spell that had been holding me there vanished. I snuck up the stairs, listening to the screams resume in the dungeon below. They hadn’t noticed my absence yet. 

I got out quickly, picked a direction, and ran. They would notice the cracked table any minute now. We were in an industrial area, and there weren’t really houses to knock on, so I just tried to find a road that might have cars this time of night. The first car I flagged down didn’t stop, and neither did the second. For the third car I decided to take matters into my own hands and I stood in the road. They didn’t want to stop but they didn’t want to hit me either, so they tried to drive around me but I jumped in front, I was desperate. They weren't going very fast, but with the wine, the drugs, and the adrenaline, I hit my head hard enough to pass out when we collided. 

I do wish I’d been more careful because, by the time I woke up, the others in the basement were long dead. There were police waiting for me when I woke up in the hospital, and I did tell them what happened, minus the bit at the end, but I don’t think they believed me. I’m sure you’ve been keeping up with the news, they still haven’t found any of the bodies. 

On the back of this letter, I’ve written down everything I can remember about the priest, the door girl, and the nun. I’ve also written down anything I can remember about the other people at the rave, in case any of the party-goers didn’t tell anyone where they were going that night.

I had to stay in the hospital the next night, they were worried about the combination of concussion and drugs. I wonder if the drugs made it more or less horrifying for the people who were still rolling when the carnage began. Did the ecstasy make them careless, or did it make them feel everything more? 

A few hours after my interview I started to feel well enough to eat something, but it made me sick right away. When I threw up I tasted blood, so I looked in the bowl to see how serious it was. There was quite a bit of blood, but well, I don't think it was mine. Between the gray and orange goo from my hospital lunch, floating in the middle of the toilet, was an eye. It spun around, floating in the bloody water, and though it had no lids to blink with I swear it was looking at me. 

One of the detectives I’d talked to had given me his business card so I went down to the lobby to call him. I’d left my phone in my car during the rave, as per the rules, so I had to find a landline. I couldn’t have been gone for more than five minutes but when I went back up to my hospital room the door was open. I figured it was probably just a nurse coming to check on me, but I walked in slowly and quietly just in case. I made a beeline for the bathroom and the blood and chunks were still there, but the eye was gone. 

I left then. I didn’t go home. I won’t go into details, but I wasn’t exactly unprepared to have to leave at the drop of a hat. I’m writing you this letter from somewhere safe, and this is the last time I’ll contact you until I know it’s safe to do it in person. 

I managed to throw up the rest of the blood, along with the other eye. It’s been a week now and it hasn’t decayed a bit. It moves around on its own, and I’m certain it sees me. 

The last few years I feel like you’ve been telling me I’m not living up to my potential, and that’s not entirely fair, I just haven’t been telling you about everything that I get up to. But you are right. The way I’ve been living, the things I’ve been doing, it’s not what I want to be. 

I think this is a chance to re-invent myself. I feel like I’ve been chosen for something. I know the eye can see me, and I know that wherever its owner is, he has a mouth to speak. When the time is right I’m going to let them come to me. I’m writing you this because I have no idea if I will come out of this alive. But I want you to know what happened. I also know that you’ll believe me, no matter what. If I get out of this alive maybe we’ll finally sit down and I’ll tell you about the secrets I’ve been keeping all these years, I think it would be nice to get some of that off my chest. 

But if I don’t make it, and you never hear from me again I want you to know that you were right. Whether you were right about Gods or Ghosts, or perhaps both, I’m still not sure, but I’ve found something bigger than us. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m finally where I was meant to be. So thank you for being my friend Destiny. 

I hope we meet again,

Paul

Until next time, take a moment this week to catch up with the Destiny in your life, she might be trying to tell you something.