03 Mar The Ravine Incident

Part I

I never told a soul about what happened that night forty years ago. Not the whole truth, anyway.

That day, I signed my name on a stack of papers handed to me by men who didn’t ask me to understand what I was agreeing to—only that I agreed. The words on the page blurred under the cheap hospital fluorescents, my eyes swollen and hazy from the painkillers they’d given me after setting my leg. It was all in legalese, a mess of clauses and sub-clauses, but the meaning was simple: I was to never speak of what I saw. I was to never return to the place where it happened. If I did, there would be consequences.

I kept my mouth shut for four decades. Not out of fear, but because I wanted to believe that it would stop being real if I didn’t acknowledge it. That I could outrun it.

How foolish I was to believe it was going to be that easy.

All these years later, I still feel it. I always have, I suppose, but tonight, the sensations are… different. They’re not how I remember them. Back then, the feeling was external, something I could resist. But not anymore. This time, it’s working its way out from inside me. I wake in the dead of night, my fingers curled tight around my blanket, stiff and aching, as if I’ve spent the night clutching something I don’t remember taking hold of. My legs don’t work the way they used to, but I find them carrying me places without my meaning to go. My reflection has started to look like someone else’s.

I can hear whispers at the edge of my thoughts, a frequency I don’t remember tuning into.

Instinctively, I know it. It’s happening again.

And this time, I won’t be the only one.

* * * * * *

The night it started, I was running a load of lumber out of western Nebraska, heading toward Kansas City. The CB was quiet, which wasn’t unusual for those parts. A few truckers passed chatter back and forth, mostly road conditions and complaints about the weather, but for the most part, it was just me and the steady hum of my Peterbilt’s engine.

I liked driving at night. There was a peace to it, the rhythm of the wheels against the road, the world shrinking to just the glow of my headlights and the stretch of highway ahead. No cars, no distractions, just the road and me. I’d been driving for nearly six hours, only stopping once to stretch my legs and grab a cup of coffee from a twenty-four-hour fuel station. It wasn’t a bad route—nothing but open plains, the occasional farmhouse tucked back from the road, and the stars overhead, clear and endless.

I had the radio dialed low, an old country station drifting in and out of static, when I saw the road ahead wasn’t right.

It wasn’t just a pothole or some loose gravel. The whole highway looked wrong, the asphalt buckled like something had hit it from below, pushing sections of pavement up in jagged ridges. The lines painted on the road bent and twisted, the way they do when heat rises off the pavement in summer, but it was the dead of night, and the air had a cold bite to it.

I let up on the gas as my headlights rolled over the crest of the hill, illuminating the road ahead. There was a car off to the side—no, down the side—its front end crushed against the base of a ravine, half-buried in brush and rock.

The wreck must have been fresh; the metal was still gleaming under my lights, no sign of rust, no dirt coating the windows. Even from up here, I could tell the impact had been brutal. The hood was crumpled like tinfoil, the windshield spider-webbed. A sedan, maybe a Chrysler or an Oldsmobile. Not much chance anyone inside had walked away.

And then, just beyond it, I saw something else. Not another car. In fact, it wasn’t anything I recognized at all. It was a sleek, metallic shape, half-sunk into the earth at the bottom of the ravine. The light from my truck reflected strangely off its surface, not like metal exactly, but something else, something smoother. It had no headlights, taillights, doors or windows that I could see, just a curved hull that looked impossibly undamaged despite the crash.

I felt a bit queasy as I grabbed the CB mic and keyed up the channel. “Breaker, breaker, this is Howie. We got a wreck off Highway 83, near mile marker—hell, I don’t know, somewhere between Ogallala and the Kansas line. Car’s gone down an embankment. Looks real bad. Anyone reading me?”

No one responded, so I tried again.

“Got a real nasty wreck here. Anyone close enough to relay to emergency services?”

Static crackled back at me. Then, thankfully, I heard a voice, familiar and gravelly.

“Howie? That you, buddy?”

I sighed in relief. Big Earl Jennings. He’d been on this route longer than I had, always good for a joke or a bit of road wisdom.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I said. “Got a real bad accident here, Earl. Looks fresh.”

“How bad we talkin’?”

“Bad.” I stared down at the crumpled sedan. “There’s a family down there, I think.”

Earl paused. When he spoke, his voice was lower and far more serious. “You stay put, Howie. Someone’ll be through soon. No sense gettin’ yourself hurt climbin’ down there.”

“I can’t just leave ‘em.”

I heard a flare of static again. Then, Earl spoke again. “Something don’t feel right about this, Howie. I think you oughta stay away.”

I hesitated, fingers tight around the CB mic. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“You say the road’s buckled? Like somethin’ hit it from underneath?”

“Yeah.”

There was another long pause. “Howie, you listen to me now. Just sit tight in that truck ‘til someone else gets there. Please, man, don’t do anything stupid. You don’t gotta be a hero. Let the cops and EMTs handle it.”

I was already unbuckling my belt. “I don’t have time to do nothing. They don’t have time.”

“Then at least don’t touch—”

Before he could finish, the radio cut out. No static. No sound at all.

I tapped the mic. “Earl? Hello”

Nothing.

I looked down at the wreck again. The headlights of the car were still on. The engine wasn’t running, but there was still power—which meant someone had to have been inside recently.

I grabbed my flashlight from the dash, pulled on my gloves, and shoved open the truck door. The cold hit me like a slap as I climbed down onto the shoulder, boots crunching against the loose gravel. I kept my gaze fixed on the wreck below, my gut already twisting.

The wind had picked up, rustling through the grass, carrying a sound with it that I couldn’t quite place. Some sort of whisper, soft and indistinct, coming from the bottom of the ravine.

I swallowed hard, took a breath, and started down the slope.

It was steeper than I expected, loose dirt shifting under my boots as I worked my way down. The flashlight beam cut through the dark, illuminating brush and jagged rock, but it did little to ease the tightness in my chest. I kept my eyes on the sedan, its headlights still burning weakly, spilling light onto the uneven ground. The front end had caved in against the embankment, the windshield shattered. There was no movement inside.

The whispering sound hadn’t stopped. If anything, it had grown stronger the farther I descended. It wasn’t wind through the grass, wasn’t water moving through a creek bed. Whatever it was, it had a strange cadence.

I had the urge to call out, to let whoever was inside know I was coming, but something in my gut warned against it.

The car’s rear doors were still intact, though the glass had blown out, jagged shards clinging to the frames. My flashlight reflected off something slick, a smear trailing down the side of the vehicle.

I adjusted my grip on the door handle and pulled. The door groaned on its hinges. The flashlight beam swept inside.

And I saw them: a man in the driver’s seat, a woman in the passenger seat—and two children in the back.

But something was wrong. They were wrong. At first, I thought they were dead, that their injuries had frozen them in some last, awful posture. The man’s chest had collapsed inward, his ribs poking sharp against his shirt. The woman’s arm bent backward at the elbow, bone breaking through skin. The children—Christ, the children—were still buckled in, but their heads lolled unnaturally, their limbs hanging limp.

And yet, all four of them moved. Not fully, mind you. Not consciously. It was more like a flicker of motion, a shudder of a hand, a slow tilt of a head. A marionette’s string being tested.

Even as I watched, the whispering sound swelled.

Then, suddenly, the driver’s mouth moved. I watched in horror as his lips peeled apart and his jaw lowered, as though guided by invisible hands. His head jerked slightly, his neck cracking as if pulled by something inside him. I stepped back, my stomach twisting into a hard knot. Their eyes were still open, glassy and unblinking. The whispering was coming from them. It wasn’t speech. Not really. It was a mess of layered, broken sounds, phrases that started but didn’t finish, syllables repeating in strange, stilted ways.

The father’s lips moved, his jaw unhinging farther than it should—and then I realized it wasn’t his voice. The words spilling from his throat had no breath behind them, no hallmarks of human speech. They were too seamless, unnaturally smooth, a voice speaking through a body that was no longer its own.

I took another step back, my foot slipping on the loose dirt. The movement must have drawn attention, because the boy in the backseat twitched violently, his seatbelt straining against his small frame. His head rolled to the side, and for the first time, I saw what was left of his throat. A gaping hole.

There was no way anything living could still be functioning with a wound like that. And yet, he spoke—but it wasn’t with his voice. Worse still, the whispering wasn’t limited to random utterances. It was a conversation between him and others. Between them and whatever was inside the ship.

The unnatural glow from the wreckage pulsed, a faint vibration rolling through the ground. The sedan’s occupants twitched in unison, like something had just given them orders. Then they turned their heads—all four of them—to look directly at me. My entire body screamed at me to move, but before I could, the father’s arm jerked toward the door handle. His shattered chest didn’t rise or fall, but his hands clenched, fingers stretching unnaturally.

I didn’t think, I reacted—slamming the car door shut and stumbling back, nearly losing my footing on the incline.

Part II

I backed away from the car, my boots scraping against the loose gravel. The whispering had become rhythmic and had intensified. These weren’t the dying gasps of accident victims, carried faintly on the wind. This was language—and not one of human origin. A voice spoke through them, weaving its syllables in a cadence I couldn’t understand. It flowed from the father’s throat without breath, using his vocal cords like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

The mother’s lips moved next, her shattered arm twitching at the elbow, the bone still pushing through her sleeve. Then the boy, his ruined throat opening wider, his jaw stretching past its natural limits. They were answering.

I followed the light from my flashlight, raising the beam toward the wreckage of the other vehicle. The thing that had crashed.

I had no words for what I saw.

A hull, dark and seamless, was half-buried in the earth. Impossibly sleek, alien, and alive, it wasn’t constructed of metal or anything I could recognize. It looked like smooth stone, yet rippled like liquid when I moved the beam across it, and had no markings or seams.

Then something inside of it shifted. The movement was scarcely perceptible, a ripple of form beneath the fractured remains of what must have been its cockpit. I was being watched.

The ground trembled beneath me. The whispering from the car grew louder, more urgent. And then, I felt it—a force, like a hand gripping the base of my skull. Not a physical touch, but pressure, something pushing against my mind, testing it. My thoughts blurred, and my limbs felt far away, as if they were no longer mine.

It was trying to get in.

I dropped to one knee, my head pounding. My fingers twitched against the flashlight, the light bouncing wildly across the wreckage. Every nerve in my body screamed that I needed to resist, that if I gave in—even for a second—I wouldn’t be able to fight my way back.

The whispering became a chorus. The bodies in the car convulsed violently, their heads snapping toward the craft, their mouths stretching in unison. They weren’t just speaking to it. They were connected.

I clenched my fists, forcing my body to move, to respond. I stumbled back, my boots dragging against the dirt, my mind pushing back against whatever had latched onto me. For a moment, the pressure eased, not because I had won but because it had found something else to use.

The bodies in the car lunged forward all at once, their shattered bones cracking under the sudden movement.

They weren’t just talking anymore.

They were coming for me.

The bodies surged toward me, not with the broken, sluggish movements of the injured, but with purpose. Their limbs twisted unnaturally, shattered bones shifting beneath their skin as they dragged themselves free of the wreckage. The father moved first, his chest collapsing inward with the effort, one arm hanging useless at his side while the other reached for me. The mother followed, her ruined elbow bending backward, fingers clawing at the dirt.

But it was the children that froze me in place.

The boy’s seatbelt had snapped, his body flopping forward like a discarded puppet. His legs dangled uselessly, yet he crawled toward me, pulling himself with his arms. The girl moved slower, her head lolling to one side, a fractured smile stretching across her lips. She wasn’t smiling at me. She was smiling at something behind me.

I turned toward the wreckage, toward the thing that had crawled out of the sky, watching the ship pulse faintly.

The Flanagans had been dead the moment they crashed, but their bodies had been claimed.

The ship—and whatever was piloting it—was feeding on them.

At the same time, I felt a strange pressure at the back of my skull, an invisible thread pulling at my limbs, testing them. It wasn’t control—not yet—but it was trying. I fought back. My muscles locked, my jaw clenched, my thoughts barely my own. I staggered, pushing my weight against the slope, trying to climb even as my legs trembled beneath me.

The father snapped his arm forward, a ragged, wet sound tearing from his throat. His fingers brushed my wrist, but there was no strength in them. The moment it let him go, he collapsed, his body hitting the dirt like a sack of loose bones. The mother shuddered violently, her mouth moving in a voiceless scream before she crumpled beside him.

The thing inside the craft had no more use for them. The Flanagans were rotting from the inside out. The radiation bleeding from the ship had blackened their skin, turning their flesh brittle. As I backed away, I watched it split along their arms, their necks, their cheeks, dried meat peeling from their faces. The whispering had faded, replaced by something worse—a sound I didn’t want to understand.

It was the sound of something leaving them, hungry for something stronger. Hungry… for me.

I scrambled backward, dirt sliding beneath my boots as I fought for footing. My mind wasn’t my own anymore. It was inside. Thankfully, not fully—not yet—but I could feel it pressing against my thoughts, coiling around my will. It wanted me to stop running and let go. To make me one of them.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Part III

I forced my legs to move, staggering up the incline, clawing for purchase against loose gravel and exposed roots. My fingers dug into the dirt, nails splitting as I pulled myself higher, my limbs fighting me with every motion.

Meanwhile, the thing inside my head wasn’t done yet. It hadn’t taken me—not entirely—but it was still there, pressing at the edges of my mind, testing my will. Every few steps, my foot dragged where I didn’t mean for it to, or my hands clenched involuntarily, as though waiting for a command that I couldn’t hear.

The Flanagans were gone. Whatever had been controlling them had abandoned their bodies the moment it found a better host. That host, to my dismay, was me.

I reached the lip of the ravine and collapsed against the embankment, sucking in cold air, sweat rolling down my back. My flashlight had fallen somewhere along the way, but it didn’t matter. The wreckage below cast an unnatural glow, illuminating the valley with an eerie, shifting light. Down below, the ship’s remains pulsed—a slow, rhythmic shudder, like something inside was waking up.

No, not waking. Repairing. I realized then it needed the Flanagans to free itself from the wreckage and to piece itself back together. It had used their hands, their bodies, to reshape its broken form, and when their flesh had failed, it had turned to me.

I felt a pulse in my skull, a slow, steady rhythm that wasn’t my own. I tried to focus, grounding myself in the cold night air, the rough scrape of rock beneath my hands, the distant hum of my truck’s engine idling on the roadside. Anything to remind myself of who I was, what I was still fighting for.

Then, below, I glimpsed movement. The ship’s fractured hull twisted, an opening yawning in its side, spilling more of that unnatural glow into the ravine. It was working, rebuilding itself—and now, communicating. It was undeniable. The certainty sent a bolt of panic through my chest. It wasn’t just trying to survive—it was calling for reenforcements.

I scanned the ground around me, looking for anything, any way to stop it, before it finished whatever it was doing. Then, my eyes caught something I had ignored before: a boulder, massive and precariously perched at the edge of the ravine, held in place by time and gravity alone.

A plan formed in my mind. If I could push it loose, send it tumbling down the cliffside, it might be enough to destroy what was left of the ship and prevent it from signaling whatever waited beyond the stars. Signaled more of them.

I braced my hands against the stone, shoving with everything I had left. The first push didn’t budge it, but the second did. A deep groan echoed through the valley as the earth shifted beneath me, the boulder tipping forward.

The ship pulsed violently, its light flashing like a warning. The Flanagans’ bodies twitched violently, as if sensing what was coming. Then the rock broke free.

For a moment, time seemed to slow, the boulder teetering at the edge before it plunged downward, tearing through the cliffside. I barely had time to register the impact before I felt the ground beneath me give way.

The next thing I knew, I was falling.

* * * * * *

The world tilted as I went over the edge.

I tumbled down the slope as it gave way beneath me, dirt and loose rock cascading downward in a violent rush. My shoulder clipped something hard—bone jolting in its socket—before I flipped again, the ravine spinning in a blur of shadow and sickly light.

Then, I made impact. A sudden, jarring stop as my back slammed against a ledge jutting out from the embankment. The force knocked the air from my lungs, leaving me gasping, my vision dimming at the edges. I could still hear the boulder, feel it, the deep, grinding rumble of stone ripping loose from the earth. I tried to move, but my limbs responded sluggishly, my thoughts sluggish, tangled.

As before, I could feel something pulling at the edges of my mind, that same pressure that had undboubtedly gripped the Flanagans before they had become something else. Whatever it was—whatever it truly wanted—it was inside me now.

I had no time to dwell on it, however, because down below, the boulder had found its mark. The impact sent a violent shockwave through the ground, the fractured hull of the ship shuddering violently beneath the weight of the stone. A flash of energy rippled outward, distorting the air like heat over pavement, and then the light began to flicker.

The voices stopped, not all at once, but in stilted, broken gasps—like a signal failing. Whatever was inside the wreckage was losing its hold.

I turned my head, forcing my body to move despite the pain grinding through my ribs. Below, the Flanagans were still standing. Barely. Their bodies twitched, slackened, and then twitched again. Their heads lolled, jaws moving wordlessly, as if whatever had animated them was struggling to maintain control.

The mother fell first. A sudden, boneless collapse, as if her spine had finally given out. The father followed, his ruined chest folding inward as he crumpled to his knees. The children remained standing a moment longer, their silhouettes rigid and unnatural in the fading glow of the ship. Then, the boy pitched forward, and the girl…

She turned toward me. Her head cocked, and her body swayed, one arm rising in a jerky, uneven motion as though something still tried to command her to move. But the ship was dying. Whatever had been inside her was leaving.

And then she dropped, hitting the earth with a sound like dried leaves crumbling underfoot.

I lay there, my chest heaving, every muscle in my body locked with tension, taking in the sudden silence, waiting for something to happen, or for some sign of movement. The wreckage let out one final, wheezing pulse of light—weak and flickering—before the glow died entirely.

It was over.

I let out a breath and immediately regretted it, pain flaring sharp beneath my ribs. I’d broken something. Maybe a few somethings. But I didn’t care. I was alive, gloriously alive.

I tilted my head toward the sky. The stars still hung there, cold and unmoving. There was no sign of backup. No sign of anything coming for the wreckage.

Maybe, just maybe, I had stopped it in time.

Part IV

I woke to the sound of voices. They were muffled at first, little more than murmurs drifting in and out of the edges of my consciousness, too distant to make sense of. I was floating, pain rolling in dull waves beneath a heavy fog, my limbs too weighted to move. It took a moment to realize I was no longer lying on earth or rock, but on fabric. A mattress. Hospital sheets.

Panic lurched through me, forcing my body awake. My eyes snapped open, and light stabbed at them, bright fluorescents humming overhead. The sterile scent of disinfectant filled my nose. Machines beeped somewhere behind me, measuring my vitals. The rhythmic hiss of air cycling through vents filled the silence.

Somehow, miraculously, I had survived.

My mind clawed backward, trying to piece together the last thing I remembered. The ship. The bodies. The boulder tumbling, my own body falling with it. I moved my arm, testing. The sharp ache that flared beneath my ribs told me I was still injured, but not dead. I was bandaged and hooked up to IVs, but someone had saved me. Or worse—someone had found me.

The voices returned, louder this time, just beyond the thin partition curtain beside my bed. I turned my head slowly, every muscle stiff, and strained to listen.

“—no mention of the other wreckage,” a man said, his voice level, controlled. “As far as the official report is concerned, it doesn’t exist.”

A second voice, a younger man’s, came through, clipped and uncertain. “And the Flanagans? Their bodies—”

“There’s nothing left to examine. The family perished in the crash. That’s all anyone needs to know.”

They paused.

“Sir… what about him?” the younger man asked.

Someone shuffled a stack of papers. Nearby, a chair creaked.

“He was found unconscious a hundred yards from the impact site. He suffered a concussion, three broken ribs, and a fractured wrist. He doesn’t remember what happened.”

“And if he does?”

Footsteps approached, and the curtain was yanked back.

Two figures stood at my bedside. Government. No question about it. They didn’t wear uniforms, but their suits were too crisp, their postures too controlled. The older man—tall, lean, Agent Richard Marshall—held a file in one hand and a pen in the other. He studied me like I was something that needed to be cataloged.

The younger one, Agent Travis Lynch, lingered a step behind, his hands clasped in front of him, mouth set in a tight line. There was something in his eyes that the senior agent’s didn’t have. Worry.

Marshall flipped open the file. “Howard Carpenter,” he said, as if verifying the name belonged to me. “Age twenty-six. Long-haul trucker. Born and raised in Nebraska.” He tapped the folder against his palm. “You were found along Highway 83 two nights ago, near mile marker 146. You suffered a fall and sustained multiple injuries. Do you recall how you ended up there?”

My mouth felt dry. I swallowed, eyes flicking between the two agents.

I could lie. Tell them I didn’t remember. Pretend I’d blacked out after the wreck, that I had no recollection of what I saw.

But then I thought of the Flanagans. Of their bodies twisting, breaking, of the way they moved long after they should have been dead. Of the thing that had tried to take me, and might still be inside me.

I licked my lips. “I remember a crash.”

“Go on,” Marshall said.

“There was a car. It went over the embankment. I saw it from the road.” I hesitated, choosing my words carefully. “I pulled over to help and climbed down. I saw the family. They…” I trailed off.

I wanted to say that they were already dead, but that they somehow weren’t. But that made no sense.

Marshall’s pen hovered over the page. “What happened after that?”

I hesitated. “I… don’t remember much.”

He studied me for a moment, then nodded, jotting something down. He flipped the file shut and slid a stack of papers onto my bedside table.

“This is a non-disclosure agreement. By signing it, you acknowledge that any and all details pertaining to the night of March 17th are classified and that you will not discuss them with anyone—ever.”

Lynch shifted, pursing his lips, but he didn’t say anything.

Marshall extended the pen. I stared at it. Something in my gut told me there was no point in refusing. I had no proof of what had happened. Even if I had, there were people who could make sure no one ever heard it.

I took the pen and signed.

Marshall slid the papers back into his folder and nodded. “Good.” He turned to Lynch. “We’re done here.”

Lynch hesitated, then added, “Sir—”

Marshall’s gaze flicked to him, sharp. He closed his mouth. The two agents turned and strode toward the door. Marshall reached for the handle, but before he pushed it open, he spoke without looking back. “You’ll be under observation for the remainder of your life.”

A chill crawled up my spine.

“Don’t go looking into things that don’t concern you,” he continued, voice calm, his tone matter-of-fact. “And if something… feels off, if anything unusual happens, you are to report it immediately. Do you understand?”

I didn’t respond. It wasn’t a request.

The door swung open, and then they were gone.

Part V

I signed their papers. I kept my mouth shut. And for forty years, I told myself that meant it was over. I went back to driving. Not long after, I left Nebraska for Colorado and put some distance between myself and that stretch of Highway 83. The road didn’t feel the same anymore, and I told myself it was just the trauma of what I’d seen—the bodies, the wreckage, the things I couldn’t explain. I buried it the way a man does with something he doesn’t want to remember.

I never went back to that stretch of road, never looked into the Flanagans’ deaths—and never spoke about what happened. And for forty years, I thought that was enough.

Then, two weeks ago, I woke up somewhere I didn’t remember going to sleep.

At first, I figured I’d been sleepwalking. It happens to men my age sometimes—stress, a touch of dementia, whatever name they want to slap on it. But as I stood there in the kitchen, staring down at the half-eaten apple sitting on the counter, still clenching the knife I’d used to cut it, I felt something I hadn’t felt in decades.

A presence. It wasn’t in the room—it was inside me.

That was the first time.

The second time, I woke up standing in my backyard, staring at the sky. My bare feet were half-buried in the dead winter grass, the cold biting my skin, but I hadn’t shivered, hadn’t moved. I had just been standing there, waiting. For what, I didn’t know.

But something in me did.

Two days later, it got worse. I had been doing something menial, flipping through an old book at the table, when my fingers suddenly stopped responding to me. I sat there, watching them flex and tighten, moving in slow, measured motions, as though someone else was trying them on. A test.

It let me go after a few seconds, but I knew what it meant. The thing inside me—whatever had been left behind that night in the ravine—was waking up. The parasite had been dormant for forty years, buried deep in my mind, biding its time. And now, for reasons I couldn’t understand, it was stirring.

That’s why I’m writing this. The agents are going to come for me soon. Not tomorrow, maybe not even next week—but I know they’re watching. I’ve seen the same car parked at the end of my road twice now, the same pale-faced man behind the wheel, pretending he doesn’t see me when I look at him.  They know.

They knew this was always going to happen—and if I don’t get this out now, I never will. Because this isn’t just about me. I wasn’t the only one there that night.

What if I wasn’t the only one infected? What if there are others? What if we’ve been walking among you for decades, not even knowing what we are?

I can feel it now. Something is coming.

And I’m a loose end that’s got to be tied up.

* * * * * *

The first sign that it was too late came when the street outside my house buckled.

I had been sitting at my desk, the words on the page blurring, my hands trembling as I wrote. The sensation had grown worse over the past hour—a tingling in my fingertips, an unnatural stiffness in my joints. It was getting harder to control. Harder to hold a thought steady in my mind without something else pressing in, trying to take over.

Then I heard the sound—a deep, groaning shift in the earth, like asphalt being torn apart from beneath.

I turned toward the window. The road outside my house was warping, twisting in on itself. A spiderweb of cracks raced across the pavement, curling toward my front yard like fingers reaching out to grasp the foundation.

The streetlights flickered. Somewhere down the block, a dog started howling. For a brief, foolish moment, I thought it was the agents. That Marshall and Lynch had sent their people, that black SUVs would roll in, that men in dark suits would pile out, and that I would be dragged away before whatever was happening could fully take hold of me.

But the men in black hadn’t gotten here first.

The parasites had.

The street outside shuddered, caving inward with a violent crack. Something huge and impossibly smooth began to rise from the ruined pavement, slick with mud and dust, its surface rippling like liquid metal.

I had seen it before, forty years ago, broken and dying at the bottom of the ravine. Now, it had come returned.

I staggered away from the desk, nearly knocking the chair over. My legs weren’t working right. My arms weren’t working right. A slow, creeping numbness was spreading through my limbs, my fingers twitching against my will, the bones in my neck popping as my head tilted too far to one side.

I wasn’t alone anymore.

I tried to fight it, forcing myself forward, gripping the desk, grinding my teeth against the unnatural pull. But the more I resisted, the more the pressure grew, like invisible hands guiding me toward the window, forcing me to watch what was happening. Outside, the ship hovered over the ruined street, light pulsing from within, its surface shifting like something inside was trying to penetrate its surface.

Then the voices started, a whispered frequency vibrating in the marrow of my bones, rattling my thoughts loose and fraying the edges of whatever part of me was still human enough to resist.

They weren’t speaking to me. They were calling the others—and I wasn’t the only one.

The thought sent a wave of nausea rolling through me, but I couldn’t focus on it—not with my reflection in the glass changing.

The man looking back at me wasn’t me anymore. His eyes were too dark, too empty. His arms hung loose at his sides, trembling like a marionette with tangled strings. His mouth moved, but it wasn’t forming words—just that same whispering, pulsing sound, rising and falling in time with the ship.

I wasn’t in control anymore. Something else was—and I don’t know how much longer I have. Maybe a few minutes, maybe less.

By the time they get here, it won’t matter.

I need you to remember what happened.

I need you to stop this, before it’s too late.

I was never the only one.

Something is coming.

I’m sorry.