The time was 4:50 am as I got up to get a drink of water. At that time, I was hit with dizziness from being half asleep. As I made my way down stairs, the pitch blackness of the night filled my thoughts, but I was focused on getting a drink. I proceeded with getting a glass, when, I felt a large poke in my arm as if someone put a needle in me, I screamed at the top of my lungs and dropped the glass, shattering on impact. When I looked at my arm, there, a large mosquito-like insect stood there on its legs staring at me. I then carefully tried to swat it, but it got away, out of sight. I looked at my arm again to see a large green bump right there. "What just bit me?" I asked myself. To avoid being paranoid, I told myself that, "It's just a mosquito." I then headed back to bed to get some sleep, which I would never get since my mind was plagued with chilling nightmares that just depicted random dark shapes morphing on a red backdrop with very distorted sounds varying from high pitched ringing to low pitched laughing. I woke up the next morning sick to my stomach. God I hated stomach aches, I checked my arm to see that the green bump was turning into a green boil as the day went on.

The next day my stomach was not getting better, but around noon I felt my stomach cramp tightly as if someone was pushing their hand on it. I then called up my friend to take me to the doctor as quickly as possible, when we got there, we waited for the doctor for about fifteen minutes. He finally got to me as I made my way to the doctor's office, he told me that I probably have food poisoning, then he saw the boil on my arm, he asked me what that thing is. I told him that a mosquito bit me, and left it on my arm, as he examined it I saw this growing look of fear on his face, he then screamed in absolute terror. Two other doctors ran in to see what the problem was, they asked the doctor what had happened, he spoke in what appeared to be Spanish, one doctor scared by what was happening ran to get another doctor to see what was going on, a female doctor told us to exit the building until they figured out what was happening. I did not know what to even think about what just happened. I decided to go back tomorrow when everything was sorted out. Yes, I am writing down what happened in this journal, but I'll continue in the morning. For now, good night.

Three days after this entry was written, the writer's friend, who I'll keep anonymous as he requested, reported that he found the writer in his house sitting in a ball on his couch with his eyes shut tight and breathing heavily. Panicked, the writer's friend picked him up and took him to the hospital, there, nobody could figure out what was going on with him, until a Spanish nurse saw the writer's green boil and overheard how a mosquito did it, and explained that growing up, she heard stories of how evil presences take forms of mosquitoes to scare people, they procee...

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The journal entries that follow are from one of the men that oversaw the Uganda Railway in the late 1890s. Mom always said that we were related to one of the men that helped John Patterson shoot The Ghost and The Darkness, two of the lions that were said to have eaten the men.



March 1, 1898


We have just arrived in this godless country, all the monkeys here are slaves of the British Empire, here to help build the railway from Mombasa to Kisumu on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, named after our great Queen. As Master John stepped off the train, he grumbled as he looked around the camp and construction site of the railway.

"Look at these monkeys, my dear boy. They are savages." I just stood there and nodded as he walked to the camp to see the progress of the railway.

After finding the construction to be going as planned, we boarded another train for Tsavo. After several hours, we arrived at our destination with its ghastly and sun-stricken look of the Nyika.

We went to our separate huts and settled in for the night.

March 4, 1898


We had been in Tsavo for several days when we had heard rumors of lions in the vicinity of the camp. The workers have said that these lions have been described as man-eaters and are unlike normal lions, from what the scientists back home in London have said. During the night, two of the workers disappeared and were said to have been carried off by these lions.

I fear for my life and the others.

March 25, 1898


During the night, we heard screaming coming from Ungan Singh, a man of Indian descent. We ran out of our tents to see him being dragged off by a lion that was about 3 meters in length. This lion was enormous, bigger than I had ever seen in books.

I watched in horror as the lion grabbed Ungan by the throat, as he screamed in his tongue for the lion to let go. It did not, and it dragged him into the bushes to kill him.

March 26, 1898


Upon hearing that a worker was killed, Master John had set upon to track down these Man-eaters of Tsavo as the English people soon started calling them. Master would not allow me to join in the hunts, as I'm not a very good marksman. After the night had passed, Master came back and had said that he thinks he had shot the 3 meter lion we had seen last night.

After months of repeated attacks from these lions, my ancestor stopped writing, as he was busy preparing John Patterson to shoot and kill the lions, the next entry is from December 9, 1898, when the Tsavo Lion, nicknamed The Ghost, was killed.

December 9, 1898


After many months of the workers being killed and dragged off by those horrid lions, Master finally has a plan, a dangerous one to be exact. He plans to use himself as bait to lure the lions into the open, so that he may kill them. Once again, he has denied me to come with him on these expeditions, for I may be at risk of being...

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Table of Contents
I walk down the hall towards Marshall’s room. Pictures of wildlife, nature and the frequent stuffed bird lined the walls. I’m a taxidermist. Yeah, maybe it isn’t healthy for my eight-year-old son to have a mother who stuffs animals for a living, but it’s what I love to do. I don’t kill the animals, obviously. It’s roadkill that hasn’t been completely squashed, or an animal that’s been shot for sport and the hunter didn’t like his catch.

I see it as a way to restore the creature’s past beauty, a sort of way to breathe life back into their appearance. I even made Marshall a stuffed fox cub to sleep with. He’s buried it in the crook of his neck and slept with it since he was four.

Once I get past the large stuffed hare on the shelf, I knocked lightly on Marshall’s white door. He wants to be a bachelor when he grows up, which will hopefully be a while from now. He keeps his room organized and simple. There’s no answer.

“Marshall?” I say, easing his door open. I immediately spot his head of sandy brown hair, half-out from underneath the covers. He likes it longer than the average boy. I walk over and pat his arm. “Marshall, get up, you are NOT going to miss that bus again.”

No response. I gently shake him awake. Tuesdays are always the worst for him. “Uuuurgh,” he groans, sticking his neck out so he can see me. “Mama,” he croaks. I can tell there’s something wrong. “I don’t - I mean, I… My throat hurts. A lot.” Yes, he still calls me mama, but only when we’re alone. He cuddles the fox cub.

I put my hand to his forehead. He’s as cool as a cucumber. “No fever,” I say, getting out his clothes. I walk briskly out of the room and down our long hallway. “Be downstairs in 10 minutes.”

At 1:46 that afternoon, I get a phone call.

“Mom?” Marshall says quietly from the other side. He’s calling from the nurse’s office.

“Yes, hon?” I answer. I already know what it’s about.

“My throat hurts.” I coil some thread around my finger from the sewing kit in front of me. I’m patching up an aardvark.

“I can’t come get you unless you have a fever,” I say, unwrapping the brown thread.

“I don’t have a fever but… yeah. Okay, bye mom,” he croaks. I hang up.

The next day, he woke up and says the same thing. “It’s worse,” he gasped. “It’s like all fiery but it’s all cold and raw at the same time.” I looked at his throat. It didn’t seem red, just…dark. I sent him to school anyways, hoping he would feel better.

“Mrs. Mejia-“ the school nurse clucked over the phone at 11:12 that morning.

“Just call me Kirsten. And it’s Miss.”

“Ms. Kirsten. Marshall is complaining of extreme pain in his throat, and I recommend you picking him up early and taking him to see your family doctor.” I agreed and picked up my son from school, wishing I’d let him stay home. He didn’t talk much, mainly just sat and panted on the way to the pediatrician. I patted his back as we walked in...

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Garnet: In your past life, you were a deer with antlers like a gnarled pine tree. A boy shot you with an arrow as you pranced through the king’s enchanted forest.

Amethyst: You were a boy who wore the skins of a magical deer on the day you were beheaded for the crime of poaching.

Bloodstone: You were an executioner who followed orders to cut off a child’s head.

Diamond: You were a witch who avenged your murdered son. You skinned and gutted the executioner, roasted him over a spit fire, and arranged him on a silver platter with an apple in his mouth. You served the cooked man to your feline familiars.

Emerald: You were a priest who captured a witch and burned her at the stake for murder and sorcery.

Moonstone: You were a black cat. You watched your witch mistress being set aflame. You told the goblin king what you had witnessed.

Ruby: You were a goblin king who lived in a giant red-capped mushroom and who sat upon a throne made of bird beaks. You wept to hear of your beloved’s fiery death. You climbed upon the back of an owl, and flew out in pursuit of justice.

Peridot: You were an owl who clawed out the eyes of a priest with your steely talons and replaced them with glittering white moonstones.

Sapphire: You were a vulture who feasted upon the corpse of a priest. You carried his bejeweled skull over the clouds towards your nest, but somewhere along the way, you dropped it.

Tourmaline: You were a melancholy queen who found a skull bedecked with gemstones, and recognized it as belonging to your lover, the priest. In a mournful rage, you threw it at the enormous wall of bones that separated the ocean from your terrestrial kingdom.

Topaz: You were a watchman in the lighthouse, the one who first saw the bone wall shatter and the ocean’s waters rush inland. You rang the enormous brass bell to alert the king, who threw you into the floods and took your place in the lantern room.

Turquoise: In your past life, you were a mad king who lived in a lighthouse made of unicorn’s horns. You spent your days writing royal commands on little flakes of skin you peeled from your stomach, folding them up into tiny airplanes, and flinging them out over the ocean, where they floated on the surface for a few days before being found by a passing mermaid or clever octopus. The creature would read the written command for a moment, shrug, and then toss it to the ocean floor.

In the end, there was only you in the world, because your kingdom was covered in seawater, and everyone's algae-covered skeletons slept in the briny deep, eternally dreaming of being mermaids and octopuses who find little notes written on skin-paper.

The final note you wrote said this:

“Dear God!
Tell me:
Where did it all go wrong?”

IMPORTANT - READ IMMEDIATELY

I know you are likely overwhelmed with grief right now. I need you to read this right now so you can know that I did what I did to prevent my greatest mistake from ever being repeated.

We have been very wealthy ever since my device was demonstrated for the first time. I am being called the greatest innovator in history for inventing the first teleportation device. You spent the last 20 years of your life waiting for me to crack the secret to large-scale quantum entanglement. You were dutifully overjoyed when I bit the bullet and tested it on myself on July 2nd, 2104. The success of my experiment has brought us great wealth, and it made both of us very happy for the following weeks.

A few weeks later, I started to become very ill. I couldn't sleep. Your delicious cooking turned to ash in my mouth. I would even vomit suddenly without reason. This may have been puzzling to you, and it was definitely hard for me to decipher at first. Last week, I realized the true nature of this illness.

Physically, there was nothing wrong with me. What was plaguing me was my own guilt. I have destroyed the machine and all of my research so that it may never be continued.

Upon writing my concluding paper, I realized I had made a terrible mistake. Quantum entanglement does not work by instantaneously moving particles: It works by making an exact molecular copy of them in another place, and destroys the original molecules to conserve mass. How could I have been so naive to not consider the most basic of principles?

While you think you see the body of your husband lying in shambles on the floor, your eyes decieve you. I am an imposter. Your husband died on July 2nd, 2104.

We spent our first anniversary in the living room, Milly and I. Wanting her to get the restaurant treatment, I made a little "A La Carte" menu, listing all the dishes I can passably cook, and gingerly placed it in her hands.

I so wanted the night to go well I almost spilt the pasta sauce, my professionally steady hands shaking from nerves. I was so sure I'd ruined it and told her so, a dull stone resting in the pit of my stomach. But as we ate under the lamplight, she told me "It was lovely", as if I could never disappoint her, and I felt like the luckiest man in the world.

I got up from my chair and walked to the windowsill. With our heavy green curtain always drawn, it becomes the perfect hiding place. I reach into the fabric and pull out a parcel, wrapped in yellow paper. I cross the room and sit on the arm of her chair. As I hand Milly her anniversary gift, I realise my hands are shaking again.

She delicately unfolds the tissue, to reveal the brown leather photo album. I'd searched online for weeks to find the perfect one. As her delicate hand raises the cover, I watch her face intently. She gives nothing away as she slowly leafs through my gift, a comprehensive document of our first year together.

She sees the first messages, screengrabs of our online dating profiles and the words we exchanged. Where I first fell in love with Milly, the aspiring pastry chef from London. Then the texts where I learned about her life and her incredible kindness, the pictures that showed her pure, naked beauty.

She turns the page.

She sees the reveal. The moment Milly told me she was actually John. The harsh mocking words that he typed, little boxes once full of sweetness now filled with sarcastic ire. She see's my response. Stating how he was wrong, that the fact he was capable of such beauty showed that Milly was within him. That he was still the woman I loved.

She turns the page.

She sees the process. How I found John, how I laid him down and slowly, over many months, pulled Milly from within him. She sees the diagrams, the calculated lines and their perfect transposition onto John's skin. She sees the hours of meticulous restructuring, Milly's photo always at my side. She sees the moment I placed Milly in front of a mirror and showed her to herself.

She turns the page.

She sees the hundreds empty sleeves. As I tell her of all the memories we have yet to make, I see her finally stir. Though she's smiling of course, tears fall from her eyes. I even see her hands start to shake

They came out of nowhere. The angels descended from the heavens above, their wings bigger than any birds on Earth, they shone with a near blinding light.

We had so many questions to ask them. What was it like in Heaven? Can we get there? The media was raving about this event. No one could've imagined that they would be able to meet, let alone ask questions to an angel in their lifetime.

They seemed apprehensive at first, refusing to answer any questions regarding where they came from. But when asked about why they came here, they answered bluntly: "To escape."

My friend called me up two days ago. She told me she was losing her mind. That her keys, her documents, her cell phone, her laptop… they were in her apartment one day, and then gone the next. I drove to her apartment and we talked for an hour.

‘’You know,’’ my friend said. ‘’It’s so ironic. Europe is collapsing. Europeans look down on Americans, it’s like their pastime. They’ll be fleeing here, it’s a matter of time. You’ll see. Oh, if I had a magic wand. You know what I’d do? I’d change every single European that wants to live here into a Girl Scout. Or a cheerleader! Would be hilarious. A lesson in humility for their arrogance.’’

The merry atmosphere quickly turned into dread when my friend realized she could not find her laptop.

‘’I told you!’’ she exclaimed. ‘’It’s like I’m losing my mind! All my presentations for my clients, it’s just… gone!’’

I told her it would be best to install surveillance in her apartment and see what would be recorded. My friend thought it could even be a poltergeist, but I was quick to point out that some sort of a deranged individual was responsible. A stalker who enjoys playing mind games with his victims. Alice assured me she was going to install the surveillance equipment in her apartment to get to the bottom of the insanity.

She called me a week later.

‘’You know what?’’ she said. ‘’I know who did it.’’

‘’Who?’’ I said. ‘’It’s not the poltergeist, obviously?’’

‘’Oh no,’’ she replied. ‘’But then, you knew that, didn’t you? It was you all along! Bitch.’’

‘’What?’’ I paused. ‘’What the hell are you talking about?’’

‘’You’re dead!’’ Alice screamed into the phone. ‘’You died FIVE FUCKING YEARS AGO! You’re coming back to haunt me! You’re the poltergeist! I know the only way to get rid of the poltergeist is to burn down their locum!’’

‘’Lo..’’

‘’That’s right,’’ she paused. ‘’That’s right, bitch! I’m going to burn your place down.’’

The connection broke off. I dialed the number of our mutual friend.

‘’So you don’t know?’’ my other friend said. ‘’Alice suffered some sort of a mental breakdown about a month ago. She was committed. So I don’t know who’s on the other end of that line of yours, but it sure as heck wasn’t Alice.’’

Chaotic thoughts were racing through my mind. She sounded like her, looked like her, same body language. I went to Alice’s apartment with a group of my friends. There was nobody inside. In fact, all the neighbors assured us there was nobody living in the apartment for about a month.

The case of the mysterious woman remains unsolved.

Cuentan que en un pueblo lejano los lugareños le temían al monte Grekus, dado que allí habitaba una cruel y vieja hechicera. Las personas mayores aseguraban que aquella mujer no siempre había sido mala, pues inclusive ayudó para la construcción de la ciudad. Sin embargo, fue traicionada por el amor de su vida, lo que la orilló a alejarse.

Una leyenda de terror acerca de ella dice que los niños menores de 12 años no deben deambular solos por la noche, ya que ese momento es aprovechado por la bruja para llevárselos a su escondite donde les arranca los ojos y se come su corazón.



Otro mito de terror asociado con esta maga es el que nos indica que la única forma de librarnos de esos maleficios es enfrentándola cara a cara. Es decir, si estás en las cercanías de la montaña y notas que tanto las hojas como los arbustos se comienzan a mover de manera irregular, no debes retroceder.

Tienes que permanecer con la vista al frente y esperar a que la figura de la bruja de la montaña se refleje en tus pupilas. Enseguida ella emitirá un chillido equivalente al que hacen los murciélagos.



Tal vez pienses que ese sonido te perforará los tímpanos o algo por el estilo. Nada más lejos de la realidad. Lo que sucede con esta leyenda de terror es que son contadas las personas que han aguantado más de 30 segundos viendo ese rostro tan horrible lleno de cicatrices y marcas.

Médicos especializados han aseverado que algunos de los pacientes que han logrado llegar a las clínicas mentales, jamás han recobrado la cordura. Por el contrario, sus noches son acompañadas de terribles pesadillas.

Además, los cuartos de los enfermos invariablemente poseen una temperatura por debajo de los cero grados. Lo que hace pensar que la bruja de la montaña gélida no solamente se apodera de los órganos de sus víctimas, sino que a veces también de su alma.

Dorthea had thought the ghost was a hallucination, perhaps signs of impending dementia. But when the uncanny clanging and howling through the estate's musty corridors had ended her bridge party early, Dorthea realized the noises weren't just an attribute of her old age. Her dear friend Helen Alston, taking a hasty departure, recommended the services of the local Oriental psychic, Madame Miko. Dorthea made an appointment for the following morning.

Madame Miko was punctual, and came dressed in ceremonial robes. Alcott, the butler, admitted her through the front gate. Miko bowed to Dorthea, who stood rigidly.

“Listen! You can hear them now!”

A low moan floated from the cavernous house, followed by thumping, like the deep reverberations of a heart.

Miko's brow furrowed as she listened, thoughtfully. “I will need a few hours alone in the house,” she said, eyes cast down.

“Yes, yes,” huffed Dorthea, “I'll have Alston take me to town for the day.” The butler bowed.

Miko was left alone in the expansive estate for many hours, as the servants were frightened of the noises and refused to stay. Dorthea returned at twilight, and found Miko waiting for her, holding several bright sticks of incense.

“The spirit will be gone within a week if you burn this osenko. Beware! Even after the sounds have stopped, you must continue burning osenko. The reek of evil can return to your home, even after a spirit has left. Please find me when you run out.”

Skeptical, Dorthea thanked Miko, and paid her a preposterous sum for her time and incense. She had Alston walk Miko to the front gate, and lit a stick.



The job was ruined, to say the least. Frank smelled faint incense on the air and gagged. This wasn't how he wanted to die, trapped and bleeding in an air duct, smelling faint acrid smoke. His leg had swollen up and couldn't move. Not that anything could move, wedged vertically in a shaft. His leg had broken in the fall, and the narrowing vent constricted around his body, locking him in.

Blood dripped from cuts in his hand, the result of pawing uselessly at nails in the shaft. How long had he been here? It was so dry. He was so thirsty.

Everything was fading. He imagined he was home, bringing flowers to his beautiful wife. She'd take him back, and apologize for their fight. He wasn't a do-nothing drunk. He was a rich man, now.

Frank snapped awake at the sound of a car outside, remembering his torturous situation and his failed robbery. Nothing but dust and metal around him, wedged in the narrow darkness, his right leg broken above the knee. Tears came to his eyes.

For the hundredth time since he had fallen, Frank let out a keening wail, and banged his forehead against the metal.



Downstairs, Dorthea shivered, and lit another stick of osenko.

And she did notice, in following months, an evil stink when the incense w...

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