C (17:19)

Detected. Hey there. Darkness prevails here. Founder of ericast, my little network of scary shows. I appreciate you listening to our scary content, but did you know you can support us? Get ad free feeds of your favorite shows, get a 20 discount code to the Erie Cast store, and unlock access to members only audiobooks all at the same time. Just go to ericast.com/and become a member today. It's cheap and really helps us out. That's eeriecast.com/thank you.

D (17:57)

Signal connection restored.

A (18:01)

The choking sound was coming from a door ahead and slightly left, hanging open like it had been broken and then forgotten. I stood in the threshold for a second with my light on the floor, feeling my body try to refuse, feeling that primitive resistance that kicks in when you're about to see something your brain knows you shouldn't. Then I stepped in, weapon raised. The room was bigger than the corridor suggested, and it took my eyes a moment to make sense of it. At first I tried to interpret what I saw as cords, storage lines, insulation. Someone's ridiculously sloppy work because there were thick coils piled along the walls and strung across broken furniture in uneven, sagging arcs. I took one step further and felt my stomach heave because I could see now that the coils were layered, mounded, worked into the room like someone had been building with them. Some strands were taut, like they were under tension, others lay in heavy piles, and when my light traced them, some were as thick as a forearm, some thinner, branching in places like tendons or veins, and the whole mass looked like a body turned inside out and repurposed into cable. Then my light stopped and found the first body. It was held half in, half out of one of the mounds. The front of the torso was opened from throat down in a long, horrible line, and the cavity beneath was completely empty. The ribs were exposed and spread like something had forced them apart, and the edges of the opening weren't even close to a clean cut. The second body was upright, leaned back against a wall, pinned in place by those cords wrapped around the chest and shoulders. I saw the face and recoiled from it because it wasn't torn the way you'd expect from an animal attack. It was stripped away and the forehead. There was a hole bored into it, and when the beam angled just right, I could see into it far enough to understand that whatever made that hole hadn't been satisfied with just opening it. My flashlight hand started trembling when the choking sound came again, and I turned toward it. At first I only saw another mound. Then my beam caught an eye, reflecting back alive. A person was embedded in the cords, held by upright thick strands wrapped around their torso and arms and thighs, not cutting through them, not crushing them, just holding them tight enough that any struggle would be pointless, like a fly caught in a spider's web. Their head lolled slightly and their lips were split and wet, blood pooling at the corner of the mouth like their body couldn't even manage the dignity of swallowing anymore. They blinked slow, sticky blinks, and when they focused on me, the look in their eyes wasn't relief so much as a resigned kind of panic. They knew something I didn't.

C (21:44)

Please.

A (21:46)

They rasped, and the word came out with a gurgle at the end, like their throat was full. I took a half step forward before my training could stop me, because there is something in a human voice that still overrides everything in my head. Their body convulsed as if on cue, and that's when I saw the movement properly, something that made my phantom limbs want to crawl out from under my bones. Their veins stood up under the skin like cords, raised and dark, and along them were bulges traveling in irregular patterns, some fast, some slow, like whatever was inside them didn't move as one thing but as many. The skin on their forearm pulsed in a dozen tiny points, little pushes outward and relaxations, and their face tightened in pain so sharp that stole their breath. Kill. Kill me, they said, and it wasn't dramatic or angry. It was flat, like it was the only sentence they had left. Blood slid from their mouth again and dripped to the floor in thick drops. One drop hit the concrete and something in the smear twitched, quick and small. It squirmed for less than a second, then went still and the blood became just blood again, but that one moment was enough to make my stomach flip, because it meant whatever was happening to them was happening in all of them. The person's eyes locked onto my pistol like it was the only thing left in the world. Please. I can't. I can't, they whispered, voice breaking. I had a flash of that other house, the one Conroy and I went into months back. The heat and the humidity and the way Conroy didn't hesitate when mercy was the only thing he could offer. And I hated that my brain reached for it as a baseline because it meant I already accepted what I was about to become. Behind me, the largest mound near the far wall tightened in a slow, subtle pull, like cable drawing taut. Then I heard it, wet, dragging across concrete. The victim's eyes widened in terror and they forced the words out around the blood and the choking. It's back to it now, please. And standing there with the smell filling my throat and the eye open wide in my chest, I felt a simple truth settle into me like ice. This was no longer recon, and I had a decision to make. I wish I could tell you I found some third option that didn't involve becoming the kind of person who makes decisions like this. There was only the fact that they were trapped, suffering in their own body, begging for mercy, and the sound of whatever had done this getting closer. The eye was wide open in my chest, and when it spoke, I felt something in its meaning. Fear or urgency, Maybe both. And the host exit the premises, it said. I hated it for being right, in the same way I hated myself for already knowing what I was going to do. Because the second I looked into their eyes, I knew that there was no way out of that kind of suffering. Conroy had showed me that sometimes that's all we can do. I just didn't think it would be me making that call. At least not so soon. I stepped in close and I said I'm sorry, because I didn't know what else to say. And then I fired once, and they went limp against the cords, like their body had been released from a lifetime's worth of pain and misery. The wet drag from the far mound accelerated into something decisively closer. The cords nearest the wall tightened and lifted, and then something dark and slick slid out of a shadow low to the ground, unfolding rather than rising. It didn't roar or charge, it just hooked me in. It made small, precise adjustments as if it were lining itself up on me, and when my light caught the front edge of it, I saw surfaces that looked more like exposed muscle than skin, rigid and wet with parts that folded into each other in a way that made me struggle to understand what I was looking at. Then a needle thin appendage unfolded from beneath the mass, jointed, surgical, glistening wet, and shot toward me with the precision of a striking viper. My body understood before my mind did every nerve screaming as I realized it didn't want to kill me. It wanted to use me, like it had done to the others. I scrambled backward, pistol trembling in my white, knuckled grip, and fired wildly. The rounds tore through the rope mass with wet, meaty thuds, spraying dark fluid across the concrete. The creature convulsed, recoiling and retracting its appendage more in an act of protection than pain. Its mass quivered with what I could only interpret as frustration. That half second was enough. I moved out into the corridor and forced myself not to run blindly, because panic is how you miss exits and die in places you shouldn't be. My training kicked in like muscle memory. I kept my light tight, kept my muzzle where it mattered, and listened. I reached an intersection, feeling the kind of hesitation that gets you killed, and the eye spoke, sharp and direct. Left. Left. I turned left without arguing, and as soon as I did, something heavy struck the wall to my right, hard enough to vibrate through the corridor, followed by a scrape like a wet cable pulling tight. The timing told me everything I needed to know about how it hunted. It was trying to cut me off, like it was used to playing this game. I moved through two adjoining rooms, office spaces with overturned desks and collapsed cabinets, and the cords were everywhere now, I noticed thinner strands and corners, thicker runs along the base of walls, enough that the whole place felt like it had been wired with something organic, and this was some kind of a system, a network built up over time. The creature slid into view at the far end of the corridor as I cleared the second room, low and wet in my beam for barely long enough to register, and the thin piercing tool under it. It deployed again, angling toward me with a surgeon's intent. I fired once to force it back, and the round punched into its corded frame. It didn't flinch. Like something that feels pain, it shifted its mass to protect the limb. The stinger snapped forward fast enough that my brain lagged behind the motion. I felt the eye step in and move for me and pulled my arm back a fraction of of an inch. It punctured the edge of my sleeve, just barely missing my flesh by an increment so small it couldn't be measured. The stinger retracted instantly, probably assuming the attempt succeeded and I didn't need to waste time in the open. I didn't wait to find out what was next. I backed away, heart pounding in my chest as the eye hummed, steady, steadily analyzing the situation. Stairs, it said, and I turned to see a doorway that I'd missed before behind an overturned filing cabinet. The creature hissed from the darkness behind me as I vaulted the cabinet and bolted down the stairs, my Maglite in one hand, pistol in the other, trying to keep both in front of me as I took the stairs three at a time. The humid air was replaced by a colder draft as I realized I was getting closer to an exit, but so was it. I could hear the wet, sucking sound of its body dragging itself down the stairs behind me, closing the distance with each passing second. I reached a door and slammed into it, praying it wouldn't be locked. Miraculously, it wasn't. Downstairs, the space opened into a larger production floor a again, and for a moment that wet, dragging sound felt further away, but I didn't let that trick me into slowing. It had already proved it could come from anywhere. I hit the loading bay corridor and forced myself to stop for exactly one task, because if you come back with nothing but fear, you might as well have stayed home. We needed the intel. My hands were shaking and I hated that. I pulled the evidence bag, took my knife, and shaved off a small strand of the pale, fleshy cord from where it was anchored near the stairwell doorway. It came away with a wet stretch like cutting tendon, and the smell that rose off of it nearly made me gag, but I sealed it and shoved it into my pocket. Then I moved. The loading bay door was a black rectangle filled with cold night air, and when I crossed it, the outside hit me like relief and insult at the same time because the factory looked dead from the outside, quiet and normal, like nothing was wrong at all. I kept going across the lot until the building was far enough behind me that it became a silhouette again, and only then did I turn and stare back at it, trying to listen for pursuit, trying to hear anything that would tell me it had followed me out. Nothing came. The building just sat there, dark and still. It could wait for the next person to walk in, thinking it was just an abandoned place full of scrap metal or a space to get into trouble. The eye stayed open the whole time, and it didn't say good job or you survived. I could feel its mood irritated, like I'd been frivolous with its body and jeopardized it. That kind of shit pisses me off and was probably the reason I pushed as much as I did, something I need to be aware of. It's hard for me to explain what it feels like to have to compete for your own body and autonomy. By the time I got back to the safe house, the adrenaline had already started to train. And that's when the shaking really sets in. Because fear is one thing when you're moving, but it gets creative when you stop. I locked the door behind me and went straight to the bathroom because I felt contaminated in a way that wasn't rational. I turned the water as hot as it could go and scrubbed myself until I was red. The eye was silent. I know it could feel what I felt. I wanted to clean the experience off of me, but the thing I wanted to be rid of most is the one thing I could never go back from. I had killed someone tonight. A person. Someone that posed no threat to me. Was it the right thing to do? Yeah, I honestly think it was. But that doesn't change the way that it makes me feel like I'm a murderer. Like I'm some kind of monster. I know I described this person pretty vaguely, but there's a reason I didn't use any identifiers. It's not identity politics or anything like that. I don't care what people do one way or another. My problems have reached so far beyond that kind of shit. I honestly wish that's what I had to care about. The reason is, after seeing those people, what happened to them, what became of them and what I did, I don't want their family and loved ones to have that as their last memory. Some might say that isn't for me to decide, that it's better to know than wonder. Maybe that's true for some, but having been there, I honestly don't think so. I've made the executive decision to leave that out of public information. I don't know if that makes me like the Bureau in some twisted circular way, but I know if it were my mom out there listening, I wouldn't want her to know. I sat down at the table and set the evidence bag in front of me. Even sealed, it seemed to radiate that smell, and I had to fight the urge to shove it in the incinerator. The strand inside looked pale under the overhead light, glossy in places, rigid and others, and the longer I stared at it, the less I was sure what type of thing I was even looking at. Then I did what I should have done before I went through everything I went through tonight. I called Conroy. He answered fast, which meant I probably wasn't the only fire he was dealing with tonight. Talk, he said. No greeting, no softness. It's real, I told him, and my voice sounded hoarse even to me. It's not squatters. It's not a drug den. It's I don't know what it is, but it's real. Start from the top, Conroy said. Yeah, I didn't record the call, which putting this together now, I guess would have made for a better listening experience. This is all so weird to me, but I'm kind of getting it. What I thought of as theatrics people see as proof and authenticity, and that makes sense when what we're selling is so far outside of normal. Sorry, I guess, for my shitty Conroy impression. Anyway, I told him what happened and I kept it as factual as I could. I told him about the smell, the rope like organic material, the bodies, their hollowed out chests and skulls, the living host pinned in the mass, begging for me to kill them, and the way the blood on the floor moved, like it had something inside it. I told him about the thing that was in there, the thing that tried to catch me and inject me. When I finished, there was a pause long enough that I checked to see if the call had dropped. Then he asked, you brought anything back? The question almost caught me by surprise. I was half expecting him to tear me a new one. I stared at the bag for a few seconds. Yeah, a sample of one of the rope strands and my body cam footage. Good, conroy said with thinly veiled exhaustion. How close did it get? Close. Too close, I admitted, and I could hear my own hesitation it punched through my sleeve. Another pause, shorter this time. Check your skin, he said. I did again. I did, I repeated, sharper now, because I didn't like how calm he was, and I didn't like the way my mind kept circling, the same image of bulges moving under the victim's skin. The eye would be going insane right now if there were another foreign presence in here. Okay, conroy said finally. We'll handle it. You did what you were sent to do. I almost laughed at that, because what I was sent to do was recon, and recon doesn't usually include mercy killing a stranger pinned to a wall of meat while something with a needle tried to tag you like livestock. Conroy, I said. My voice came out lower because I needed him to hear the part that mattered. It's still in there. I know, he said, and the simplest certainty of it made the hair in my arms lift. Get some rest. Don't leave the safe house. I'll call you soon. We'll handle it, you and me. He hung up before I could argue, because that's what he does when he's already made a decision. I sat there for a while after staring at the bag, listening to the quiet of the safe house. Eventually I got up, went to the bathroom, and removed my shirt in the mirror to check the eye like I often do. It was open fully, not blinking, not half lidded, just staring straight at me in the reflection like it had been waiting for me. I stood there with my hands on the sink and felt cold creep up my spine because it wasn't looking at me the way it usually does, like I'm a container it happens to live in. It looked alert, interested. Then, very quietly, like it wanted my full attention, it said propagation. I felt my throat go dry. What? I whispered. It didn't answer. It just blinked once, slow, and closed halfway, like the conversation was over, and I stood there in the harsh bathroom light, realizing what it meant, the bodies, the way it had come after me not with the intent of killing but injecting and capturing. It was making more. It was breeding. Fuck, man, this is gonna suck.

B (41:23)

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