Author's Note: Thank you so much for waiting and for sticking with me. I love this ending, and I hope you do, too. My final notes will be posted in the next "chapter" but they're not consequential to the story so you can skip them if you want. But enough rambling. Here's part two! Please enjoy it, and happy Halloween!

It was easier than Taehyung expected to get out of Mommy and Me.

His mother’s increased interest in his studies meant that she knew about his teachers, about his assignments. He called her at lunch and let her know, with feigned disappointment, that he would be unable to attend their daily gardening session, speaking in polished, precise Korean for extra brownie points.

“Mr. Branca sprung this project on us,” he lied smoothly, not missing a beat. Having always been a courteous, timid child, Taehyung had never had any real reason to lie to his mother. As such, he was rusty. The few times he did try to pull one over on her, she saw right through him, noticing shaky hands and an obvious lack of eye-contact. But that afternoon, he lied like a pro, putting on a performance that would have made Seokjin proud.

“That man is going to work you kids to death,” she said, sighing disappointedly. But how mad could she be? Her son – her new favorite son – was trying to get a jump-start on his schoolwork. By all accounts, she’d done a good job with him. She had reason to be proud. “What am I going to do while you’re learning biology?”

Taehyung had planned for this. He still needed to go home. He needed his bike, among other things, and he couldn’t very well have brought them all to school with him. Someone – maybe Jihoon, maybe someone or something else – surely would have seen him and that would have opened up a can of worms he wasn’t quite ready to deal with,

So he’d thought ahead, and factored that into his lie.

“Why don’t you visit Ms. Simmons and the girls?” Taehyung prompted sweetly, referring to an old family friend that lived two towns over. “She’s called like three times in the last month begging you to come over for dinner. Why not take her up on it? Seokjin and I can fend for ourselves. We’re big boys. We can work the microwave and everything.”

Sounding equal parts impressed and flattered, she said, “You know what? That’s a good idea. Why should I always cook?”

“You shouldn’t,” he countered easily. “You deserve a night off.”

They spoke for another minute or so and then Taehyung hung up, slipping his fossil phone into his pocket and taking a steadying breath.

It had been easier than he expected, but that just made him anticipate trouble later. It couldn’t possibly stay this easy, not when he’d taken so much time off. God, how could he have been so stupid? How could he have fallen for that false security? How could he have allowed himself to be seduced by complacency and comfort? He was one of maybe two people in town (or in the state, or in the country, or maybe in the entire world) that knew the truth about Canon Bay and he’d almost let himself forget.

It was exactly what they wanted.

He’d called his mother from the stairwell near the library on purpose. There were no windows there, no way for that trench coat bastard to see him. (And he assumed that it had to be the same guy. If it wasn’t, how many were there? How many people were involved with this? How many loyal, shadowy minions did it take to pull something like this off?)

He checked his watch – it was almost 12:30. With just over an hour left in his school day, he decided to skip his last two periods. How much trouble could he really get into for that?

He walked home, taking the long way to ensure that his mother had ample time to get ready and get out. If she caught him, all of this had been for nothing. But, once again, luck, however short-lived, was on his side. He ducked into the bushes across the street just in time to see his mother get into her car, fumble with the GPS on her phone and pull away.

Like last time, he counted to a hundred, giving himself a buffer in case she forgot her purse or left the curling iron on, but once the coast was clear, he darted inside, a man on a mission.

His bike was exactly where he’d left it and so he skipped a step, going right up to the attic and digging like a troubled gopher through boxes with Korean words scribbled onto masking tape labels. Where was it? Was it in with the photo albums, or with the stuff they’d brought over when they moved?

He nearly wet himself when he heard footsteps coming up the attic stairs. He hadn’t counted long enough. His mother had come back to get something and not only had he been caught in a lie, he’d been caught skipping school. He was boned – utterly and royally boned. In a way it was a relief. He knew his luck would run out. At least now it had finally caught up with him.

But it wasn’t his mother that appeared in the attic a moment later.

It was Seokjin.

“Now, I know what I’m doing home,” Seokjin said, taking a bite from the apple in his hand. “Seniors can leave after 6^th period, you see. But what are you doing here?”

“I can’t tell you right now,” Taehyung said, ignoring the way his brother always chewed with his mouth open. “Where’s the camera?”

“What camera?”

“The digital one. The one mom used to use back in Korea.”

“That hunk of junk?” he snorted. “What do you need that for?”

“A project,” Taehyung lied, aware that it was becoming a habit. “A school project.”

The truth was he needed to take pictures – a lot of pictures – and his garbage phone had neither the megapixels nor the storage to handle the load. If he was going back to that neighborhood off of Edgewater, he was going to need to come back with some proof. Nightmares and memories weren’t enough, and neither were hushed, reluctant conversations in the school library with Jihoon.

He needed actual proof and so he needed the camera.

“I think it might be with the old Christmas stuff,” Seokjin said, gesturing to the far side of the dusty attic. “Our first Christmas here was probably the last time we used it.” Taehyung tripped over an old pair of snow boots and scrambled to the box in question, not really listening to the stream of nonsense leaving his brother’s mouth. “You know, you should really get a job. Then you could afford a real phone and not have to use a camera that’s older than you are. You know what I’m saying?”

He really didn’t.

Plunging his hand into a box of lights and ornaments, Taehyung breathed an audible sigh of relief when his hand touched something metallic and rectangular. He plucked it from the box and blew the dust off. Matte red and cumbersome, it was certainly obsolete but as long as it was still basically functional, it would get the job done.

He flipped it over, looking for a charging port and panicked when he realized he’d never find a wire that old. He almost cheered aloud when he found a latch instead.

“Batteries,” he said. “It takes batteries.” He looked up to Seokjin. “Where are the batteries?”

“In Mom’s office,” he said and Taehyung exploded past him, taking the stairs two at a time and almost falling down them. “Hey, we need to talk about what you’re going to do for me if I don’t tell Mom you cut class! Bribery transcends all language, little bro. What are you going to give me?”

Taehyung couldn’t hear him. Besides, he could deal with Seokjin later. His idiot brother didn’t come with a time constrict like Edgewater did.

Doing his best not to disturb anything else, Taehyung rifled through this mother’s desk. He took two AA batteries from an unopened 10-pack, tried to think of a preemptive lie to explain them away, then popped them into the camera, holding his breath when he hit the power button.

After an antagonizing four seconds, the screen came to life. Needing to be sure, he pointed it at his mother’s desk chair and took a picture, the flash illuminating the room and reminding him of the bright light that lit up Canon Bay the night before Jongin disappeared.

Jongin.

Dino.

Maybe he’d see them soon.

He checked the camera and made sure that the picture had saved and when he was confident that his out-of-date Kodak would be enough to get the job done, he pocketed it and headed towards the garage.

It was a brisk afternoon but not nearly cold enough to deter him. Nothing would be enough to deter him that day. He was mad at himself for putting it off this long, mad at himself for letting it go, and mad at himself for doing exactly what they wanted him to do – he was mad at himself for almost forgetting.

And he felt guilty, too. He remembered what his dad said about guilt being a useless emotion but he couldn’t shake it. All this time, while he’d been gardening with his mother and brushing up on his Korean dramas, he’d been ignoring the evil lurking at the edge of his neighborhood. Who knew what else had gone wrong? Who knew how many others had remembered something awful just in time to disappear from Canon Bay completely?

Getting back on his bike felt strangely like going home again. What had that voice he’d heard meant about him needing to go home? Where was his home? Was it in Canon Bay? In Edgewater? Or in one of those godforsaken houses?

He thought about it as he pedaled towards Edgewater, the chill in the air stinging the tops of his ears.

If this thing, this nameless, faceless evil, wanted him to forget so badly, why did he still have the dreams? Why hadn’t they wiped his mind like everyone else? And why had they spoken to him inside his own head? That had happened twice, he remembered. The first had been gentle – a warning to get the hell out of dodge before the true owners of those giant houses returned. But the second time? The time in his room? It had been violent, painful. It was an inhuman scream that Taehyung had somehow been able to understand. It had made him bleed and then knocked him unconscious.

Was it possible that they’d come from the same source? They were so different that it didn’t make sense to Taehyung (though nothing about anything that had happened to him since July had made much sense). Why would one voice, soft and genial, warn him about straying too far while another, angry and cruel, demanded that he come back?

It forced Taehyung to consider the horrifying possibility that this was even bigger than he knew. All this time, he’d been imagining a single monster, one terrifying entity that wanted Canon Bay all to itself and that used an all-knowing, coat-clad spy-squad to keep its secrets. But what if it was more than that? What if it wasn’t just one monster, but a whole world of them? What if it wasn’t one man in a trench coat, but a whole army of them? What if there were invisible neighborhoods in towns all across the country, all across the world, all littered with giant buildings, all filled with the unfortunate souls who dared to remember the horrors they’d seen? What if there was entire universe out there, existing just on the edge of their own, filled with unspeakable evil? And what if the people that lived there, the ones just outside the realm of humanity, were as diverse as the humans that Taehyung knew?

Maybe some agreed with their overlords and maybe they used their powers to trick stupid, susceptible humans into returning to the haunted neighborhoods that existed in the grey area between realms. Maybe some rebelled against the evil that commanded and condemned them, and tried to warn their inferiors to run away and stay away.

Or maybe it was aliens and all of this was for naught, a rudimentary social-science experiment being put on by a superior race just to see how the weak-minded humans would react to trauma and fear.

Maybe he didn’t know anything at all.

But as he turned down Magnolia, Taehyung realized that there was only one path he could take that would even give him a shot at figuring any of it out, and that path cut through the woods on Birch Way and was usually covered in bugs.

There were less bugs that afternoon. Maybe, Taehyung thought, they preferred warmer weather. When the wind picked up and nipped at his skin, he decided that he did, too.

He took the path with careful, deliberate steps, walking his bike along the trail just like he’d done months before. When he emerged from the woods and stood before the fork in the road, Taehyung couldn’t help but feel like he was staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.

Bile swirled in his gut and bubbled at the base of his esophagus, the sour stomach of a man making a dangerous choice. He looked down the road that veered left, then to the one that went right. It felt surreal, a waking dream, something that shouldn’t have existed anywhere but in the shadows of his own resting mind. He swallowed hard, forcing down the acid that burned in his throat, and climbed back on his bike.

Last time, he’d gone left. That was where he’d found the monstrous buildings, the abominable skyscrapers. (From where he stood, Taehyung figured he should be able to see those horrible towers. They were strikingly high, easily as tall as the buildings he’d seen on his class trip to New York City, so why couldn’t he see them? Was it some sort of trick? Something that they did to conceal it?) What would he find if he went to the right? More tombs of the lost? Actual, waking monsters? Something even more awful than anything his twisted brain could even dream up?

There was only one way to find out. He angled his bike to the street bending right and started to pedal, his heartbeat the steady drumline of a man probably marching to his own execution.

At first glance, it almost looked like a normal neighborhood. The first groups of houses all seemed well within reason. They were the right size, free of all obvious structural damage and there wasn’t a ghoul or trench coat minion in sight. What they lacked, of course, were any human touches. There were no cars, no mailboxes, no house numbers. There weren’t even any driveways, giving Taehyung the all-too-vivid impression that these homes weren’t constructed but rather picked up and placed here completely as-is. The same two questions buzzed around his head like persistent horseflies – how and why?

As ordinary as they might have looked, Taehyung knew that they were anything but, and he pulled the archaic camera from his jacket pocket and snapped a photo of each of them. It was then that he realized that he probably should’ve taken a picture of the path and the fork in the road, too. But hindsight was 20-20. He could always get those on the way out.

He pressed on, holding the camera carefully in one hand so that he could steer his bike with the other. The farther he went, the worse the houses became, but Taehyung had expected that. That seemed to be the way things worked. The outer edges appeared normal. The shallow end of the pool was always safer, wasn’t it? It was when he persisted, when he swam farther out, when he got into the deep end, that things got dicey.

The houses here were hoisted up on thick, wooden beams but they weren’t nearly as tall as the houses he’d found on the other street. He took pictures, pointing and shooting and hoping that this would somehow be enough to prove to someone, anyone, that something bad was happening here, but his mind wandered. The houses were eerie but they were nothing he hadn’t seen before. Objectively, the houses here were no scarier than the storm-ravaged houses he’d seen on the other side of Edgewater.

What troubled him was the fact that he could see the ocean. He was heading west, so how was that possible? They lived on the east coast. Hell, the lived in the easternmost part of town. Walking out of his front door and walking a sixth of a mile east would bring him into the Atlantic Ocean, so how the could he be travelling dead west and still see the water?

He tried to reason through it. Maybe it wasn’t the ocean. Maybe it was a lake or a river but… it damn sure looked like the ocean to him. It looked like, if he continued down this road a-ways, the land eventually gave way to nothing but water. What river was that wide? How could there be some massive waterway that he didn’t know about?

The low rumbling of thunder pulled Taehyung from his thoughts, but that didn’t make sense either. Since when were there thunderstorms in November? He looked up in time for a fat raindrop to fall gracelessly into his left eye. Grey storm clouds had gathered into dark clusters, all threatening to burst like overfilled water balloons and soak him at any minute.

Hadn’t it been sunny just a few moments ago? If he looked at the photos he’d just taken of the houses, wouldn’t he see blue skies?

Another roll of thunder, another raindrop on his face, and then a strike of lightning somewhere over the water.

Huffing, Taehyung turned around. This place was creepy enough without an impending rainstorm. Now that he’d laid all the groundwork for his lie, it would be easier to return. With the right emphasis on the right words, Taehyung could probably claim the next week or two from his mother. And now that he had the camera and the batteries, all he had to do was start riding his bike to school and he was in the clear.

He would come back.

He wasn’t forgetting this time.

He pedaled back the way he came, risking getting wet to take a few photos of the fork in the road, but the sky had darkened so quickly that he needed to use the camera’s flash to see anything at all. The rain picked up, the air cold and dry. Not wanting to get caught up in some unexpected, late-season hurricane, Taehyung hauled back through the woods, lugging his bike down the path and emerging onto Birch Way with a swear.

He pulled his camera back out to take pictures of the path but noticed several auspicious signs all at once. The first was that all the bugs were gone. What was the point of photographing the path without the bugs? It would have just looked like any other path without the freaky cockroaches. The second thing he noticed was how strange the shadows looked, patches of swirling shade over the trail looking vaguely ghoulish themselves. And the third thing he noticed came tacked onto his observation about the shadows.

Where there were shadows, there was sun.

Sun.

Taehyung hopped off his bike, pushing the kickstand down with his foot, and walked backwards until he was standing on Birch Way, away from the covers of the trees.

Sun. Sunlight. A bright fireball in an otherwise perfectly blue sky. No clouds. No rain. No nothing.

He was dumbfounded, but that was a feeling he was getting used to.

He looked down at the sleeves of his jacket. They were still wet from the rain, still sporting two or three dozen tiny wet spots on his sleeves.

So it was raining over the fork in the road, but perfectly clear less than fifty feet in the other direction? At what point did real life end and something else, something sinister, begin? Where was the line? What was the border? Taehyung figured it had to be somewhere on the path. There was a door there, an entrance of some kind, something invisible that let him go from one place to the other.

Springing a sudden storm to scare him away was a pretty good trick, but they’d have to do better than that to keep him away. He decided to call it a day only because he wasn’t sure how much time had passed. His phone had died while he was playing sleuth photographer and he didn’t wear a watch. He had a creeping suspicion that time might not pass in exactly the same way once he crossed over that invisible bridge, and as he pedaled home, he tried to think of a way to test that theory.

He had to lie to Seokjin about where he’d gone and what he’d done, but that was even easier than lying to his mother.

“I skipped my last two periods to meet a girl,” Taehyung said, playing every bit the part of the sheepish, lovestruck younger brother. “She goes to another school so we decided to meet halfway. I’ll do your chores for the next month if you don’t tell Mom.”

Seokjin laughed and slapped his brother on the back and launched seamlessly into the macho, smooth-talking senior Taehyung knew he wanted so desperately to be. He and asked to see the girl and ultimately swore that he’d keep his secret before shoving him and telling him to always wear a .

Taehyung faked a laugh, pretended to blush, then retreated to the safety of his room to be alone with his thoughts and his pictures. He double and triple-checked the camera, making sure that the pictures were still very much there, then wrapped it in one of his old t-shirts and put it at the bottom of his backpack. The next day, he’d return to Edgewater, return to Birch Way and return to the trail. He’d even bring a raincoat in case they tried to it him with more unexpected precipitation.

One way or another, he’d get a picture of everything – the houses, the wrong-way ocean, the horrible buildings and whatever or whoever was inside of them.

He did a little homework, aware of the fact that he needed to keep his grades up, especially if he was going to keep skipping school, then fell asleep playing Unblock Me on his iPod.

He’d certainly heard of sleep paralysis (Jihoon was fascinated by things like that and he’d made Taehyung watch a documentary with him on Netflix about it) but he’d never experienced it until that night.

He woke up because his room was bright white. That flash was back, the one that was supposed to make him forget. Only he couldn’t forget. He was immune somehow. So who was this light for? What had someone else figured out? And would they forget like Mark and Baekhyun, or would they dare to retain it all like Jongin and Dino?

But Taehyung was only able to ponder the light for a second. As troubling as it was to imagine, the Bright White Light of Forgetfulness was only the second most disturbing thing happening to him in that moment. The third most disturbing? The fact that he couldn’t move. Not a muscle, not an inch. It was like he’d been filled with cement. He was completely immobile. The only thing he knew for sure to be working was his eyes, and they were literally the only part of him that would budge at all.

But the most disturbing part about all of it was the fact that there was someone – something – in his room, and he was wearing a black hat and long trench coat.

The figure wasn’t moving. Somehow, Taehyung knew that he had been moving before he’d opened his eyes. He’d been rifling around his room as Taehyung slept and now that he was awake, he’d frozen like a deer in headlights.

But, of course, their light was much brighter than headlights.

Taehyung tried to move, tried to open his mouth to scream, but what good would that do? Even if his parents and brother had somehow woken up in time to run to his room, then what? Would the figure even still be there? Would they be able to see him? Would they remember any of it in the morning? Would the figure kill all four of them, or just kill Taehyung’s family to send a message?

Dread washed over him, warm like his blankets but so, so heavy. Despite the light, he couldn’t make out any details. The man, the figure, was little more than a shadow. The only thing Taehyung could actually see beside the outline of his body was his right hand. He must’ve been human, at least at one time – he had five fingers. He was reaching for Taehyung’s backpack.

He was trying to get the camera.

The fact that the figure had stopped as soon as Taehyung awoke probably meant that Taehyung wasn’t supposed to see him.

But, then, Taehyung wasn’t supposed to see any of it. He wasn’t supposed to know about any of it. He wasn’t supposed to know about the trail, the bugs, the houses, the darkness. And if he did know, he wasn’t supposed to remember any of it. Their tricks didn’t work on him. But why? Why him? What made him special? What set him apart from everyone else in Canon Bay?

Mustering up all of the strength in his body, Taehyung tried fiercely to thrash against his invisible restraints but found no relief. A dull, twisting pain sprang up in his lower back, his body protesting against its shackles, but he remained still.

The figure, while still completely motionless, appeared to breathe. Maybe he was waiting for Taehyung to fall back asleep, or maybe he expected him to black out again like he had the last time something awful and foreign had invaded his room.

But Taehyung didn’t fall back asleep. Though his eyelids were growing heavy and his head was beginning to pound (was this another trick?), he forced his eyes to stay open. He didn’t blink. He kept his sight fixed on the figure, fixed on his bony, outstretched hand.

If he was going to steal from him, he’d need to do it to his face.

The pressure on his body increased. It felt like he was being flattened into the mattress. At any minute, he’d sure he’d burst. Keeping his eyes open started to feel like an impossible task. But he fought. He fought like hell. Blood trickled down from his right nostril and streamed down to his lips. If he’d been able to open his mouth, he would’ve tasted it. Another nosebleed. It still wasn’t enough to beat him.

It was a game of chicken, a waiting game, a pissing contest. What would happen first? Would the figure give up, or would Taehyung’s head actually implode? With the way his brain was pulsing and squeezing, Taehyung was almost certain it’d be the latter. His resolve was ironclad but his body was merely flesh and bone. Surely something from a far-off dimension of monsters would be able to crush his skull without exerting very much effort at all. So why hadn’t they?

Why not just kill him? If they were powerful enough to erect skyscrapers and create storms and summon armies of trench coat minions, why didn’t they just kill him? Clearly him and people like him were thorns in the side of whoever perpetuated all this evil, so why not just crush him like a blood-colored cockroach and be done with it? Why the giant houses filled with the poor saps who’d crossed them? Why keep them alive?

What were they doing to them? Why were they keeping them, herding them, trapping them like cattle?

Maybe Taehyung had been right. It was some alien child’s science experiment and they were the stupid, expendable rats being sent through cardboard mazes. Suddenly, he felt bad for every ant hill he’d kicked down as a kid. Just because he was the superior species didn’t mean he had to hurt those weaker than him.

The figure still hadn’t moved. It was holding its breath. Taehyung was, too, but not on purpose. It just hurt too much to breathe deeply, his chest constricting and threatening to cave in and flatten all his organs. It was getting dark now, though he couldn’t tell if the bright light was dimming or if he was just losing consciousness.

Slowly, the figure started to move, his ghastly hand inching closer to the backpack.

So, the latter, then.

Taehyung was passing out and the figure could sense it somehow. He had won. Despite Taehyung’s strong will, his body was giving up, waving the white flag, throwing in the towel. He’d regained just enough control over his body to open his mouth but all that came out was a pathetic, gasping whimper.

The figure had its fingers wrapped around the top of his backpack now and Taehyung’s eyes drifted close, the thick darkness crashing down over him like a tidal wave.

When next he opened his eyes, it was morning. He could feel the dried blood on his lip and didn’t bother trying to wipe it away. He sat up slowly, worried that whatever happened to him hours before had left lasting damage, and once he realized he was okay, he looked to his floor. He didn’t need to turn on his light. He knew his backpack was gone. Had the figure taken it back to wherever it called home, or had he tossed it into one of those wooden skyscrapers? What if those skyscrapers were its home?

Did it matter?

Taehyung didn’t have another camera. Maybe he could procure one but what was to stop them from coming back and doing this all over again? Remembering something he’d done back in the summer, Taehyung scrambled for his phone. He’d taken a picture of those bugs the first time he’d seen them. The photo quality was undoubtedly poor but it was something. With shaking fingers, Taehyung navigated to his phone’s photo gallery, breezing past pictures of his friends and of comic books and of cool-looking sunsets. He saw the thumbnail of the photo, a tiny picture of dirt and grass, but when he selected it, his phone gave him an error message.

‘File corrupted.’

He bit the inside of his cheek. Maybe he should’ve seen that one coming.

Another trick. They were able to mess with technology, huh? That was fine. He’d just have to go old school. Pen and paper. Analog. There wasn’t they could do about a notebook, was there?

They’d been in his room but he still wasn’t deterred. He’d almost given up on this once and he wasn’t about to do it again. There was too much at stake for that.

For a moment, he considered texting Jihoon. He wanted to tell him everything, but that sentiment was fleeting. Jihoon was already in pretty deep. Why make it worse? Why strain their friendship even more when he’d made it perfectly clear that he wanted no part in it?

He dug through his desk until he found an old composition book, then ripped out a few embarrassing drawings of superheroes and anime characters from back when he wanted to be a comic book artist. After some quiet searching (it wasn’t quite time to wake up yet and if he woke his brother up, he’d be eating a fist for breakfast), Taehyung pulled an old backpack out of his closet. It wasn’t super stylish but it would do the trick. (He realized that there had been lots of other things in his backpack besides just his camera and that he had essentially been robbed but it wasn’t like he could call the cops, now, could he?)

His mother noticed it immediately.

“That backpack is from 7th grade,” she said, looking up over the top of her Korean newspaper. “Why are you wearing it?”

“This one distributes weight more evenly,” he said. “I’m carrying more books lately and it’s hurting my shoulders.” She seemed troubled but he cut her off before she could voice it. “I’m going to be home late the rest of the week. I know you always say to be nice to everyone because you don’t know their struggles but my partner for this project is kind of an idiot. If we work anywhere else besides the school library, he’ll get distracted like a puppy.”

She nodded slowly, understanding, then asked lightly, “What am I going to do all week?”

“You’ll have some you-time,” Taehyung said with a shrug. “Think back to when me and Seokjin were little kids. You probably would have killed for some alone time back then.” His mother seemed placated so he gave her a smile. “I’m going to ride my bike to school today. Yes, I’ll be careful. I just want to get a little stronger. You know, like Seokjin.”

She didn’t question it. It was scary how good he’d gotten at lying, and how quickly, but there were much scarier things afoot and Taehyung brought his focus back to where it belonged.

School was tough. He’d had textbooks and homework in that backpack and without it, he was in quite a pickle. Beyond that, whenever he looked at Jihoon, an unspoken concern seemed to radiate between them. It was as though Jihoon could smell it on him. He knew what he was up to, he know how close he’d gotten. But if Jihoon really did know, he didn’t say anything. There was a look in his eye, a sort of pleading, but he didn’t say a word.

Maybe it was better that way.

Maybe, in the long run, it would be easier for both of them.

Taehyung didn’t skip his last two periods again. He showed up, went through the motions, answered a few questions and then took off like a bat out of hell as soon as he heard the final bell.

It was getting easier to return to Edgewater, to Birch Way, to the path. His heart wasn’t pounding as hard now. There was a certain practiced ease to it. He walked his bike through the woods, through the invisible door or over the invisible bridge, but he didn’t feel that same fear. He felt… relaxed. He felt prepared. Ready. But why? Had that voice been right? Was this, somehow, his home? Did he belong here? Did anyone?

A certain amount of dread still remained. He knew what to expect now but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He stood at the fork in the road and looked to the left. Even with this newfound courage, he wasn’t sure he was ready to face those houses again. He wasn’t ready to face what they meant.

Besides, he hadn’t fully explored the right side of the neighborhood yet. He had all the time in the world to go back down that path. For now, he wanted to finish what he started. Because he knew it wouldn’t be conducive to his new plan, Taehyung left his bike parked at the fork and started walking. He left his backpack on the handlebars and pulled the notebook from inside.

Immediately, he started to write. Though his grip on the English language was sometimes tenuous, especially when he was feeling stressed, and though he had the handwriting of a Russian doctor, Taehyung started taking notes. He counted out his steps, measuring the distance from one landmark to another. On the subject of landmarks, he described them in detail, sparing no adjectives or adverbs. He walked slowly, sketching diagrams of houses and fumbling his way through the spellings of challenging words he’d never had a reason to use before.

Maybe it wasn’t pictures but it was something. At the very least, this was a file those bastards couldn’t corrupt. He was in the middle of describing a large, orangey rock when something in his lizard brain told him to look alive. He looked up from his notes, eyes wide, a dog responding to a shrill whistle. In the distance, near the water, he saw a cloaked figure and he nearly laughed out loud. Was it the same one from his room? Was it the same one from the train tracks that day he hung up Jongin’s flyers? Was it the same one that watched Jihoon? Or was it someone new? How many could there really be?

Shaking his head, Taehyung put his pen between his teeth to free up one of his hands, then lifted his arm straight in the air and stuck up his middle finger.

“Eat me,” he muttered, making sure to hold his arm up long enough so that the figure could get an eyeful, then went back to writing. His hand was cramping from the speed of his scribbling and diagraming but Taehyung didn’t care. This was progress. This was productive. This was resistance.

He heard thunder then Taehyung did laugh out loud. He raised his middle finger again, this time pointing it at the sky, effectively flipping off the new group of clouds over his head that seemed to materialize from nothing.

“ you and your clouds,” Taehyung mumbled. “I’m not afraid of a little rain.”

Lightning flashed angrily in the distance, perhaps a direct response to his taunt, but Taehyung ignored it. If they didn’t explode his head by now, they probably wouldn’t electrocute him, either. Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe there were rules. Maybe psychological torture was okay but they weren’t allowed to actually touch him.

Maybe there was still a whole lot Taehyung had to learn about them after all. He’d come so far but maybe he’d only just scratched the surface of whatever this was. Maybe it extended deeper than he could even imagine. Frankly, that seemed likely. He wasn’t sure if anything could surprise him anymore.

A second later, it was like the sky above him had opened itself up. Water poured down on him, soaking his clothes and threatening to ruin his notes. Not a surprise but definitely an inconvenience. He realized immediately what they were trying to do. They couldn’t corrupt his notes the way they’d corrupted his pictures, but they very easily could destroy his notebook, turning his Beginner’s Guide to Haunted Edgewater into nothing more than papery mush.

“This is really getting old,” he grumbled, shoving his notebook into his coat. He zipped it tight then crossed his arms over his chest, hugging it tightly to his torso. It was an awkward run back to his bike but at least he knew it was safe on his person. Getting his bike back over the trail without dropping his book or getting any wetter was a cumbersome task but he knew once he got past the imaginary door, he’d be okay. The rain would stop (he’d look awfully strange biking home soaking wet when it was an otherwise sunny day) and his notes would be safe.

And he was right. Though he hadn’t been paying attention to exactly when it happened, the rain stopped. Once he was back on Birch Way, he was safe. He was wet and cold but he was safe. He put a little space between himself and the path, then pulled his mostly-dry notebook from his not-so-dry jacket. Sighing with relief, he ped his backpack (though outdated, it was, apparently, pretty decently waterproofed) and slipped it back inside.

He went home, scoped out if anyone was home (they weren’t, thankfully), then rushed inside to change. Not willing to trust anything anymore, Taehyung kept his notebook with him wherever he went for the rest of the night. When his mother asked about it, he made up some bogus story about how it related to his project, and she was none the wiser.

That night, before he went to bed, Taehyung slipped it under his mattress. He slipped it under his preferred side of the bed, literally putting himself between his notes and them. It was one thing to steal a backpack laying sloppily on the floor, but this was something else entirely.

Or so he thought.

He woke up that night, too, but it was different. There was no bright light, no sleep paralysis. He woke up because he heard someone in his room and when he opened his eyes, the figure was at the foot of his bed. If it weren’t for the angle of the moonlight and the streetlight on their sidewalk, Taehyung wouldn’t have even seen him.

He opened his mouth to scream, more in surprise than fear, but in an instant, the figure lunged at him. Darkness and silence fell over him, blanketing him in nothingness. He woke up to the sound of his alarm clock and felt the increasingly familiar feeling of congealed blood on his lip. One-hundred percent sure that he hadn’t been dreaming, Taehyung dove out of bed and threw his mattress off the box spring with uncharacteristic strength. It clamored nosily to the floor, flipping halfway off the frame but going more than far enough to show Taehyung that his new worst fear had come true – they’d taken his notebook.

He fought the animalistic urge to throw his head back and roar in agony. How could he have any hope of winning this game if he didn’t understand the rules? And what the had that trench coat  done to him to make him pass out immediately? If it was simply another trick, it certainly was a new one.

He returned to Edgewater, to Birch Way, to the path and to the fork in the road with a newfound rage, a sharp, metallic aggression that he could taste on his tongue. This was as angry as he’d ever been in his life. This feeling transcended frustration and only stood to fuel his anger. If they were trying to scare him away, they were doing a ty job. If anything, they’d awoken something inside of him, a beast he never knew existed

Skipping his last two classes because detention seemed like pittance of a punishment when compared to the horrors of the rest of his life, Taehyung raced back to the path. He didn’t bother bringing anything with him, no backpack or camera or pen and paper. What was the point? If any evidence he gathered could be stolen or destroyed, why go to the trouble? All he could do was hope he pissed them off enough to knock them off their game. He just needed them to slip up, to overlook something, to up one of their tricks. If they did that, if they showed even the tiniest weak spot, he could exploit it. And maybe then he’d be able to walk away with something other than wet clothes and a stolen camera.

Once more, he considered reaching out to Jihoon. Jihoon was smarter than him. Jihoon would know what to do and he’d have a better plan then just idly trying to piss off an evil, faceless entity in hopes that it would somehow slip up in its relentless harassment. Jihoon probably would have thought of a way to keep the camera and notebook from harm, too. But Jihoon was a realist and his sense of self-preservation was a lot stronger than Taehyung’s. Jihoon wouldn’t have gone anywhere near this place. Not again. Not after what he’d seen.

But Taehyung wasn’t Jihoon. And because Taehyung didn’t want to hurt his best friend, he decided once again that it wasn’t worth contacting him. He missed him, couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a normal conversation with him, but he’d do as Jihoon asked and leave him out of this.

It was better he did it alone.

But maybe, just maybe, Jihoon could’ve calmed him down before he biked tirelessly and fearlessly down the right-veering road, metaphorical guns a-blazing. He biked past the houses he’d photographed and diagramed, venturing deeper down this winding road as he had in the past. The houses on either side of him grew taller and taller, some of them taking on that wooden, hollow shape of those on the left-veering road, but there was one very distinct difference – these houses were empty.

There were no distorted bodies, no flailing limbs, no movement at all. In fact, they didn’t look like they were finished just yet. They had the same rough exterior as the other skyscrapers but these seemed incomplete somehow, like there was some final insidious ingredient left before they were perfect.

He was getting closer to the water now and he was certain that it was the ocean. He couldn’t understand how – didn’t understand how he knew for sure and didn’t understand how it was happening at all. He looked at the position of the sun in the sky. He was traveling west. There was no explanation for it, no way that the Atlantic Ocean should be to his right like this, but there it was. The only thing he could think of was that it was another trick. Maybe they put the sun in the wrong part of the sky to confuse him, or maybe it was outlandish and laughable to consider that they had enough power to do something like that. But if they could fabricate a thunderstorm from nothing (and Taehyung was fully expecting another one of those to roll around any minute), what was stopping them from moving the sun, too?

A noise from behind him made Taehyung brake hard on his bike. The tires skidded haplessly against the pristine blacktop but ultimately came to a safe stop and slowly, very slowly, Taehyung turned around.

He noticed the ones to his right first. Two figures, both in hats and coats, had emerged from the space under one of the houses. He couldn’t see their faces but, then, did he really need to? On his left, from beneath another house, came three more. Five in total, answering his questions about whether or not there had been more than one following him and Jihoon.

He swallowed hard. There was a buzzing in his ear but he knew it wasn’t from the bugs. This buzzing was coming from inside his brain. His thoughts were gone, having left him for the relative safety of Edgewater and Birch Way. It was as though his mind, empty and still, was a radio. He was trying in vain to tune to that station, the one that let him hear thoughts that weren’t his own, but both voices – the one that warned him to leave and the one that begged to him to return – suddenly had nothing to say.

He was entirely alone. Minus, of course, the five trench-coat-clad underlings that had, all at once, begun to charge towards him. He still wasn’t sure what they were but they certainly ran like humans.

Choking on a gasp, Taehyung turned back around and pedaled as hard as his legs would let him. He glanced over his shoulder to be sure but found the expected result – they were chasing him. More than that, they were gaining on him, and he really didn’t want to know what would happen if they caught him.

He pedaled harder.

The street suddenly branched into two narrower roads, reminding him of the fork that started all this. He assumed that the street that went left took him to the other side of the neighborhood, leading him back somehow to the skyscrapers and the ghoulish bodies. He could tell that the street on the right took him to the water.

He decided that he’d rather swim than see those buildings again and jerked his handlebars to the right, changing his trajectory and giving him a stunning but still surreal ocean view. The sun gleamed down on the water, casting a very bright glare. He saw multiple wooden bridges extending from the land’s edge but then noticed something troubling – the bridges to nowhere. He couldn’t make out what was on the other side of the water. It certainly looked like land but what was it? An island? Another neighborhood? The beach?

The unfinished bridges were throwing him off, messing with his head, but that was probably the point, wasn’t it? Show him something awful and catch him off-balance. Even though he knew he was playing right into their hands, he couldn’t stop the questions from coming. Why were they incomplete? Had they been built and then abandoned like the half-built homes on the other side of this neighborhood that shouldn’t exist?

He was acutely aware of the fact that he was still being chased. He couldn’t actually abandon his bike and start swimming. He needed a real plan to get away or else he was going to find out firsthand whether or not these trench coat soldiers were allowed to inflict bodily harm upon him. His frantic eyes scanned the coastline, looking for a way out. From where he was, he could see four bridges, all wooden. Each of them started off normally – a wooden arch with railings and raised up on beams – before twisting and jerking like some sort of sick obstacle course. If someone had tried to walk it, they would’ve only made it halfway before being thrown from the platform. And even if they did have some magical, sticky Spiderman feet that let them stay on an inverted path, they would have eventually fallen into the sea when the bridge abruptly came to an end before reaching a destination. Or, at least, before reaching any destination that Taehyung could see.

Maybe that invisible bridge theory wasn’t so silly after all.

A sick feeling settled into Taehyung’s stomach. Something was very, very wrong. Something told him that he shouldn’t have been seeing any of this. None of this was meant for him. None of this was meant for human eyes.

Miraculously, he saw something beyond the third bridge, something that would lead him to safety. It was a path (it was completely flat, no arch to be seen, and Taehyung wondered if it could still be considered a bridge) that cut across the water. At first, it looked like a land-bridge or a sandbar, something just barely above the water that would lead him out into the ocean, but when he got closer, he saw the rough texture or wood. From what he could see, it appeared to extend clear to the land on the other side.

It was his absolute best option and without a second thought or another look over his shoulder, Taehyung biked towards the water and boarded the wooden walkway.

It was about two-feet in width, leaving him more than enough room to ride, but Taehyung felt incredibly exposed. There were no railings or guardrails to keep him on the path and he was barely above sea level. One wrong turn, one misstep and he’d be in the water. He could smell it – salty and stale – and the tide seemed to be mocking him, daring him to fall in and join it. Wasn’t it a great time for a swim? The sun was shining just like it had that day at the boardwalk, that day he’d brought up Dino to his fraction friends. Wouldn’t a nice dip in the water feel so refreshing after the long day he’d had?

What was holding this walkway up anyway? Why was it here? He knew better than to ask rational questions, knew he’d never get a rational answer, but his curiosity was tangible, a ravenous hunger. He’d take anything he could get, any morsel, any crumb of information, no matter how small or irrelevant it may have seemed.

The walkway began to narrow. What started at two-feet slowly decreased to eighteen-inches until it was barely a foot in width. With the utmost care, Taehyung slowly stopped pedaling and gingerly climbed off his bike. It would be awkward to walk with it like this but biking on a path so narrow was making his legs shake. One wrong move and down he’d go. How deep was the ocean here?

. It was slowly setting in. He was walking in the middle of the ocean… and he shouldn’t have been. Suddenly, he remembered how he’d gotten here. He’d been being chased, pursued, hunted.

He jerked back around to look at where he’d started and gasped when he saw that he was completely alone. All five figures had vanished. Either they hadn’t wanted to venture out this far and returned to their homes, or they hadn’t been there to begin with. Neither would surprise Taehyung, even if neither made much sense.

Now what did he do? Did he continue forward, or did he turn around and go back the way he came? There was no guarantee that they wouldn’t be waiting for him if he turned around but, then, there was no guarantee that more weren’t waiting for him at the other end of this path.

Shaking and growing strangely seasick, Taehyung turned to look at the foreign landmass at the end of his footpath. What the was over there? Was it still Edgewater? Was it still Canon Bay? Was it even still his universe?

He’d turn back, he decided with uncharacteristic certainty. He’d go back the way he came and deal with the consequences. At least he knew the way home if he turned back. He might have to outrun more trench coats but at least he knew how to get home.

He turned around one last time, ready to pick up his bike and venture back, but what he saw horrified him so profoundly that he found he didn’t have enough breath in his chest left to gasp.

The walkway he’d used to get this far was gone. It was gone. Water covered it completely, leaving now trace that it had ever truly been there to begin with. It had been a completely level path and now half of it was gone. It was underwater. It was underwater as though the tide had come in, or as though it had been some sort of ramp leading from the ocean floor up to this point. There was no more path. There was no turning around. The path disappeared inches from his bike’s back tire.

It was gone. Within seconds, it had vanished completely.

He repeated it in his mind over and over again but the words made no sense to him. It was like when kids tried to talk to him when he first moved to the US. He knew that they were words but he had no idea what they meant.

He’d never felt fear this deep before. He’d never felt anything remotely so visceral. This was dread at a cellular level, a dark, vast, empty sort of hopelessness that he wouldn’t have wished on his worst bully.

He inhaled deeply but his breath rattled and shook and bounced around his chest.

It looked like he’d be exploring the island after all.

He turned again, trying to prepare himself to face the inevitable the way a grown man would, but what he found almost dropped him to his knees.

The rest of the walkway had flooded, too. With the exception of maybe two feet in either direction, the path was completely covered. It was all underwater. He was standing in the middle of the ocean on a single wooden platform and he had no means by which to escape.

He couldn’t step off. He was an okay swimmer but this ocean didn’t play by regular rules, did it? It could come and go as it pleased, regardless of the wind and the tide. It didn’t even exist on the right side of the ing coast. Surely a west-facing east coast ocean could do whatever it wanted. What lived within its depths? Jellyfish and krill, or something never meant for human comprehension?

Taehyung was dizzy. He felt like he was floating outside his body, like if he looked down, he’d be able to see himself from the outside. Was this what it meant to disassociate? He’d felt like this once before. He’d gotten a terrible flu bug when he was in 8th grade. His fever spiked to 103 and he’d been hospitalized for three days. This was how he’d felt at the peak of it. Nothing was real. Structural lines began to blur as his consciousness started to zoom out like the camera they’d stolen from him. He wasn’t himself. This wasn’t his world. He wasn’t meant for any of this. His human body wasn’t strong enough for it.

He was about to cry. The lump in his throat was so big, it caused him physical pain. Tears welled in the corner of his eyes. What was a boy to do in a situation like this? He was still just a child, after all, no matter what he’d gotten tangled up in. He was only fifteen. Seokjin, barely his senior, liked to joke that he was still just a baby. Kids weren’t supposed to have to fight like this. They weren’t supposed to be in this much danger.

Regardless of his age and the universe’s feelings on the innocence of children, he was trapped. The water lapped at his feet, teasing him, taunting him, and then, all at once, the walkway beneath his feet gave way, sending him and his bike into abrupt blackness.

The water was so cold. He tried to scream but found himself silenced by and choking on mouthful after mouthful of saltwater. He flailed wildly. He was being dragged down by something that felt like gravity but how was that possible? He was underwater. He was buoyant. Even if the bridge had truly given out, eventually, he should have floated back up.

He struggled hard, a boy fighting for his life, but down he went. There was nothing touching him, nothing pulling him, but he knew that he was being pulled down. He fell with a reckless freedom, his body tumbling through freezing darkness. He was so, so cold. He couldn’t breathe. He needed air and he could feel his lungs burning through what little oxygen they’d had left when he fell. This was it. He was dying.

He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything but his own weightlessness against the water, couldn’t make sense of anything but the abstract idea that it might all be over soon, and then, just as suddenly as it began, it stopped.

Solidity returned. The world took on its original shape. His body regained its original mass.

He opened his eyes. He could see. He was… in his bedroom.

More specifically, he was in his bed.

He put his hand over his heart to make sure it was still beating.

It was, but he truly didn’t understand how given that he’d felt himself drown.

Then he realized he’d been screaming.

The door to his bedroom flew open and then his mother was by his side, shaking him and trying to get him to stop crying. She asked him over and over again what was wrong but he didn’t understand the question.

Eventually, he grew quiet. This was real. He was actually in his bed. It wasn’t another trick trying to fool him into security. He was actually alive.

“It was a nightmare,” he lied, his voice shaking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It was just a horrible dream.”

His mother eyed him skeptically, looking at him like she might be calling his childhood shrink later in the day, but she appeared to accept it anyway.

“It’s because you stay up too late watching those damn horror shows,” she said. “You’ve probably scared yourself half to death.” She stood up and shook her head, then gestured to the window. “And I don’t know what happened to your bike but you better not think your father and I are just going to buy you a new one. I knew you shouldn’t ride to and from school. You’re lucky you didn’t get yourself killed on that damn thing.”

“What?” he asked, still hazy, but she was already gone.

He got up slowly, afraid that he couldn’t trust his bedroom floor to support him any more than he could have trusted that ing walkway, but once he knew he was solid ground, he went to the window.

His glorious, shiny blue bike lay mangled on the front lawn, a mess of twisted metal and ripped rubber.

He took a very deep breath, his fists clenching tightly at his sides.

So it hadn’t been a dream, after all. He’d been right. That water didn’t play by the usual rules. It could rise and fall however and whenever it wanted, and it also had the ability to bend steel. That certainly was a neat trick.

When he went to get dressed, he found that the sneakers he’d been wearing the day before were soaking wet. Just to be sure, he brought them close to his face and inhaled deeply, his skin raising into a mess of goosebumps as soon as his brain placed the scent.

They smelled like salt water.

He didn’t know why he was alive, or how, but he came to an incredibly bold decision right there, standing barefoot in his bedroom – this ended here.

This ended now.

They’d ed with his head and he hadn’t been able to make sense of it. They’d ed with his backpack and his camera and he hadn’t been able to move. They’d ed with his friends and he hadn’t been able to fight back.

But now they’d ed with his bike, and so it was time to die.

It was Saturday, and so Taehyung didn’t bother waiting. The anger in his soul was a roaring fire, an accumulation of all the stress, worry, frustration, grief and rage he’d been feeling for the last four months. He didn’t know what his family was doing that day and he didn’t care. Besides, without his bike, he had no time to spare.

He stormed down the stairs and made a beeline for the garage. Sure, he didn’t have his bike, his trusted steed, but he wouldn’t be completely alone. He’d be armed. His father didn’t believe in guns but he did believe in being able to fix the structural wear-and-tear of their home without having to call a handyman. Taehyung went right to his dad’s toolbox. He unlatched the lid and pulled it open, his eyes falling onto saws and bolts and wrenches and pliers. He wondered what, if anything, would be enough to help keep him safe but decided he wasn’t willing to waste any more time thinking. It was time to stop thinking and start doing. He pulled a hammer from its slot and exited out the side door, not even bothering to close the toolbox.

Maybe deep down, even deeper than his reptile brain, Taehyung knew that this was a suicide mission.

He wondered how he looked as he marched down Magnolia – a teenager in a black hoodie, clutching a hammer so tightly that his knuckles were white. Would someone call the cops? He certainly looked like a threat. He was clearly disturbed and he was wielding a weapon. If Taehyung had been on the other side of things, he surely would have called the cops himself.

How did he look to everyone else in Edgewater? His mother always told him to be nice to people because he never knew the sort of struggles they might be facing in their lives. But what about him? Wasn’t he going through struggles? People had never been nice to him. Not the kids at school, not his brother, not the trench coat people, not even his own mother until recently. So what did others see when they looked at him?

Did it radiate off him, a thick, black fog that smelled of sweat and fear and saltwater? Did they look at him and see what he’d been through? Did they know what he’d seen? Did they know what he’d done? Did they know what had been done to him?

Maybe they’d all know soon.

He turned down Birch Way, his pulse drumming painfully in his ears. Within a few seconds, he realized why he was able to hear his own heart beating. He realized why it was so quiet, so still. There was nobody else around. No people, no dogs, no cars, no birds, no bugs, no wind.

They’d done it somehow. He was sure of it. They’d cleared the street, rid the neighborhood of all possible witnesses. Had they killed them all? Or just relocated them? Did they make them forget they ever called these houses home, or did they just move them into those tall wooden tombs? Taehyung would figure it out soon enough.

This was their last battle, the final chapter, the big conclusion to their months-long rivalry, and they didn’t want anyone else to see it. They weren’t about to let anyone bear witness to the of their warfare.

That was okay with Taehyung. No one else deserved to suffer. No one else needed to get hurt.

He pushed his way through the bushes and stomped onto the path, half-hoping to crush a few cockroaches under the vengeful soles of his sneakers. But if he did, he didn’t know. He didn’t bother looking down. If the white rubber of his off-brand Nikes were stained with the blood-red guts of the blood-red vermin, he wouldn’t know for some time.

Still, he marched on.

He stared down both sides of the fork in the road and for once, he felt no fear.

Sure, he could turn right like he’d been doing for the last few days and go face the sea that had stolen his bike but he knew what this was. This was how it had been slated to end all along. And if he was going to go out, he would do so with a bang. No more shying away. No more avoidance.

They weren’t going to win. Not without a fight.

He turned left.

“Dino,” he said quietly, his hand contracting forcefully around the hammer’s handle, giving himself splinters. “Jongin. I’m coming for you.”

He started to run. Why waste time? They knew he was there. They were there, too. He could feel it. They were inside some of the houses, underneath the others. There were hundreds of them, thousands, maybe. His only hope was to outrun them. The only chance he had of saving Jongin and Dino was if he somehow got to the buildings first.

He ran faster, hammer still inside his grasp. The skyscrapers, rough and hollow, rose up in the distance, appearing from nowhere and taking up the entire sky. Dread pooled in his stomach, thick and soupy, but he didn’t slow down.

He squinted so that he could see better. The movement was unmistakable now. All four buildings were filled with people more than there had been months before. They flailed and waved, beggars. Though he couldn’t hear them, he knew they were pleading for help. He didn’t know what one boy with one hammer could do, but he knew that there was only way for him to find out.

Jihoon had told him once that sometimes it only took one person to make a difference.

Maybe he was that person. Maybe he just needed to have the guts to hit back.

The closer Taehyung got, the worse he felt. He was still flanked on both sides by regular houses, the ones raised up on crumpled beams, and when he looked closer, he saw trench coats. Just trench coats. They hung in rows beneath the houses, dozens and dozens of long, black jackets. All lifeless and waiting to be claimed.

So that was it, then. There was an entire army. And they lived here. They didn’t live in the tall, wooden ones but they lived in these houses. They were probably raised up that high so that no one else could get inside of them, but who else but Taehyung Kim would ever be stupid enough to get that close? And, more horribly, what did they look like under those jackets?

He wasn’t deterred. He was getting closer to the buildings. His ears were beginning to ring, a steady, high-pitched whine starting in the center of his eardrum and radiating out. His vision blurred, but just slightly. He was getting too close, and they didn’t want him to. They were trying to stop him, but they’d have to try harder.

He was heading for the biggest building, the one where he’d seen a body in a lime green shirt. As far as he knew, this all started with Dino. Maybe it ended with him, too.

It was getting harder to walk. That invisible barrier was back, and it was strong. But Taehyung was stronger. Though it felt like was wading through waist-deep quicksand, he persisted. His eyes watered. He felt the familiar twinge in his sinuses, the beginnings of a nosebleed, but lowered his head and pushed on. It was like walking against a strong wind. Was it the good guys trying to stop him from getting too close, or the bad guys trying to impede his progress before he could interfere with their nefarious plans?

It felt like there was a fist inside his skull, mashing his brains into a pink-grey paste. He could see it in his mind’s eye – those black, bony fingers wrapping themselves around his brain and squeezing until grey matter seeped out from between the knuckles. It was possibly the worst pain he’d ever experienced in his life but still, he kept going. He was moving much more slowly now but he still hadn’t stopped.

He was reminded of one of Jihoon’s favorite quotes – the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

He squeezed his eyes shut, tears streaming down his cheeks and put one foot in front of the other. He was terribly close now. When he opened his eyes, he realized how far he’d come. The building was so tall that he needed to crane his neck ninety-degrees to look at it. But now that he was here, nearly at the base of his worst nightmare, he could see things much more clearly.

There were people in those windows. A lot of them. Thousands, probably, and they were all screaming for his help. But they didn’t look like people anymore. Their bodies were twisted, elongated, warped. Their faces were sunken, drooping. Their eyes and mouths were gaping holes, black and endless. They weren’t communicating in words but in pained, ghastly weeping and wailing. They weren’t people anymore – just the tortured, ghoulish shells of who they’d been once.

This close, Taehyung could see their clothes. Scrubs, pajamas, school uniforms, workman’s jumpsuits. Each of them had been a person once, a person with friends and hobbies and feelings. He couldn’t be sure why they were all here. Were they like Dino and Jongin, people who had remembered too much? Or were they like the people of Edgewater that had disappeared that morning, people who had simply had the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

There were four buildings here, each full of screaming, emaciated ghosts. Where had they all come from? How many loved ones had they left behind? How many houses had been left vacant, destroyed? How many lives had been ruined, but only ruined temporarily? How many friends and family members had forgotten that these people had ever existed?

Blood dripped from Taehyung’s nose at a much greater volume than before. It wasn’t like when he out in his room, a little blood his brain’s way of protesting the stress. He was gushing blood to something of a dangerous degree, his body realizing that he’d somehow left the comfort of their own dimension.

He was bleeding because no part of him was physically able to handle where he was and what he was doing. His body hadn’t been created for this world, and it was finally bending under the pressure.

“I’m not afraid of you!” Taehyung screamed, his voice raw, primal. He shouted it into the sky, sure that there were minions just out of sight, waiting, watching. “You’re not going to get away with it! I’m not going to forget!” He brandished his hammer to no one and spun around, waiting to be ambushed, waiting to be given a reason to swing. “You can’t scare me anymore!”

He wiped his nose with the sleeve of his jacket, wondering idly how he’d explain a blood stain this big to his mother. Somehow, he knew that wasn’t going to be a problem. Maybe he was finally gaining real clarity. Maybe it really did take true suffering to reach nirvana.

He moved closer to the building, half-expecting to find a ladder or a staircase that would lead him up into the depths of this wooden prison. But, then, why would there be anything so straightforward? Only humans would need a ladder to get inside, and humans weren’t supposed to be here.

He’d need to find another way inside.

He found himself asking a question he’d already asked before. Why not just kill them? Why go to all the trouble of constructing these giant houses to keep all of these people inside? Why not just exterminate them once and for all?

The answer came to Taehyung in the form of another foreign voice. It wasn’t the same as either of the two he’d heard in the past, but it was surprisingly soothing. Somehow, it sounded like an ally.

They didn’t kill them because if they did, they couldn’t use them. Maybe they’re feeding off of some of them. Or maybe they’re using them for something much, much worse. Do you really want to know?

Ignoring the voice, Taehyung used his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. He was looking for Dino’s green jersey or Jongin’s pink hoodie. Were they in the same building? Were these houses separated by the types of people that were inside them? Was this the building for people who remembered? Was the one across the street storage for people who’d been displaced from their actual homes in Edgewater?

It was hard to look directly at them. They were so disfigured, so far gone, but still so unfamiliar to him. They weren’t decayed or rotted like zombies, but stretched and warped like something he’d never seen before. But, then, that was the point. No human had seen anything like this before and lived to tell the tale. He wasn’t supposed to understand it. He wasn’t ever supposed to see it.

Noise from across the street drew his attention and he swung wildly with the hammer out of sheer instinct. He could see them now, emerging from their homes – they were wearing trench coats and they were moving in on him.

He smiled, humorless, joyless, the twisted grin of a man with nothing left to lose.

“Bring it on,” he said, raising his hammer like a baseball bat. “I’m not ing scared of you.”

He took off running again, turning so that he was sprinting directly under the largest building. This was his endgame. Maybe there was a way inside. Maybe there was a trap door or something. Maybe this was the only way in, and he’d just been too scared last time to get this close.

Though it hadn’t seemed possible, the pain in his head got worse. He wondered how much blood he could lose before he passed out or died. His limbs were shaky, weak, and the hammer suddenly felt like it weighed more than he did.

It was ten degrees cooler beneath the unhallowed skyscraper and the chills that injected themselves into Taehyung’s bones caused his whole body to tense. He’d only made it ten steps before the world lit up in a flash of light.

They were trying harder now. A flash of light in the middle of the day was new. Was it just here on the dark side of Edgewater, or was it all over Canon Bay? Were they trying to make everyone forget him already, or were they just trying to disorient him?

The pain was overwhelming. He thought his eyeballs were going to pop from his skull and flatten under the immense pressure, and it took all he had to stay standing.

He wasn’t giving up.

He stood beneath this awful wooden roof, a perfect square of shade to contrast the sun that now seemed lightyears away, and waited. He knew it wouldn’t be long now. They wouldn’t tolerate much more of him.

Their patience, and his luck, was finally beginning to run out.

“I’m home, motherers,” he grumbled, one hand moving flush against his forehead in hopes of keeping his brain inside where it belonged. “I’m ing home.”

They all came for him at once. They waited until he was in the center, waited until he’d walked as far as he could, and then they moved in. Four trench coat figures from each side of the house. They weren’t moving very fast and Taehyung let himself look straight up. There, in the center of the ceiling, was a square hatch. It wouldn’t be easy to get to but it was there. He snorted, pleased with himself. There was a way in after all. In a sick way, he’d been right. If he’d brought a ladder tall enough…

The white light had yet to dim and with the way they were coming for him, slow and from all sides, they looked like little more than shadows. They walked towards him in perfect unison, not a single one of them missing a well-synchronized step, and Taehyung smiled. Though his arms felt like jelly, he lifted his hammer again.

“Come on, then,” he said. They got closer and closer and closer and Taehyung’s smile faded once they emerged from the shadows. He’d never seen them this closely before. The times they’d been in his room, it had been dark. All he’d been able to make out were fingers. But now that they were coming, now that they were surrounding him, he could see what no one was supposed to.

They had no faces.

No eyes, no mouths. Their faces were completely smooth, yet their skin still seemed damaged, burned. It wasn’t the clean, shiny surface of an android or even an alien – it was the charred, fleshy remains of something that might’ve been human once.

He didn’t know if it was the shock or the pain, but Taehyung fell to his knees. Without even realizing it, he dropped the hammer. They were merely feet away from him now, all sixteen of them, and it was getting harder and harder to keep his head off the ground.

“You’re not… going to get away with this,” he gasped. He felt lightheaded, airy. That was probably the blood loss. The ringing in his ears was making it hard to hear his own voice. He fell onto his back, his arms dropping to either side of him. The blood from his nose began to flow down his cheek instead. He had no choice but to look in the direction his head had landed. He didn’t have the strength to pick it back up and look elsewhere. “People… remember. Jihoon… remembers. He’s my…. best friend in the world. He’s never…. ever… going to forget me.”

They moved in closer, a perfectly choreographed sequence, every step and every movement completely seamless. They were an army, a pack, a unit. Maybe it was just one guy. Maybe the repetition was just a trick, like the mirrors at a haunted house. Maybe it had been just one guy all along.

Maybe.

They stood over him in a circle, staring down at him with featureless faces and clenched, black fists.

“You… won’t… win,” he wheezed. Blood dripped into his mouth. His lungs were collapsing. He didn’t know how he knew his lungs were collapsing. He just did. Somehow, the light outside the house got brighter. He couldn’t hear himself over the incessant ringing. It was so loud. Was it coming from inside the house or inside of him? “It’s not… just me… and they… won’t… forget…”

One of the sixteen figures kneeled down, the one closest to his head. He had no eyes, but Taehyung knew that he could see him. He raised a gloved hand and reached out to cover Taehyung’s face with his long, twisted fingers and with one final gasp, everything went black.

Taehyung was reported missing on December 1st but by December the 10th, no one in Canon Bay knew he’d ever existed.

Jihoon cried for three straight days but once everyone else forgot about Taehyung, he had to, too. He remembered the exact moment everything changed, the exact moment he knew Taehyung was gone for good. He’d been talking to Jungkook and Baekhyun and Mark and mentioned Taehyung’s name. The looks on their faces that day were the same ones they’d worn on the boardwalk when Taehyung brought up Dino.

They’d never heard of him, and Jihoon was forced to laugh it off. A slip of the tongue. He’d said the wrong name. He was tired. Anyway, had they seen the hockey game the night before?

He still had the pictures and the birthday cards and the drawings from middle school, but he couldn’t talk about them. When Jungkook made a joke that would have made Taehyung laugh, or when Baekhyun said something dumb that would’ve made Taehyung roll his eyes, Jihoon bit the inside of his cheek to the point of blood.

Why couldn’t he just have left it alone?

Jihoon liked to take walks to clear his head. January 2nd was the last day of winter break and Jihoon used that afternoon to make the trek to Taehyung’s house. Of course, the Kim family didn’t remember Jihoon. Why would they? He wasn’t in Seokjin’s grade and Seokjin was their only child. Jihoon was just another teenager that lived in Canon Bay. There were lots of those, though considerably less than there had been once.

He stood across the street, behind the cover of a wide oak tree, and watched Taehyung’s family. His mother tended to her garden, singing to herself, while Seokjin and his father tried to fix the car.

Maybe they hadn’t been the perfect family, but they’d loved Taehyung. Seokjin loved him, too, even if he didn’t know how to show it. He’d loved him in his own way. They’d loved Taehyung just like Jihoon had, yet they had absolutely no idea that he’d ever been born.

Jihoon knew Taehyung existed. He just didn’t know what had happened to him. He wasn’t allowed to know. Part of him thought that that was for the best. He had his suspicions, of course, but if Jihoon knew, if he truly knew what they’d done to his best friend, all bets would have been off.

And that would’ve been too dangerous for everyone.

Because no one remembered Taehyung, he didn’t have a memorial or a grave but Jihoon had planted flowers right here, right across the street, on December the 11th. The light that night had been especially bright. Jihoon had always had a theory that their powers got stronger at the end of the year. People wanted to change for the new year, wanted to reinvent themselves, and so they were more willing to forget. They were more pliable.

It made as much sense to him as any of his other theories.

Standing there, looking at the sad, wilted flowers, Jihoon swallowed a lump of grief and wiped fresh tears with the back of his gloved hand.

He’d warned him. Why hadn’t Taehyung listened? He could have survived. They could have survived together. They could have left together. Taehyung had been his best friend. He’d been the best person Jihoon had ever known. Now, all that was left to remember him were dead flowers planted across the street from the family that would never know his name.

Jihoon wiped his nose with his sleeve, then looked down the street.

He was standing there, hands tucked into the pockets of his trench coat, watching.

Sniffling, Jihoon nodded his chin in his direction.

It was a silent agreement; the same one they’d had for years. Jihoon wouldn’t say a word. He’d choose not to remember any of it. He’d never talk about it. If it would keep him alive, and away from them, he’d forget.

He was far away, as far as he could be while still being visible to Jihoon, but Jihoon knew. He knew what they were, what they looked like, how many of them there really were. He’d only seen one up close and personal the one time, but that had been more than enough. He’d lied to Taehyung that day in the library when he said he’d never seen one up close, and that was for the best. Taehyung hadn’t needed to know.

That first day, when Jihoon was eleven, that first day when he’d found out about the evil that existed beneath Canon Bay, he’d seen its face. It had no eyes, but that didn’t stop it from looking deep into Jihoon’s soul. It was like they said – when you stared into the abyss, the abyss stared back. In that one look, a thousand images moved between them, horrors that transcended everything Jihoon Lee knew to be real or fantasy. It was the only time any one of them had ever shown a human what they could do.

It was things they had done, things they were doing now, things they’d do in the future. It was both a warning and a gloat. This was what they were capable of, and Jihoon needed to know that he was helpless to it. They needed him to know exactly how strong they were. They needed him to know that if he went against them, they were capable of destroying everything and everyone he ever loved.

He knew what went on in those tall, wooden houses. He knew what they did to people who remembered. He knew that what they did to Jongin and Dino was nothing compared to what they could do. And they showed this to Jihoon because they were scared, too. They didn’t just show him these otherworldly atrocities to scare him – they showed him so that they could protect themselves.

The truth was that if there was anyone in Canon Bay, anyone on the east coast, anyone in the world who could understand who and what they were and figure out a way to stop them, it was Jihoon Lee. He was just as dangerous to them as they were to him. He was too smart, too self-aware, too calculated, too influential.

Taehyung had naively believed that he was the chosen one but he was wrong. He wasn’t the chosen one. Jihoon was. Taehyung was merely collateral damage.

Someone has capable as Jihoon needed to be neutralized but it wasn’t enough just to kill him. There was a certain malevolence that they needed to maintain in order to survive and killing him? It was too easy. He needed to know what they could do. He needed to know what they were planning. That was why they’d come for him four years ago. They needed to show him. They needed to give him a reason not to fight back. He needed to be scared.

Years later, he still was.

Taehyung used to tell Jihoon that guilt was a useless emotion but standing there, looking at the rotten flowers that marked his best friend’s grave, Jihoon could feel nothing else.

He was guilty, alright. He hadn’t forced Taehyung onto Birch Way. He hadn’t told him to challenge them. He hadn’t forced him to return to the fork in the road time and time again. In fact, he’d tried to talk him out of it. He’d wanted Taehyung to forget like he had.

But he was still as guilty as they were.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil was for good men to do nothing, and Jihoon sure had done a lot of that.

He inhaled deeply, a trembling breath of crisp, winter air that burned his chest.

He looked back to the figure, staring into the abyss for what felt like the thousandth time in his life, and nodded again. The figure nodded back.

He’d be good. He’d keep quiet. He’d do as he was told, playing the part of the sad, helpless pawn that knew more than any human should. But he’d never give up. For Taehyung, he’d never forget.

He closed his eyes and remembered everything they’d shown him when he was eleven, every horrible, gruesome cruelty that they’d beamed into his young brain to scare him off.

He was scared, sure, but it wasn’t the same now. They’d killed his best friend, and that was no worse than anything they’d shown him. How much more could they really hurt him? How much worse could it really get? How could forever in one of those houses compare to the grief he felt now? What was an eternity of suffering between friends?

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, threw one last look at the figure in the distance, and turned to walk back home.

Maybe there were some things that humans just weren’t capable of understanding but Jihoon knew that he wasn’t the only one that knew them. He wasn’t the only chosen one. He wasn’t the only one who’d remembered and survived.

By showing him what they could do, they managed to put the fear of God into his heart, but they also made him more powerful than they could ever imagine.

They were evil, they were powerful, but they weren’t invincible.

And he knew. He knew all of it. And he wouldn’t forget.

And one day, when the time was right, when the stars were aligned and the right people were on his side and they forgot all about the weaknesses they’d shown him that day in 6th grade, he’d go back home.

He’d go back home, armed with the knowledge they’d given him, and he wouldn’t stop until every last one of them dead.

He’d been right that day in the library. There were simply some secrets that human beings weren’t ever meant to know. It transcended their laws, their feelings, their understanding, even their consciousness. These were things that were meant to live outside of their realm, outside of humanity. They were the secrets of this universe and of all the others, but Jihoon knew them. He knew because they’d told him.

He his heel and stepped into the street, beginning his voyage home.

The journey of a thousand miles began with one step, after all, and he knew the way.

He had the map. He had the memories. He had the secrets. He had the key.

In fact, he might’ve been the key all along.

He remembered Dino Lee. He remembered Jongin Kim. He remembered Taehyung Kim.

He knew their names.

And someday, by his own hand, the whole world would, too.