“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”

  ― Helen Keller

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  The mill smells of wood, which really shouldn’t surprise me. It does, though. It’s always a sort of surprise, when you realize that the world isn’t like the reality you build up in your mind, especially when it’s less of a discussion and more of a surprise. It’s not that I had a smell in mind- I had none in mind at all, and so the smell arrives as a sudden note that my mind simply didn’t have ready.

  Old sawdust, falling into mold, humidity and cold fighting a war to preserve and decay it. Wooden beams, slimy with moss near the water far down the way and crisp up above, the two scents competing with each other for supremacy and failing to do anything more than fill the space with faint whiffs of themselves. It’s like walking in the woods, or in a construction site, or neither, and the smell marks this place for me as something alien, the idea of something as banal as sawdust so novel and rarely experienced that it stands out more than any lack of scent could have.

  Jay sneezes, and it breaks me out of my brief reverie.

  “Damn but it’s dark in here,” he says, wiping his nose. “Lucky we don’t have allergies, or I’m pretty sure this place would have just killed me. Didn’t anybody clean up before they locked up?”

  “I doubt they paid janitors to keep it up after they shut the place down. No need to, really. Not like anyone’s making any money off the place, so might as well let it rot, huh?”

  Jay shrugs, looking around as he walks in behind me. “I dunno, hun, doesn’t seem particularly rotted to me. Got that all-american cold to thank for that, maybe?”

  He takes out his phone, turning on the flashlight app and sending a beam of light through the space ahead of us. A moment later, I add my own light to his, helping us to get a clearer look at what we’ve walked into.

  Truth be told, he’s right. My impression from the outside of something neither alive nor dead remains relevant here as well, as I see no signs of true rot settled into the space around us. We’ve entered into a long hallway, office spaces on either side of it and a slot for punchcards, of all things, visible near the back, next to what looks like a changing room with lockers. The lights are long dead, of course, and the whole space is painted a discomforting beige, but what’s beneath that has started to leak out, the pain chipping away over time and leaving varnished wood behind it.

  Was it a point of pride, maybe? A reference to what this place is? Or is that just how they happened to build the old building?

  Hell if I know, but wood that looks black in the dark has begun to crawl out from behind the wallpaper, making the hallway darker than it should be. Beige is being replaced, moment by moment, by something more primal out from beneath.

  And yet… no mold. No stains. It’s not a decay of the surface, simply a… molting.

  “Well. This is pretty fucked.”

  Jay laughs, the sound awkwardly loud. “You don’t say?”

  Deep breath in. Ignore the air, crisp and cold and smelling of old sawdust, and just focus on the breath.

  Breathe out.

  Good job.

  I start walking deeper into the hallway.

  Jay keeps close behind me, and I can’t help but feel a note of relief at that. I know it was the plan. It fills me with pain and dread at the thought of him coming in here with me. And yet, in spite of it all, I’d rather have him here than be alone.

  And isn’t that just the best compliment a friend can give?

  The first door we pass is some kind of office, locked and shuttered, and a ways behind that, the changing rooms I saw earlier. The hallway extends a bit further, with doors to either side, and a quick glimpse through the glass on their doors reveals vast, empty chambers, possibly used for storage of some kind.

  Stopping Jay, I make a quick turn into the changing room, light and knife both up and ready, just in case.

  Nothing jumps out at me. No strange beasts, no cockroaches, not even a little rat hiding from the cold. There are four walls of lockers, about three feet tall, in vertical sets of two. While there are some benches, it really seems more like a place to store lunchboxes and jackets before heading into work, maybe. Most of the lockers are hanging open, but there are a few that still remain closed, and some even still have locks on them.

  “Check through them?” Jay asks, and I nod, not feeling up to speaking out loud.

  It really only takes a few minutes, clearing through them one by one. Most of them are empty, and visibly so, which makes the whole thing rather easy, but it’s not without some results.

  The pieces of human leftovers here show a lot more degradation than the building proper. A few sets of old workboots, half wasted away or torn in places; an old lunchbox, rusted and grimy, nearly fused to the locker it was in; a single dented thermos, something that might once have been coffee still half-preserved inside. Basic, simple things, examples of human existence, but no real signs of anything… nefarious.

  Not at first.

  I open one of the lockers that’s only half-open, the hinges squealing politely as I pull at the doorway, and glimpse what it was hiding.

  A picture.

  A simple polaroid. Nothing special, nothing really all that strange, except for the figure in the center of it. A tall man, shoulders wide, standing next to a petite woman, a lovely sundress…

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  Neither one of them have faces.

  It’s… it’s like the house. The dead house, rotted and mildewed and necrotic, sitting deep in the woods. The house where she found BLEED. With the hallway, the one with hanging pictures of the family, all missing their faces.

  Just like there, it’s not some alien absence- the picture looks worn, like the oils from someone’s skin were rubbed over just the faces, over and over, until the colors just faded away.

  Very carefully, I put the picture back.

  “Ilia?”

  I turn, looking at Jay, who has found his way to the last wall of lockers. He’s standing in front of one of the lockers that’s, well, locked, and his camera is pointing down at the ground.

  Two sets of muddy, deep brown bootprints, near-black. No trail, no boots to match them, just… two prints, right in front of the locker.

  I walk over, coming closer, and-

  Hello hi I’m here

  I hold very, very still.

  Jay’s eyes immediately go to me, taking a step back from the locker. “What? Is it… some weird magic shit?”

  “I… did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That…”

  I lean forward, straining to hear, tilting my head-

  Hello hi I’m in here don’t you want to say hi

  “Like… like a whisper.”

  “Oh hell no. I’m not opening that shit.”

  “Not sure we could, even if we wanted to. Lock looks rusted shot, maybe, and-”

  Click.

  Jay looks at me in confusion as I stare at the lock, hanging slightly open.

  “What? What is it?”

  “The lock.”

  He looks back, and-

  “Oh hell no. Not touching that shit. That’s a trap. That’s a traaaap. Ilia, don’t-”

  “Yeah, I’m… it’s fine. I’ll be careful. We came here to find stuff, right? Explore the weirdness?”

  “Yeah, not wander into obvious traps.”

  “It’s… I mean it’s not a very good trap. And it sounds… really small. It’s not really whispering, it’s just quiet.”

  “And you’re sure about that?”

  I shrug. “No. That’s why I’m going to check.”

  I step forward, over the bench in front of this wall of lockers- but well behind the bootprints, and off to one side. No need to stand on the exact spot of weirdness, after all- that’s just asking for it.

  Holding my knife, the Glove’s fingers extend out, almost three times longer than my left hand’s, and use the back of the blade to slightly nudge the locker.

  It opens easily, smoothly, its metal strangely intact…

  Nothing jumps out.

  Jay peeks out from behind the lockers he was hiding behind, leaning out again.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s…”

  Hello hi I’m here please come closer you want to come and touch and taste its tasty-

  The little voice is back, louder this time, loud enough that I can make out the words. It’s… a babbling string. It’s not even words, really, just a sort of noise, but it’s the sort of noise that… means something? Has some sort of weight to it? Feather-light, but the difference between dripping water and something drooling, accompanied by the smallest touch of breath, of warmth.

  Hello hi don’t you want to say hello its warm and good and safe and tasty and-

  Slowly, I peek over the edge of the locker, looking in.

  It’s… a little dead rat. All curled up into itself, wrapped tight into a little ball, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. A corpse, as innocuous as anything that you’d find in a sticky-trap.

  Except… no. The tail.

  A winding little tube of once-meat, that moves out further than it should, like it lengthened as the body shrank, rather than mummifying… and then connected to the wall. I can see the line where it spreads up, like a little vein, and then splits, spreading across the interior of the locker until the bottom quarter of it looks like one of those fungal maps.

  And at the center of that map, there is that dead little rat, wrapped tight around a little ball of… something.

  It might once have been food, but that was a long time ago. Now it’s just more undifferentiated mass, biological material made equal in the mess of death and… not-quite-decay.

  And as I look closer, I see it’s not quite death, either.

  There’s something alive in there. Something fleshy and quivering, beating with a rabbit’s pulse in a body so small I can barely see it.

  “Ilia! What the fuck is it-”

  “Jay! Breathe! It’s a dead rat, sort of. I don’t think it can hurt you if you don’t touch the locker. Come see.”

  “Girl you keep getting more morbid! Why do you want to show me a dead rat of all things?”

  “It’s… I think it’s weird. Like my hand.”

  Silence. And then, footsteps.

  Slowly, he peeks over my shoulder, taking up the only available space to see through that doesn’t leave him standing on the bootprints.

  “...Ok? Point it out to me. I just see a little mouse, all shriveled up.”

  “It’s the tail. See how it extends? Branches, it keeps looping and spiraling out, like-”

  “Oh. Oh fuck.”

  “Yup.”

  “What… what is it?”

  “...proof. There are weird things here, and not all of them can kill us so easily.”

  With that, I slowly lean the locker closed, putting the curled-up little body back into the shadows of it. Maybe later, I can come back and give it a proper examination, but for now… bigger things to do.

  “Come on. This was just the first room, basically. Let’s check the storage rooms on the sides, and then… I say we head for office space first. Less chance of sharp implements, and higher chance of finding some sort of map for this place. I’d rather not keep wandering blind.”

  “That… sounds like a decent plan. Warn me if you notice something like that again? I’ll watch behind us, try and see if I pick up on anything. I hate not being able to notice this shit right away but I can still see something about it. I’ll just point out anything that seems notable.”

  “Yeah. Sounds like a plan.”

  Together, we advance. Deeper into the dark.

  But I can still hear that thing behind us. Whispering. So quiet it’s nearly silent.

  Hi hello come back come back please come back it’s safe its warm please…

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