Slenderwoman is an enigmatic creature resembling a tall faceless woman in black suit with tentacles which she uses to abduct and mating, often with men. She usually abducts and takes her victims away no knows where exactly but it’s believed to be for mating, her appearance is pale female figure, with a height of seven feet tall and no facial features. She wears black suit with tie and a skirt, this is her appearance in modern times always looking like some kinda of deformed version of elite class in the past she appeared as a priest and a knight etc.

I’m so fucked up right now.

I heard the skittering for the entirety of my first night in my new apartment. I could barely sleep. I thought it was an insect at first, maybe some sort of rodent, stuck in the claustrophobic, aluminum duct.

“God,” I remember thinking, “I hope it’s not a rat.”

I wish it had been a rat.

All night, I heard it, back and forth, back and forth, right over my head. It was so quiet that I almost didn’t notice it at first. As soon as my ears picked up the faint tick-tick-ticking, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

It was maddening.

The next day, I listened closely, and sure enough, I could track all of its tiny movements. The scampering would go from the leftmost vent in my room, run along the wall bordering the ceiling, and end right at the top of my closet doorframe, before doing it all over again. With heavy, sagging eyelids, I watched the white painted vent, waiting for anything. It had clearly been given the landlord special, haphazardly glossed over just in time for me to move in.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Tiny insect legs, maybe a delicate little mouse claw. Alas, despite my mounting frustration, I saw nothing, I heard only the back and forth cupid shuffle of invisible, erratic feet.

Tick-tick-tick…

Tick-tick-tick…

Rather than unfurling and enjoying the first day in my new home, I sat, irritated, and shifted my gaze along the top of my wall, following the audible miscreant with my eyes, incessantly.

It really was maddening.

Tick-tick-tick…

Tick-tick-tick…

It got to the point that I was hyper focused on it, even in other rooms, I simply couldn’t focus on anything else, no matter how hard I tried. I even took a walk, but I swear, I could still hear it, almost like an itch, deep in my head, behind my eyes.

Tick-tick-tick…

Tick-tick-tick…

I laid for hours my second night, trying to fall asleep, eyes shut tighter than a freshly sewn button. But I just couldn’t escape it, the constant noise. Back and forth, from the vent opening, to the doorframe of the closet, then all over again.

I couldn’t take it anymore. At 2 am, I bolted straight up in the dark with a sigh. Bug, rat, didn’t matter what manner of critter it was.

I was determined to get it.

I found a screwdriver in my kitchen drawer. I fought with the vent opening in the dark. It wasn’t even screwed in properly, just painted over like everything else. Within seconds, the plastic cover came off with a pop. Only then did the scattering come to a confused halt.

It was maybe a foot from the mouth of the cave. That only pissed me off more.

“Oh, so now you wanna stop, huh? That’s it?! Get over here,” I hissed, standing on my tip toes and reaching into the hole.

It scrambled back.

I grit my teeth, reaching in further.

It retreats deeper.

The vent system itself was surprisingly clean, smooth metal surfaces thumping and twanging as I bumbled further and further in.

Tick-tick-tick…

Tick-tick-tick…

It stayed just out of my reach, yet just close enough that I could feel my fingertips brush against its sweaty skin. I felt it slipping further and further into the wall, and I only had so much arm that I could twist to fit into the vent.

My mission could not be clearer, in that moment.

I needed to grab it, quickly.

My last chance at peaceful sleep was literally skittering away from my fingers.

“Oh no you don’t,” I wheezed triumphantly, shoving my forearm all the way to my elbow in a last-ditch burst of energy to snag the thing.

Now, I wanna pause to acknowledge something.

I know it was a stupid decision, all of this.

Why didn’t I try to shine a light in? Or put down pest bait? Admittedly, it was a compulsive thought, to shove my arm into a vent, spurred by desperation and a lack of proper sleep. Illogical.

I was instantly sobered by a horrific sensation. My fingers were wrapped around something cold with a soft exterior. Clammy, icy to the touch, but disyinctly… wrong. Too firm. Not like a small animal. I had gripped something that felt like a...

It tried to fight, but I fumbled until I had wrestled more of it into my grasp. I felt more of the thing.

Creases, bends. Multiple long, cold, phallic objects, each no more than a few inches long. They varied in length, and fought my grasp vigorously.

It was when I found the distinctly hard shell that adorned one of their otherwise soft tips that I realized what I was holding in my hand.

It was 5 fingers.

With growing panic, I tried to write off my own discovery, but sure enough, when I kept feeling further and further, I found knuckles, then the back of a hand with the hard ridges of bones underneath the skin, then a soft palm in the center of the wriggling mass

I was holding an adult human hand, and it was in my vent, embedded in my wall.

Almost instinctively, I yanked my hand back, the object still clutched in between my digits.

Now this next part is really hard to explain, so I have to make sure I do it right. If it's confusing, I’m sorry.

You don’t think of holding a hand as anything other than holding a hand. The physics of the act isn’t something you consider. You just sort of do it.

You either intertwine your fingers between the fingers of another, or maybe you just hold their palm and they hold yours, which is admittedly less intimate, more of a hug than an embrace.

I used to get to hold someone's hand.

Anyhow, the way I was gripping this hand, I knew it was disembodied, because the way I had to hold it, kind of made it ball up into a clenched fist.

Imagine my fingers are tightly wrapped around the top of the wrist, so to speak. The whole hand is in my hand, and where the top of the wrist would connect to an arm, it's just a nub, like it had grown entirely separate from the body it was assigned to.

Maybe it was never assigned to a body at all.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that the top of the nub had an opening. A cavity.

And that cavity apparently had teeth.

I realized that when I felt a sharp pain zap through the webbing between my thumb and my index finger. Like a taught wire being cut.

It fucking hurt.

Bright crimson blood adorned on the edge of the vent hole, where I’d popped the plastic lid off only a moment early.

I let go out of surprise at the sudden pain in my thumb, and the disembodied knuckle-sandwich flew out into the recesses of my dark room, between some boxes or something. Into the shadows where I couldn’t see it anymore.

I had a brief notion that I’d need to look out for it. A notion that was quickly remedied, when it came crawling out of the void like a crustation, and made a beeline directly back into the open hole.

It doesn’t have any discernable eyes. I doubt it has a brain.

How did it know how to do that? Aside from what it did to my hand, that’s that part that troubles me. It just… I don’t know. That thought fucked me up.

Anyhow, it was quiet for a while. I called management, but they laughed at me and implied that they call the cops pretty quickly on prank callers. Very low tolerance. They also didn’t appreciate being called earlier than 5am.

I guess my next step is to grab a maintenance guy or maybe a wandering neighbor in the morning? Convince them that I’m not crazy, just long enough to get them in here and make them see for themselves. Maybe I’ll make a complaint about an unrelated issue, and go from there, see what that does.

Hell of an introduction, by the way. Something about first impressions?

I left the opening off. If it comes out, it comes out. I doubt that it’s gonna do that though.

After it was still long enough, it went back to, well, what it’s been doing since I got here. Back and forth, back and forth, like it don’t ever run out of steam.

Tick-tick-tick…

Tick-tick-tick…

The sun's about to come up, and I haven't slept even a wink. I just keep staring at that opening with the dribblets of scarlet around the corner. My hand hurts real bad, I haven’t even put a band-aid on it. It just keeps bleeding.

I wish it had just been a rat.

Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRCoD5cXXzw&list=PLh8-Yhg_l8UcV6KlSL8WhJHh3GqgV7Vt0

Has it ever happened to you that you fell asleep, opened your eyes and found yourself in a reality that wasn't your own?

This has a name: the SoW concept

SoW or the sleep of Wexley.

This is what happens when your consciousness is between reality and the land of dreams.

You find yourself trapped in an alternate universe that resembles your world. But beware, nothing here is good for you.

This universe would be too "different": climate changes in specific places, creatures from our world or people's dreams, and a heavy silence.

If you spend more than 8 hours in this world, everything around you will turn white, everything will gradually disappear, and a door will appear.

•Above all, never cross that threshold.

If you open the door, you will be sucked in, taking you to another, much worse universe: the place of silence.

A place where there is only a simple road and all around you an endless garden.

If I were you, I'd start running because this place is known for knowing your greatest fears or traumas and playing them out on a loop.

Run to a red door with no handle and push in.

place.

By taking it, you find yourself in another universe...if you had taken the wrong door: red with a handle...You will be forced to remain in the place of silence, reliving your traumas over and over again without ever being able to leave.

•If you didn't take the first door, congratulations at least for now.

Surviving in the first alternate world is simple, and if you managed to spend 8 hours there, you'll wake up in your own world with no memory of this place.

Unfortunately, if you do not survive, your soul will become one of the many lost spirits of this place, wandering from universe to universe without ever returning to Earth or your body.

The story about Elias Alexander Caine (The Shadow Walker), who is the 24 years old man with troubled homelife until he met the entity called Bodach. If you're interested reading it, please do! I would also appreciate it if u shared it as well! Also comment down below what did u like the story :)

The Route Before Mine
 
I’ve been hunting this land since I was nine years old. Forty-three acres of mixed hardwood and creek bottom in central Pennsylvania, passed down from my grandfather to my dad and then to me. I know every game trail, every scrape, every low spot that holds water after a rain. I know which trees the turkeys roost in and which ridge the does use to cross between properties. I know this land the way you know your own face.
So when something felt wrong last November, I noticed.
 
It was a Tuesday — off-season, nothing open but small game — and I was doing my monthly card pull. I do it the same way every time: start at the creek crossing near the south fence, work northeast along the ridge, cut back through the hollow, and finish at the big white oak where I’ve had a camera running for six years. Twelve cameras total. Takes about two hours if I don’t stop to glass anything.
 
The morning was cold, the kind that sits in your sinuses and makes your eyes water. No wind. The woods were quiet in a way I’d normally call “perfect” — that deep, held-breath stillness that means the deer are moving. But that morning the quiet felt different. Less like the woods were waiting and more like they were listening.
 
I pulled the first card at the creek crossing, swapped it, kept walking. I didn’t look at the footage in the field anymore — I’d learned to just wait until I was home and warm and could watch it on the laptop. So I had no idea, not yet.
 
The second camera was on a scrape line about three hundred yards up the ridge. Card out, card in, keep moving. I remember pausing there to check the wind with my lighter. It was still. Perfect still.
 
I hit all twelve cameras in about an hour fifty. Nothing unusual out in the woods — no tracks I didn’t recognize, no hair on the fence wire, nothing broken or knocked over. The only thing I kept noticing was the quiet. The way the birds weren’t talking. The way I couldn’t hear the creek anymore even when I knew I was close enough to.
 
Got home. Made coffee. Sat down with the laptop.
 
Most of the cards were normal. Deer, a coyote on camera six, a raccoon that had somehow learned to look directly into the lens like it was posing. I was on camera eight — the one I’d set along the north edge of the hollow, facing a natural funnel between two thickets — when I stopped.
 
There was a figure in the frame.
 
My first thought was neighbor. But the neighbor to the north is seventy-two and doesn’t walk the fence line. My second thought was trespasser, and I leaned forward and put my face about six inches from the screen.
 
It was at the far edge of the frame, partially behind a tulip poplar, and what made me stop wasn’t that it was there. It was the way it was standing. Both arms hanging too low. Head tilted at an angle that made my inner ear do something unpleasant — the kind of angle you only see when something is broken or wrong, the kind that takes a moment to register because your brain keeps trying to correct it into something normal.
 
I told myself it was a trick of the light. Compression artifact. The camera was three years old and the housing had cracked the previous winter.
 
I moved on to camera nine. Then ten.
 
I was on camera eleven — the one set on the east fence, looking back toward the house — when I noticed the timestamp.
 
Camera eight. The figure had been on camera eight at 9:47 AM.
 
I had pulled camera eight at 9:51 AM.
Four minutes.
 
I sat with that for a second.
 
Told myself I’d misread it. Went back to camera eight and checked again. 9:47:03, the figure steps partially into frame. 9:47:31, it’s gone — not walking away, just gone, the frame empty between one second and the next.
 
I pulled up camera nine. Checked the timestamps.
 
A shape at the left edge of the frame. Same low arms. Same tilted head. Timestamp: 9:54 AM.
 
I had pulled camera nine at 9:58 AM.
 
I didn’t want to check the others. I checked the others.
 
Every single card. Whatever was on it showed up four to seven minutes before I got there.
 
Twelve cameras. Twelve appearances. It had been moving through the property ahead of me the whole time, staying just out of eyeshot, keeping pace.
 
I sat with that for a long moment. Then I opened the Ring app.
 
I scrubbed back to that morning — around eight o’clock, when I’d left the house. I watched myself come out, pull the door shut, cross the porch, step off into the field and disappear into the tree line.
 
At 7:54 AM — six minutes before I’d stepped outside — something crosses the porch.
 
It moves through frame left to right, unhurried, heading toward the field. The way it moves is wrong in a way I can’t fully articulate. The proportions are close but the timing is off, like watching a second hand that hesitates slightly before each tick. It drops off the porch steps and goes into the tree line at almost exactly the spot I would use six minutes later.
 
It had already run the circuit before me. I’d been following it the whole time without knowing.
 
I kept scrubbing.
 
At 10:46 AM the camera picks up motion again. It comes back out of the field the same way it left — same gait, same wrong timing — and crosses toward the door. It tries the handle.
 
I don’t lock my door. Never have. Forty-three acres in the middle of nowhere, nearest neighbor a quarter mile off. Never once felt like I needed to.
 
The door opens.
 
It goes inside.
 
I watch it for a long time after that, the empty porch, the door left open a few inches the way it always swings back when the latch doesn’t catch. At 10:51 AM I watch myself walk up the steps and go in after it without breaking stride.
 
I’ve been sitting at this table for three hours.
The woods are always quiet out here. That’s what I’ve always loved about it. But this is different — the same wrong quiet from this morning, the kind that doesn’t feel empty so much as it feels full. Like something is in it with you, holding very still, not breathing any louder than it has to.
 
The kind of quiet that listens back

The howl of the graveyard all around Florin was mournful and felt lost. Defeat. Like the place, the whole of the cemetery land was weeping for him and his pain and all of the pain of wasted time and fruitless effort, all of the loss of all of the others back home. Everyone else. He couldn't believe it… after all this time and trying, all of this riding and travel and peril and heart breaking hope, all of it was for naught…

All of it was for nothing. 

Van Helsing was dead. 

The wrapped and bandaged man watched the young rider from the village dying from the onslaught of vampiric disease from behind his dark black glasses, his shades and special lenses, and said nothing. 

He just watched the young man as he knelt in the dirt. And stared at the grave with great sorrow and hurt and loss and torture writ all over and about his tired and haggard face. His young and harried and damaged worn visage was a perfect reflection of the tombstone grave. 

And something within his own weary chest stirred then. Something not touched upon nor thought over, happily neglected for years as he'd neglected this old graveyard and the burial plot before them now. The hole in the earth that was filled with his friend.  

He remembered…

How the doctor had served and helped so many, in his chosen field of medicine and in the more abstract murk of the psychological field of mental malady. How he'd gone even further than all of that, from the kindness and bravery of his own inexhaustible heart, his blessed Dutch soul…

He'd fought and done battle with monsters. Fought the living dead forces of the nightscape on their own damned battlefields and had sent them back to the hellfire chasms from whence they'd came. 

In the end he'd died of the thing no purely mortal soul and its expiring coil can out run or overcome or endure. The slow blade of age had eventually caught up and came in calm in the night. The vampire slayer had died in his bed. Finally at peace. 

The strange man wrapped and hidden by bandage from sight had been there. The old professor had tried so hard to help him too, in the end. Before it was all over. He'd tried to help him, in so many ways. 

By the pharmaceutical and alchemical hand, at first. Then the gentle and calming aid of friendship. A true companion. Who at the very least, had tried, really tried to understand…

Finally the strange guide of wrappings and overcoat and wide brimmed hat sauntered over to the poor fellow and touched his shoulder. 

“I'm sorry. Truly. Let's go." 

After a moment of further hopeless gazing… Florin picked himself up and followed. 

And then silence returned to the cemetery once again. 

But then something… something that had been watching, low and in the stinking mire of black porridge sludged earth, tempered and commingle mixed with years and years of sloughing rotten corpse putrescence, began to slowly rise and pull itself free from the foul quagmire of its birth. 

A wretched semblance of a face began to take shape with the rest of a ruined bipedal semblage, slowly and painfully rising and trying to pull itself free… trying to take after the two graveyard intruders and swallow them in its filth and- 

A crossbow bolt suddenly shot through the muckman's pouring sludging face just as it was beginning to develop. The arrow, silver, and coated in the proper mixture of garlic and wolfsbane and nightshade, obliterated the foul green flame of unholy life flickering demonically within its abominated manshaped liquid mass. 

The muckman of the graveyard melted back into the rest of the old and putrid cemetery sludge as another one that had been watching stepped over him and the grave of Van Helsing. The grave that the two visitors he'd been watching had come to visit. 

The stranger reloaded his crossbow as he thought. Considered. 

Then followed. 

…

The Countess roared! 

A sound that was beyond the mere auditory. Beyond the mere threshold of the decibel level. The assistant and little Carmella felt their bones first rattle and then palsy and quake down to the atom, as if the whole of their meat sack frames and skeletal structures threatened to shatter and burst and snap all at once. 

Castle Dracula did shake too. And shed great clouds and stone breath exhaled and exhumed in a rising and surrounding column of ancient choking dust, in a thick deathly fog. Mortar and loose stone came apart and fell and cascaded down as the mountains that surrounded the great and broken jagged battlements began to join them in their unearthly tremble. 

The Countess roared her outrage! Her loss!

The assistant and the little living dead girl tried to beg her to stop, but they could not be heard over the din of their master. It was apocalyptic, that hellspawned sound. 

The little child-shaped wraith could feel the sudden rupture of many blood vessels within and about her living dead person. She began to bleed profusely from the damaged and splitting membrane of her eyes and the vibrant lurid violence of the sudden flowing scarlet poured forth feverishly like a blasphemous rendition of a saint's holy shedding tears. The red poured down the demoniacal lie of the youth of her face from the rupturing soft jelly of her lying child's eyes. Hot and running red began to burst and flow forth from under the nails, at the finger tips, the gums, all about her small teeth and sharp fangs. The ears! Out of her small pale ears came something like a high powered arterial spray of a darker shade, almost black. In thick viscous cords that darkled crimson as they spat. 

Carmilla just shot dark and bled and writhed in a pain she'd never felt before or thought possible, the assistant too. Both of them. They abandoned their shouts and pleas for the assault to stop and just left themselves to the dark tumult of the whims and mercy of their master. 

The Countess eventually ceased her ungodly caterwaul. At her leisure. She then gazed at her two servants on the castle floor before her, beneath her. Eyed them both severely. 

And then she belted, yelling and letting loose her commands: –

“The both of you! Worthless! Earn your keep within my castle walls and my lordly and supreme favor, go out! Into the mountains! The pass! The town! Find me the one that would pretend to my power and thus insult me, this night! Go!”

…

One of the last and fragile remnant gaggle of town peasants were gathered together in the evening in the town square, discussing one of their own… young Florin, his trembling parents were there, when Doctor Praetorius rode into town on horseback. Straight and composed. Regal and immaculate in the small and humble thoroughfare astride his pale horse. 

The few left to the village eyed him suspiciously… some viciously already. Just waiting for the first sign of trouble at the first sight of this riding interloper. Like taut and coiled things, cats ready to pounce and fly… ready to maim and tear this interloping snow-haired man. 

Praetorius, overhearing their worried talk and discussion, the blubbering and sobs of the parents of the young rider concerned, and not caring: spoke loudly and clearly so’s to be heard over the anxious chatter of the humble and small mountain village people. 

“Excuse me! Yes, thank you! I wonder if any of you pleasant creatures could help as to tell me if someone has been through your humble and charming town, a Countess Marya Zaleska? Her and her man, earlier this year, some months ago now. Please, she's very important to me, I must find her as soon as possible.” 

At first none wanted to speak. They all just continued to glare and eye the interloping loudmouth with thinly veiled hate and suspicion. 

But then Bela, Florin’s father, remembering his brave son and his own desperate prayers to God and fortune for his safety and success, stepped forward and answered the tall thin lofty man who refused to dismount and come down from his horse. 

“You need to leave, stranger. We do not know who you seek, but please, for your own sake and ours, leave.”

Praetorius just laughed in his face. Something humble Bela had not expected. 

“And why should I leave? Are you going to make me?”

Bela said nothing but tensed. 

Someone else amongst the small gathered bunch spoke out, not too loudly…

“There’s wickedness alive and loose in this place as of late, stranger…”

Praetorius only laughed again, rearing his horse by rein towards the dark mouth of the great mountain pass. 

“And what of there? What of Borgo Pass? What of Castle Dracula!? What of there, pleasant creatures …! What of there ..!?”

And he galloped away and towards the entrance to the mountain way, all out. Bellowing laughter at the pathetic and frightened little gathering of small and lowly dirt farmers. For all their semi informed and hackneyed haphazard understanding and knowledge of the dark and its arts and its necromantic language, it did not save them. For they would always just be fucking peasants in the end. 

Doctor Praetorius made for the wild of the mountains atop his pale and tireless horse. Already knowing he would find her at the top. 

…

The hulking vulpine nosferatu thing of Frankenstein’s surgical table traveled the wild and treacherous terrain of rock with praeternatural ease and cunning. Innate. He strode and galloped-leapt and launched himself through the woods and trees and cold. Crawling and climbing up the rock faces with dangerous hungry animal speed and inhuman power. He hunted the wolves and the deer and small game with ease. Snatching their wild squirming forms with his undead and bestial necromantic speed and ripping them apart with his pure strength. Bathing in the wild animal baptism of their fresh and steaming red even as he drank and fed on their still struggling dying forms. The blood drank in through the green mottled skin of the creature in addition to his gaping maw. As if every possible part and all of the pores of his repurposed graveyard flesh thunderclapped back to life was a thirsting ravenous hungry mouth. Yearning and wishing to be fed. 

Henry Frankenstein watched. Proud. So proud of his greatest creation. Thinking of ways to make him even greater and enhance his awesome power. 

He watched the hulking patchwork batfaced mass of suture and corpse colored green-blue… and thought to himself, with pride and wonder for himself and his strange son of dark science and the necromantic…

Perfect! He’s completely superhuman! …

And he knew with smug pride and a faint head, he still hadn't fully recovered from his catatonia and loss of blood to his necrophile son, he knew that he would without a doubt go down in the dark annals of his strange family’s history as the greatest and most ambitious and singly most accomplished of the Frankenstein Men!

Later …

They made a fire. Frankenstein roasted a bit of wolf meat as his creation tore into the rest of the dead wild bleeding thing of snow colored fur, and ripped and drank and slurped and chewed. 

Frankenstein watched as he cooked over the fire. Studying. 

Thinking over what the massive thing of reanimated design had already told him. Carefully. 

Finally he said: –

“What is it that you want here, in these mountains? You've spoken of a song, one that calls to you. What does it say?” 

The creation ceased its tearing into the fresh bloody carcass for a moment and said, croaked: “I hear it at all times, Frankenstein, but most clearly at night. When I shut my eyes and all else out and open the flicker of mind in the resalvaged brain you gave me, I hear it clearly. And it is a song of power. Heralding. Heretical. Harbinger. It is a wide and open throated chord, discordant in its choral chant that sings to me and bade that I come to take the power alive in these rocks that is so much like mine. Take. Devour it. And make it as my own. … much like how you first designed and made me father, am I not right? Did you not grave rob the great Count and give me these…” 

He gestured with a splayed and bloody four fingered hand to the pair of vulpine wolfen fangs, as of pearl and gleaming amongst the rest of the wet and black ruin, oozing dark ebon ichor green with the blood of the fallen animal on which it now feasted. 

Frankenstein almost found himself entranced with the sight of them… in the gathering and deepening dark, lost in the memory of the frozen river and black sulphur mountain…

… now here they were, again in another wild and tumultuous mountain pass. 

But Frankenstein wasn't afraid. He had greater than the late Egnaw as his servant and companion now… 

Although, he'd have to be careful. These things of stitched parts and arcane black magic and witch science seem to always come back… unpredictable. 

He'd have to be careful. Test this one. See how it behaved. He'd already observed much. 

Doctor Henry Frankenstein nodded and bit into the smoky haunch of wolf meat he'd spitted and roasted. Smiled. 

“Yes. I did do that. For you. Before you were ever even born. Your birthright that I claimed and gave, your very first birthday present, my son…” 

The assistant spied from the forest line of trees and in the dark. Watching the mad doctor and his vulpine thing about their shared fire for a little while longer…

Then he faded back into the thicker growth and deeper black, back to the castle and his Countess. 

…

Back at the cramped and stuffed little humble abode of the strange bandaged man, young Florin was resolute. And his odd host of wrappings and mystery was exasperated. 

Impetuous young… fools. They were always fools. Always were and would be. And he had been no better. His own mad ideas and bravery and disregard for consequence had led him to his current ailment. One that had now dominated his life and destiny since he’d been little older than the young rider. He thought to himself but wouldn't say to the boy: Don’t Goddamn yourself… don’t recklessly consign yourself to a fate and torment you could scarcely understand… foolish boy. 

Things might’ve played out differently if he had. But then … Mayhap not.    

They sipped at tea and debated the matter. The bandaged man behind his stygian lenses of glass, staring deeply at the young man and refusing to falter, said thus: –

“You’ve done what you can, to return now, and empty handed, without anyone to help you that knows what they are doing, it would be suicide, young man. Please, do the last thing available to you and do right by yourself. Go, find a new home and leave that damned place. No happiness can come from any place that lives in the shadow of Castle Dracula. Anyone still living in that Godforsaken hamlet, any family or friend you may still have that still lives, would want the same of you. They would want you to save yourself.”  

The young man was silent for some time. Not touching his cooling cup of chai. Finally he looked the man of wrappings in his hidden face and gaze of black glasses and said flatly –

“Florin.”

A beat.

The unseen face hidden by surgical wrapping was puzzled. “What?” he said. Flummoxed. 

The youth said: “My name is Florin. My father’s name is Bela and my mother’s Anastasia and my friends Dodger and Karras and Erin are all just as scared and just as in danger now, moreso likely, than they were when I first set out. They’re no doubt more scared than I am, sitting here with you. Wasting more time.”

Florin stood. 

“They’re my folk, my people, sir. People that matter to me, they're the whole world. They are the people that I've known my whole life and that I can't forsake, like how your friend Professor Van Helsing mattered to you. And I’m not gonna turn tail and leave em abandoned. Now, if you won’t help me and no one can help me then it doesn't matter. I’ve gotta go back and try to help them anyway I can.”

Florin turned to go to the door, to his horse reined outside, tethered to a post on the lonely bent and crooked little hill. 

The wrapped and hidden mystery man stood and protested: “Don’t! The night is here and you should know better by now that there's lots of hungry things out there.”

Florin whirled, “I'm not wasting anymore time sitting here with you and being afraid! You haven’t been there! And you don’t know what I left behind! I’m not gonna run away and hide like you and sit here and-”

A horrible sound cut off their argument. A horse’s shrill and powerful dying shriek.

The pair, young man and surgically wrapped, held silent. Eyes as wide as their ears. Their hearts quickening.  

A horrid and repulsive gurgling sound followed. 

And then a splurch. Like a great swallowing mud sucking something under. 

Then more horrid wet and liquid splurching sounds. Just outside the house. 

Not far from the front door. 

“What the…” began Florin, as the glass to one of the windows of the small shack suddenly shattered and exploded. 

Florin and his strange host whirled!

They watched in collective shock and horror as an arm of foulest putrescence reached in through the shattered glass. Dripping and sloughing sludge as it reached desperately and blindly for some kind of violent purchase. 

The pair cried out in shock together as the rest of the windows shattered and more putrid arms of muck and graveyard sludge came in. The house shook, battered from outside on all faces, all walls sieged as they grouped and poured forth and pressed in on the little shack. Pouring out of the nearby cemetery that the pair of intruders had dared to disturb earlier that day. Now the night had come, was nigh and upon them in the form of more and more rising and splurching forward abominations of bipedal shape and miserable and cruel aspect and design. They moaned in anguish. 

They all together, the muckmen horde, began to give rise to a wailing moan of despair and loss and woe.

Florin's eyes stung from the stench but were nonetheless helpless to pull themselves away from the sight. Within the reaching arms and sloughing faces of black mire and putrescence he could pick out and discern individual and displaced parts and bones, fingers, femurs, partially decomposed eyes and organs and faces… all of them running and swimming  through the sloughing dripping gushing dance of motion in the sludge that composed the rough man shapes of foul graveyard mire that now beset them.  Trapped. 

The poor young rider couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe that this was how it ended and that he would die so far from home and in the hands of repulsive monsters born of an entirely separate patch of likewise cursed earth. He started to pray for his mother and father and Erin and the others, throwing up one last silent one to the Lord that they just might be safe and find themselves a way out…

A call from his strange host brought him out of his silent prayers and stricken gaze of fascination and horror. His eyes were still watering when he whirled as the bandaged man called: –

“Here! Over here, boy!" 

The bandaged man was standing over a cellar-style trap door. Open. He had a traveller's bag and a new coat and hat and he was beckoning the young man in. 

Florin needed no further invitation. He ran for the trap door and dove for the hidden passageway beneath. The bandaged man that was his host followed. The trap slammed shut behind them as the walls of the small and besieged little shack began to cave in and swallow. 

The place smashed in and they swarmed inside the falling debris and crumbling structure. As the place fell in and collapsed, crashing all around the muckmen of graveyard putrescence mud, they let loose one last ghastly wail. So angry that the intruders had escaped them. 

…

Carmella thought the snow white haired man looked funny. Riding haughty and unawares boldly through her master’s mountain pass. So thin. Skeletal, really. As if already premade and ready for the bosom soil and chambered charnel rot of the grave. His shock of white hair atop his slender needle frame gave her the impression of a scarecrow. She didn't know exactly why, but it was something in that look. Her mother, her old one from before and long gone now, had used to tell her a scary bedtime story concerning an angry and vengeful scarecrow that took to walking at night, prowling and hunting for children out and caught past the time to be in bed and beneath the sheets. 

Carmella smiled, amongst the cover of treeline and shadow, remembering. Watching the haughty intruder gallop through the mountains, the smug look of a man that's already tasted victory for far too long and far too often all over his stern and gaunt visage. She licked her lips. 

The smile deepened as she coiled. Readying to pounce. 

He and his galloping ride reached her crosspoint in the road and she flew. A bat-child creature with flickering feral pink/red dots of flames set within the stretching animal jackal face about the eyes. Her lips curled back wolfen as her sharp pointed teeth began to lengthen and grow. 

But cunning eyes, quick, caught the flicker of nearly concealed hunting movement in the trees and had clocked it just in time and anticipated its potential threat. 

The form atop his ride quarter-turned as a hand that had left the reins and pulled pistol free from leather came up now, taking quick aim and firing off a loud and thundercracking shot that echoed and filled the dark natural chamber of the mountain pass. 

Carmilla screamed and let loose a child's cry as the lancing shot caught her midair and the clash of gunfire smashed into her little demoniac and half animal transformed body and sent it crashing into the earth. 

There in the dirt she writhed and shrieked and beat half developed leathery wings, pink and ebon dark and pale and discolored. Black and red shot from the gunshot in her shoulder and her eyes and mouth. The bullet continued to burn and sear. Cooking. As if alive with heat and flame, as if a star that still smoldered and thrived. 

Silver. 

The silver bullet in her shoulder smoked and burned as if a coal set in the blood and flesh and shattered bone of her unholy living dead person. It glowed inside the craterous wound and she felt it. She spat more blood and necrophile bile and shrieked gurgled child sounds. Cries. Sobbing. Mixed ungodly and blasphemous with wounded animal bat screeches. 

Like a plague infested rat caught and held underneath the bootheel of a sailor. 

Doctor Praetorius smiled. Holstered his pistol as he watched the demon child writhe in the dirt. He dismounted and reached into his large riding coat as he sauntered forwards. To the squirming screaming child thing with a smoking and cord spewing wound. 

Carmella's pain intensified considerably when he finally stood over and lorded over her fallen frame. He held a cross in one hand, aloft out and over her crying face. The agony that shot through her entire form was beyond anything she'd dared thought to venture. A wretched torture she'd never thought she would ever know. 

Praetorius spoke loudly and clearly and the little strigoica were-child of demoniacal wraith aspect heard him clearly despite her overwhelming horror and shock and pain. 

“One of her little servants, no doubt. You could do better, or mayhap she should is the point. In either case if you don't want me to bury this goddamn thing into your rotten little blasphemous lie of a face, then you'll take me to your master. Take me to Castle Dracula or I'll put a few more silver shots in you and take my time as I feed you this thing!” 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Only I survived this night.
Silence. Blissful silence. For a long time, there had been a emptiness in my head so heavy that it was consuming me day by day. My insides were rotten; I was nothing more than a functioning corpse. This was supposed to be a fresh start, the end of a wretched vegetation. I was looking for something new—a new place, new people, a new idea of who I could be. I set out on a journey with no specific destination. My lonely road was meant to find the remnants of what I used to consider humanity. I left Yokohama two days ago.
Sleeping along the way and searching for something, I stumbled upon a small town with a blurred sign. I couldn't read it; it was painted over with blood. I don't know what I thought about then—nothing, I guess. Hunger and exhaustion, that was all that remained in my head permanently, even though I should have turned back. Any normal person would have turned back, but I hadn't considered myself normal for a long time. I walked past it indifferently and wandered for a bit longer until a small hostel appeared. It didn't really look like one; it was more like an ordinary house with a sign saying "lodging and food."
Seeing this, using the last of my strength, I approached the counter. After waiting for a minute, I noticed a woman. I stared at her for a long time… until finally, I began to laugh hysterically. Why? Because she is a worm. Just like me, just like everyone else. Wretched vermin crawling on this earth, needing to be eradicated. She looked just like everyone else—dry skin, a blank stare, and a face that had lost its owner long ago. It belonged to no one. A corpse.
I felt an excitement so intense that I knew immediately—this town was the right direction. Asking for a room and food, I closely observed her movements, reactions, body language. She was nervous, but her eyes remained dead. I often had trouble with emotions, but fear was something I could detect instantly. I felt a physical and psychological arousal; I don't remember where I knew this feeling from. The fresh scent of fear. Hunger stopped bothering me; this woman was the perfect worm to eat. I licked my lips and walked toward my room.
Only on the stairs did I notice that I had been digging my fingernails into the palm of my hand, until I felt pain and the warmth of blood. Looking at the fresh blood, I felt an incredible craving. I licked my hand and—wait, what am I actually doing? How did I get here? I'm on a strange bed, in a strange room. I had fragments of entering the building, but I didn't remember much.
The growl of my hungry stomach snapped me out of my thoughts, and I immediately remembered the promised meal. While eating the beef with rice, I didn't think much—hardly at all—just as I didn't feel anything. Again, the same endless emptiness filling me to the brim. A memory appeared, an image in my head. Blood. Beef. Rice. Fingernails. Egg. Eye. That strange excitement began to overtake me again.
I looked up from my plate. I didn't remember when they came in. Two people were sitting at the next table. Four. Ten. A hundred. Everyone was looking at me with the exact same stare. Blank. Loud, too loud. Vermin, that damn vermin. They kept watching me, checking if I was still there, if I still existed. The same stare, the same smell. Smell? Food, blood, covered in blood… with that interrupted thought, I rushed to the bathroom to throw up what I had just eaten.
Choking violently, I leaned against the sink. Wait… why don't I remember anything again? Fatigue. It must be fatigue. I went back to the room to rest after the trip. Empty, just the same as before, yet still different. Still different from everyone else.
Wait, where is everyone? The restaurant was full just a second ago.

I tried my best to describe what was in my dream LMAO dont expect good writing i was js trying to get my thoughts out ... this dream was so crazy to me because usually dreams dont have a single plot line or make sense but this one followed toby's story in a way and had a set goal in mind.. i hope this makes sense 😭

Welcome to this complete audiobook presentation of The Isle of the Undead by Lloyd Eshbach, a gripping tale of horror, suspense, and supernatural terror.

In this classic horror audiobook, strange events begin to unfold when a remote island becomes the center of an unimaginable mystery. As dark secrets emerge from the shadows, the line between life and death starts to blur. Filled with eerie atmosphere, suspenseful storytelling, and unsettling discoveries, The Isle of the Undead delivers a haunting experience for fans of classic horror fiction.

If you enjoy authors like H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert E. Howard, and other masters of weird fiction, this full audiobook is sure to keep you listening until the very end.

This free audiobook is perfect for:

✔ Horror audiobook fans

✔ Supernatural mystery lovers

✔ Classic pulp fiction enthusiasts

✔ Late-night listening sessions

✔ Creepy storytelling and atmospheric horror

📖 Story: The Isle of the Undead

✍ Author: Lloyd Eshbach

🎧 Format: Full Audiobook

📚 Genre: Horror, Mystery, Supernatural Fiction

⏰ Chapters:

00:00:00 Chapter 1

00:22:23 Chapter 2

00:37:20 Chapter 3

00:52:04 Chapter 4

01:15:26 Chapter 5

Every night at 3:07 AM this phone rings but it’s not plugged in. Every time I do answer it I hear breathing…

​

In a remote coastal village in Japan, there lived an elderly man named Inakı Ho.

He was in his sixties and earned his living working in rice fields. He was alone.

After some time, small things began to change.

At first, it was his shadow.

It no longer moved in perfect sync with him.

Sometimes it lagged behind by a few seconds.

Then came the voices.

When he asked someone a question, the response was not immediate.

Sometimes it came seconds later, sometimes minutes.

But what was strange was this: the delay was different for everyone.

One day, he touched a lamp.

His shadow appeared only after a delay.

As time passed, these delays grew worse.

From seconds… to hours… and then to days.

People no longer saw him in real time.

Someone witnessing Inakı Ho would only be seen by others years later.

Those who knew him began hearing his voice.

But he was never there.

One person would hear Inakı Ho speaking in an empty room,

while somewhere else, someone would still be waiting for him to arrive.

Eventually, he almost “disappeared.”

But he had not truly vanished.

He was simply no longer aligned with time.

People would notice him hours or days later,

or realize he had already left long before.

Over time, something even stranger happened.

Inakı Ho stopped aging.

Or perhaps he was aging so slowly it became imperceptible.

It was as if time had stopped working on him.

One day, he could no longer endure it.

Dressed in gray, completely covering his body, he screamed in a crowded square.

But his voice was heard at different times by everyone.

Some remembered that scream years later.

Others felt as if they had experienced it in that exact moment.

He lost control again.

Determined to kill someone, he took a dagger.

When he struck, the death was real to him—but not yet to the victim.

That person would only die twenty years later.

And when they finally did, they would realize it had already happened.

There was nothing they could do in that moment,

because it had already been written in time.

After that, something changed.

He began to touch people.

When he touched someone, they briefly entered his “time.”

Then they were immediately pulled back out.

Everything about the encounter was erased from memory.

But something remained.

Years later, those people began to feel something they could not explain.

Not a memory.

More like the sensation that something had already happened.

But when, or where, was impossible to know.

This is what came to be called “DEJA VU.”

But old records from the village tell a different story:

“This is not a feeling.

It is EFFECT OF INAKI HO.”

And the final note reads:

Whenever you feel as if you have lived something before…

it is not a mistake.

It is simply time briefly aligning itself with you.

And remember:

If you ever see a gray silhouette…

there is nothing you can do anymore.

Because Inakı Ho has already done what he came to do.

Part 1.
I woke up to the dark room. Something had pulled me out of sleep. What was it? With a tightening chest I remembered. It was a groaning. Something in the room had made a hopeless and dreadful groan. I looked over at my wife. She lay there sleeping. Regular steady breaths bringing her chest up and down.
Supposing it had just been a dream, I let my chest ease and fell back asleep.
Again I awoke to that same groaning. It had sounded more distressed this time. Like agony and sadness mixed with fear.
My arms were covered in goosebumps and I felt as though I hadn’t even been asleep long enough to dream. Again I looked at my wife, still sleeping, still steady. A small nightlight in the bathroom cast just enough light into the room for me to be able to make out the shadows. I saw nothing out of the ordinary. But I still felt on edge. Like I had just woken from a nightmare. But I couldn’t remember any dream. I tried my best to shake the feeling and let myself fall back to sleep.
Eventually unconsciousness took me again. I had only been asleep for what felt like a few minutes when something shook the bed. My eyes flew open and I looked immediately to my wife. I hadn’t dreamt this one. Something had moved the bed. I looked more closely at her face and saw that her eyes were open. Glistening with tears in the dark of the room. Quiet sobs shook her body. “What’s wrong love?” I began to ask, wanting to reach out to her but finding I was unable to move. I couldn’t move my arms or legs or head or even my lips to speak the words. I’d had sleep paralysis before, but this was different. This was as though I was just a photo, possessing not even a knowledge of how to move.
With an ever growing anxiety and fear once again gripping me, I lay stuck watching my wife, who continued to let out croaked sobs. Sadness filled me and I wanted nothing more than to tell her everything was ok and that I was right there with her. But not a finger could I move.
So I watched, and as I watched, my wife slowly got up out of bed. Still letting out what were now wretched agonizing choked cries, she reached into the side table drawer. Out came a photo of us and a razor blade.
I was frantic now. Everything in me begging myself to please just move, to reach out and stop what I was seeing. Please. And I felt my own agony building up in me as I lay there unable to stop what was coming.
My wife lay back in bed. Tears streamed down her face as she, through hushed sobs, kissed our photo and whispered “I miss you”. She then laid the photo on her chest, lifted up her arms and put the razor to her wrist.
I watched on with a sadness and panic that felt like drowning. And after a few minutes, she was still.
As if her last breath was the key to my chains, with it I burst out of my paralysis.
Gripping my wife’s still warm body in my arms, all the dread and sadness and anguish that had built up in me had exploded out of me and I wailed. I blubbered and pleaded and shook her and demanded that she wake up. But to no avail. My wife had died, taken her own life while I lay watching, not moving a muscle, not speaking a sound. I watched and she died.
A few days passed. And I spent them in my bed. The light meant nothing to me as days turned into nights. I lay there. Sobbing my way into sleep and then dreaming of what I’d seen. There was no relief for me whether sleeping or awake.
And after a few days, I made up my mind.

Part 2.

I woke up to the dark room. Something had disturbed me in my sleep. It felt like I’d had a nightmare that I just couldn’t remember. I looked at my husband. He lay there, chest moving up and down with his breaths. I supposed it had just been a dream, so I shook off the feeling and let myself fall back into sleep.
Not much time had passed I think before something again woke me. My eyes opened and I could see that the room was undisturbed. My husband still lay there sleeping. Seemingly unperturbed by whatever had awakened me. He was a light sleeper, so I figured it was just my dreams spilling into wakefulness. Still a bit uneasy, but wanting to get some rest, I again drifted to sleep.
And again, I woke. This was unusual, and a bit alarming. Now disturbed by what unseen thing had been waking me, I went to turn to my husband, hoping to wake him up so he could help me find the culprit. But as I went to wake him, I found I couldn’t move. Was this the sleep paralysis my husband had spoken of? It seemed likely, as I felt I couldn’t have moved a single muscle. I couldn’t even say his name to wake him. But I could see him. He lay there, eyes open staring at the ceiling. Tears rolled down his face as his chest now shook with quiet sobs. “What’s the matter my love” I wanted so badly to ask him. The look of aguish on his face was heartbreaking. As if he’d been lost somewhere very dark. Sadness pooled inside of me and had I been able to move enough even to cry, surely tears would have wet my cheeks at the sight I was now seeing. My love, if I could only reach out and wrap him in my arms, I’d tell him all would be alright. But I could not. I could not move a single muscle. And although my eyes had opened when I woke, I now felt I couldn’t even blink.
So I watched in wretched stillness as my husband got out of bed. He made his way over to the closet and brought down a shoe box. Out came a photo of us and a razor blade. Panic flooded me as I desperately tried to will myself into movement. I screamed within myself, begging my body to move, to please just reach out and grab my husband’s arm. Something, anything. I pounded on my body from within it, trying to break out of my prison. Please please don’t do this I screamed in my mind.
And as I lay there motionless, I watched as my husband hugged our photo, raised it to his lips and through broken whispered sobs said “I need you” and kissed it, then laid it on his chest. He raised his arms, one hand gripping the razor blade, and pushed it into his other arm.
Unable to do anything to stop it, unable to even look away, I watched. And I watched, and I watched. His breathing went from ragged cries, to slow shallow breaths, to nothing at all. And with his last breath, I suddenly burst free. I jumped over onto him screaming his name, begging him to please wake up. I wailed and blinked through a stream of tears as I tried to shake him awake. “Please” I begged, “please”. I collapsed next to him, his warm blood turned cool as it soaked the sheets.
Days passed. But it didn’t matter to me. The blue sky was grey. Night swallowed the day. But with night came no rest from my sorrow. I sobbed when I was awake and through dreams I relived that awful night when I slept. And there was no comfort for me. And after a few days, I made up my mind.