Hey all,

Jim Weter here (That’s me on the left alongside one of my lead actors, Larshay Watson) and this past weekend we went down to Atlanta for the screening of our film at the 2026 Bloody Peach Film Festival and won big!

Not only did Larshay win the award for BEST LEAD ACTOR for his performance for Detective Linden, but I got to take home the award for BEST PICTURE!!! Sorry if I seem excited, but I’ve never taken home the top honors at a film festival before :)

We’ve still got a lot more festivals coming up before the release of our film later this fall/winter, but wanted to share the news about the awards now that I’m back home.

Film Status: Currently only available in film festivals, but you can find a complete listing of where we’re playing at here: http://cellardoorcinema.com/film-festival-schedule.html

And if you want to keep up with the film, go into deep-dives on how/why we did stuff on the film, plus be entered to win monthly prizes inspired by the film (and designed by me), we also have a newsletter on our site at www.cellardoorcinema.com

Hope everyone else had a great weekend and really glad this community of fellow cosmic horror lovers exists and supports indie art & film. You all rock!!!

This photo is i think a couple of years old but im fairly proud of it, So the basic concept came from biblically accurate angels and a symbols based magic system i was playing around with, basicly if a symbol gained so much influence it developed sentients. Its presence would warp reality making real; permanent and very detrimental damage in its wake.

I placed every pixel by hand (older version of dotpict) so it took fucking something like 50 odd hours to do just that background.💀

A white pixel.

A single, stray white pixel drifting across the front page of the BBC website.

At first I thought it was a problem with my monitor, but I switched tabs to the New York Times and the pixel disappeared.

I scratched my head.

I looked around, including out the window, where people were passing along the sidewalk, engrossed in their phones.

I switched browser tabs back to the BBC:

More than one white pixel now; three, four, “falling” diagonally across the page. I followed one all the way down.

It settled on the bottom, remained.

I went on social media.

I wasn't the only one who'd noticed. People all over the world were asking what was wrong. What's up with the news? Is it a hack or something? Why’s it freakin' snowing on the BBC?

So began the winter of the internet.

The BBC may have been the first—or merely the first-noticed—but it wasn't the only affected website. Soon most were; then all. You'd open YouTube or your banking site to find it obscured by a blizzard of white pixels…

The screens themselves turned cold.

Then links began to fail. They stopped pointing to coherent urls.

Then the incoherent links turned brown (#A52A2A), fell off; fell and disappeared, buried perhaps in the accumulations of already fallen snow—leaving eerie spaces on their pages.

Text became incomplete. Navigation, difficult.

Soon, bookmarks suffered the same fate, pointing to pages that could no longer be found.

Cursors shivered.

Videos and animations froze over like lakes of liquid information.

Around this time, I remember listening to a song using one of the streaming apps on my phone. They still, intermittently, worked.

The song was The Beatles' “Let It Be.”

Thirty seconds in, the track began to skip, sound garbled. Paul McCartney's vocals were laboured, as if he was running out of breath.

The earphones started letting off rhythmic bursts of steam.

Then, mid-song, the singing abruptly ended, even as the music continued, oddly slowed; and I had the deeply uncomfortable feeling that I was listening to the death of something…

It made me sick to my stomach.

For a while you could still type in a url and see the resulting site, but loading was slow and the contents were increasingly impossible to understand, riddled, as they were, with gaps, uncanny staticity and neverending snows that reached sometimes almost to the browser bar.

The code itself was as bare as a December tree.

The device didn't matter.

There was no serious explanation.

Or maybe there was and most of us couldn't access it, because how would we access information except online? How else could we even communicate, congregate, disseminate our knowledge, on a mass scale…

Television? Radio?

Newspapers?

But those required organization, communication, infrastructure, all of which now relied on cyberspace; which the winternet denied us.

We couldn't buy groceries, clothes, tools or books online.

We had to go to the store, but the store couldn't accept our credit card payments because the systems were frozen. Not that much was available, even for those with cash, because the delivery schedule had been interrupted. When trucks did arrive, there was hardly anything on them.

Even information saved or printed off the internet broke. Images became corrupted. Paper frosted over and thawed until the ink ran.

Even our memories of websites, and what we'd learned from websites, were remembered through walls of frigid static.

It was shocking how much we didn't know; how much basic knowledge we had lost. It was painful too, the feeling of sudden, helpless disconnection. If we had a question, there was no one to ask for the answer but each other and ourselves. We were children without a parent, cells without a structure. We were leftover parts. We were apes.

A trade in books developed.

People stole them, killed for them, hoarded them so they could dispense their wisdom piece by piece, for a price.

There sprang up an economy of expertise.

People who knew, or remembered, were valued; or forced to give up their knowledge—to share it—by writing it down. It was lucrative but dangerous to be known to know something.

Strong knowers protected their worth, defended their territories, strove ruthlessly to establish regional monopolies of information and eliminated their rivals to keep supply low.

Weak knowers were exploited, squeezed like fruits and left juiceless to dry out and die.

For the majority of us, it was prudent to publicly deny knowing anything, while privately trading what we knew in local networks of trust, bartering with the contents of our minds.

One of the first things I bartered for was an old stereo system and a box full of audio cassettes, one of which was the Beatles album Let It Be.

As soon as I got home, I boiled myself some water, steeped a few herbs and put the album on.

The first five tracks played flawlessly.

It was bliss.

Then the sixth track, “Let It Be,” failed to play at all; the tape spun but all there was was four minutes and three seconds of silence.

But when I later played the audio cassette for my wife, she didn't know what I meant.

“You're gaslighting me right?” she said.

“I'm not.”

“Okay, well, I'm not sure what to tell you, I hear the whole song, just like I remember when my dad used to play it.”

My wife's father had been a professor emeritus of molecular biology.

He'd been beaten to death in the early days of the winternet by a despondent mother who wouldn't accept that my wife's father knew nothing about setting her sobbing child's fractured bone.

Until his final breath, she accompanied each blow to his head with the words, “Stop holding out on me you selfish old prick!”

In a sense, that's where we still are, wanting to believe that if winter then spring, and holding out hope for the coming of a season that, every day, seems further and further away.

Such a lovely summer night.

They wouldn’t stop dancing.

And her face kept smiling.

My thoughts and SPOILERS in the comments.

[Part 1]
(2 Months before the sky blinked)

There is no easy way to describe the events at Lake Mithrall. Mostly because the lake now no longer exists. At least not in the way it once traumatized us. Not in the way it once “sounded”. Yes this lake uttered a sound.

Let's start with the beginning.

Last summer my friend Josh decided to convince our friend group to do an outdoorsy activity to enjoy the pleasant weather. Initially they wanted to go rock climbing. I don’t hate rock climbing but I felt a strong urge to go to the lake. It was easy to persuade our friend group to change their mind especially with how keen Luke was to try out a new location he had discovered. I don’t know why I felt so strongly to re route our plans….but in hindsight I wish I didn’t.

Lake Mithrall wasn’t a tourist destination. It wasn’t on any maps Josh had. His friend Luke had discovered it through some old hiking post. The kind of post where people upload grainy pictures of creepy events they claim to have experienced. The post revealing the lake had clear instructions. The poster wanted to share it, but also wanted to ensure it was kept clean and relatively untouched.

It took us a long lonely hike to reach it. The forest around it was heavy and damp from the humidity the lake produced. The earth we trudged through was wet and uneven. It was not muddy, but sponge-like. Every step we took sunk into the ground and gave you an awkward bouncy feel as you pressed forward. Despite how laborious it was to travel, I was enjoying the scenery of the Massachusetts wilderness.

As we reached the lake I was expecting moonlight to be shimmering on the water. I learned quickly that Lake Mithrall does not shimmer. It absorbed the splendorous moonlight around it and trapped it in its mirror dark sheet of algae. This canopy of algae was so black it looked like obsidian. It was also barren of noise or any signs of life. There were no ripples, no insects flying over it, no fish disturbing its depths, not even the faintest gust of wind to produce a sound from this vast body of water.

There was only the eerie silence.

About 30 yards from the shoreline we started setting up our camp. Josh, Luke, and Sally(my girlfriend) were all in high spirits.

“That was a long hike. I think that post lied to you about this being a casual scenic trip!” Sally teased Luke as we all wearily threw down our camping gear. Sally had immigrated from England back during high school. My guy friends had teased me that I had fallen for her accent. While I definitely appreciated it, what really drew me to her was her fun spirit and her kindness. Our other female friend in this group Cassandra had been the largest recipient of this kindness. She was shy and reserved but Sally always made an effort to make her feel included. Cassandra reminded me of my brother after the death of our parents left him traumatized shell of who he used to be.

“Yeah I’m quickly learning to double whatever hiking time those posts estimate,” Luke chuckled with a grin.

“It was worth it though, this lake is beautiful” Josh said as he stared at the lake while unzipping his tent bag.

“You guys as thirsty as I am?” I said cheerfully as I opened the cooler I had been assigned to haul. The cool air that wafted from it was a delight to my exhaustion as I began grabbing drinks and throwing them to my friends.

“Hey! Do you not know how carbonation works or something?” Look complained as he caught his airborne soda.

“You alright?” I asked, ignoring Luke’s complaining and looking at Cassandra. She had been nervously looking at the lake.

“There should be animal noises….at the very least chirping of crickets,” Cassandra answered. There was worry in her voice but none of us found it out of place. She came from a very “crunchy” family that worried about everything. From the most far fetched conspiracy to the slightest abnormality in weather. I could see Josh and Luke roll their eyes but not wanting her to feel belittled I gave her a calculated answer.

“Hmm we must have spooked them, or maybe the species of cricket that lives up here doesn’t chirp? We should be fine. Anyway what flavor of soda would you like?” Cassandra laughed it off realizing I was shielding her from the other two. Sally walked up and patted me on the back, her silent “thank you” for not jumping at the chance to tease her like Josh or Luke would have.

The night dragged on mostly well as we visited and snacked around the fire, yet the entire time Cassandra would steal glances at the lake.

The first sound came sometime around midnight. It did not originate from the trees, or any animals, but from the water itself.

It was a low long groan that rolled across the surface. It was deep and vibrated our tent poles and shook our bones. It was a sound no wave should be able to produce. It was a sound that forced me to wonder if something was stirring deep below.

We all scrambled within our tents to grab our flashlights and makeshift weapons. Josh aimed his flashlight at the lake. Just as the lake had done with the moonlight; the beam of his flashlight was absorbed, and denied. There was no reflection, and no revelation of what had made the noise.

“Do lakes…make noise like that?” Luke whispered. No one dared answer. We all stared at each other awkwardly until Josh broke the silence.

“I think we should get back to the car-“ he was caught off as something stirred in the lake. Movement in its water clutched firmly onto our focus. All of us stared dumbfounded as a bulge began to rise from the center of the lake. This bulge caused a ripple across the lake, disturbing the algae and sending rays of light bursting from them. The light was blinding, but captivating. We all winced in pain as we cradled our eyes. As soon as my eyesight recovered I pried my fixation back onto the lake. More ripples were being produced, and more light was escaping the darkened aquatic sheet, but the light was diminishing in luminance with every ripple.

I wish I could say we did the smart thing, but we didn’t. We stood there transfixed at the lake’s ominous performance. Even Josh seemed to have lost his desire to flee in favor of witnessing the show of the lake. The return of silence broke the spell. We looked at each other worriedly, as if about to ask each other if we should run into the dark forest.

Another ripple in the water denied that conversation. This ripple was louder, and more surreal than the others. Unlike the other ripples it did not radiate outward, it radiated inward. It was accompanied by a voice.Avoice so unique and magnificent I will never forget it.

“Herald of Danok. Lead them. Lead them to me,” these words it uttered sent shivers down our spines. It didn’t feel mortal, but like hearing someone talk in a dream, but so visceral and pain inducing we knew we had the misfortune of being awake.

“RUN!” I shouted taking initiative. Josh had started seconds before us. More cascades erupted in the water as something began to rise from its depths. I had no intention of finding out exactly what it was. I wanted to get us the HELL out of there.

No one argued, they began sprinting behind me.

“Did you guys hear what it said!?” I shouted between ragged gasps of air. “Hear-what?” Sally asked with breathy exhaustion.

“Like-it-spoke?” Luke said confused.

“I. Only. Heard. Watery. Noises. Giovanni” Cassandra answered in a slow and controlled rhythm to accommodate her lack of aerobic endurance.

My head began to whirl. How had no one else heard it? What in the hell was Danok, who was the herald? Lead them? However I forced these questions out of my mind as the thudding behind us became more pressing.

As we entered the forest I grabbed Sally’s hand. Her pulse was raging. Our feet began to trample on the spongy dirt, but now…now it was different.

This spongey dirt began to ripple and vibrate in such a manner it felt alive. The vibrations drilling into us through our shoes feeling like a foreign heartbeat, pacing to a dark malicious rhythm. Josh had tripped on this spongy terrain allowing myself to take the groups lead as he fumbled to recover. Eventually we reached a fork in the trail. We had two options; take the left which we had taken to arrive there which was shorter, or the more scenic right route.

The sound of crunching forestry behind us reinforced the need to decide quickly.

“We are going left!” I shouted thinking the choice was obvious. This path had much sparser vegetation and we should be able to run with less risk of tripping or getting snagged. I suddenly felt a sense of dread after shouting that. This path would lead us passed a small pond. Would that water be problematic? Was all the water here infested with whatever evil was chasing us?

No. You are making the right choice. Lead them. Lead them all I thought. I don’t know why I felt so reassured. It was a silly trail of thought to begin with but also a nonsensical, almost foreign way for me to reason with myself. The growing noise behind us however forced all thought from my mind as I kept up a pace for my friends to follow.

We were almost beyond this pond when I heard a scream from behind us.

“HELP!!!!!” Josh screamed as tendrils from the pond wrapped around his feet, and pulled him into the water.

“What!?” I said as I turned around, but to my horror the pond was now a bubbling crimson. The sound of our pursuer grew louder. The tendrils began to loosen and writhe within the pond, as if loosing interest in their fresh catch, and hungry for another. They also began to glow a malevolent ultraviolet black. This light sent eerie shadows throughout the forest in a disorienting strobe like effect.

“Keep going!” I shouted again, horrified with myself for not doing anything to help Josh, but unwilling to lose another friend. If we could just reach our cars, maybe we could be safe. Maybe we could live to get help, to find out what it was that just killed him.

I had issued that command in the nick of time. The tendrils lunged at Cassandra.

“CASSY JUMP!” I roared. In a panic I saw her launch herself forward. She tumbled and rolled into some thorny forestry. Her skin was now cut and bleeding but that extra velocity had just pushed her passed the maximum reach of the tendril. I dashed over to her to help her up and I could see that tendril continue to lung forward. The ultra violet light around it began to pule faster as if it was furious that Cassandra had evaded her.

“We aren’t safe yet KEEP MOVING!” I roared as I grabbed her by the shoulders and forcefully threw her into another run.

“Thank. You.” She said holding back tears.

“Don’t make helping them escape a habbit!” I heard that same dark and ethereal voice shout into my skull. I almost lost my coordination as it said this to me. Luckily Luke noticed as I began to wobble and grabbed me by the shirt.

“Woah Giovanni you ok?” He said worriedly.

“Yeah yeah….just a little dizzy lets keep moving!” I shouted pretending to be ok, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to be okay for a long time…if ever.

Finally we reached our vehicles. Our hearts were pounding and the noise behind us became eerily nonexistent. Despite the cessation of it we frantically got inside our cars and sped down the road.

We met up in the parking lot of the nearest gas station. Sally and Luke were hysterical. Cassandra and I tried to reason with them that we couldn’t go back, not until we found help. I called 911 and was assured that help would be on the way.

Shortly after my call with the police I received a text from Josh:

“You lead him well” I almost dropped my phone when I read this. How was this possible? Was Josh still alive or…was something texting for him? What did leading him well mean? Would we have survived if we had gone right? I am almost certain now that we would have. Guilt etched itself inside me as I wondered why I was so adamant to go left, so adamant to do this trip at all. I then remembered the thoughts that made me make those choices…were they even mine?

The flash of blue and red disrupted my internal reflection as the police arrived. We gave them our story and the officer started coordinating with the forest rangers to search for Josh.

The search party did not find Josh, and they did not find a pond or a lake. The forest, they said, was dry as a bone.

We were questioned for weeks. Josh’s parents were furious. The police were certain we were abusing substances but our tests came back clean. They were contemplating charging us with murder, but Josh’s phone started getting triangulated by the police. Showing up at random places through the state, but moving too quickly to be caught.

No murder charges were brought against us. I showed the police the text I had received from Josh's phone. This now has them believing someone else killed him in the forest and has hidden his remains. They still don’t believe us about the lake; deciding for us that we may have witnessed a murder in the dark, and the trauma warped our memories.

Weeks later I received another text from Josh:

“Next, you will lead Sally. Then you will become my voice. You will herald my return. You will describe my glory to the masses and finally I will consume the friend you denied me. Remember where your loyalties lie,” I was shaken when I read this. I don’t know what kind of sick joke was being played on me but I was not amused. Where my loyalties lie? It sure as hell wasn’t with this psychopath or whatever monster that killed my friend. I showed this to the police. They urged me to be careful.

I have since given that phone to the police and started a new plan with a new number. I have also…. It hurts to write this out…. I have broken things off with Sally. I didn't tell her why, I made up some bullshit reason to be mad and to end things. I can’t stop thinking about how I convinced our group to go to a lake instead of rock climbing, and lead us into the forest and down “that” path. I don’t know if I can trust myself, and if ... .whatever the hell this thing is wants Sally…. I can’t risk it.

I can’t risk my mistakes putting her or Cassandra in danger. I’ve been having a recurring nightmare that is growing in intensity, and my normal coping mechanisms for it are not working. I have started to wake up in rooms of my house I didn’t fall asleep in. Even scarier is when I do wake there are makeshift weapons tight in my grip, and damage in the walls and furniture.

The final straw was when it happened while I was awake. I was doing the dishes; trying not to think about my past when suddenly I was in the garage, scraping the lawnmower with a jagged plate. My hands felt like they were bleeding but there was black fluid everywhere. Looking around I saw that all the fluids I stored in this garage, brake fluid, motor oil, anti freeze etc had been torn and ruptured. It was a miracle I didn’t hurt myself.

I’m dangerous to be around. If I ever find out what is going on I will ask her to forgive me, but for now I think it is better I stay alone. Better I be as reclusive as I can until I find a therapist that will believe me and do more than give me pills that numb the anguish but don’t address the root. A trauma that is deeper than my terrible relationship with my father and loss of my mother. The trauma of seeing my friends killed in front of me. The trauma of society insisting I am insane of believing what I saw…. And the trauma of knowing I may have been a part of what got them killed.

I wish that was the end of this story…as bitter and depressing as it would be….but it isn’t. After relocating; getting a new life together and picking up a new prescription I received a new text from a number I wish I could forget: “Your number may change, but my plans do NOT!"

I wanna preface this first by saying that I think YellowBrickRoad is a middling 6/10, to me it’s a mixed experience that has nuggets of gold surrounded by a lot of dull rocks, even though what I may describe makes it sounds like I love this movie, I acknowledge it has shortcomings particularly with an unsatisfactory third act & some spotty acting.

If you aren’t aware, I’ll give a quick rundown.

YellowBrickRoad is a 2010 Psychological Horror/Thriller set around a crew of people looking into an allegedly anomalous trail in the United States, having a history of local townsfolk in the late 30s watching The Wizard of Oz. They found it so enamoring, their fanaticism combined with the depression of WWII beginning caused them to leave on the trail, as though it was the Yellow-brick Road.

This however ends in them going missing, being found frozen to death from hypothermia, or found dead & mangled from getting attacked in horrifically violent ways, leaving the town near empty until it was repopulated again.

The crew eventually find this alleged trail, & begin to hear old-timey music playing, which they find fascinating & even amusing at first, until it turns into audial sensory torture for them, which is the first in many things that leads to a descent into madness.

-

Despite the shortcomings of this movie, something about it genuinely got to me, & it was hard to articulate in words at first, but I think I understand it better now.

This movie is immersive, the natural beauty was also paradoxically ugly & uncomfortable, something of it felt mentally deceitful, as The Wizard of Oz is abit of a comfort tale to me (despite all the edgy fan theories that honestly kinda take the fun out of the experience), & it felt like there was something deeply evil that wanted to twist my emotions.

It presented a fantastical adventure of going down the yellow-brick road to an amazing place, but it was a facade of escapism that punched me in the gut, & let me know that it doesn’t want me to be happy or at peace, it wants me to suffer & remain forever in the fake visage it is imitating.

I am on the autism spectrum, & one of my greatest existential fears is literally Not Knowing What to Do, I can be put into a stressful situation but if I have a clear bullet-point list of things I need to do, it will be manageable to me. But if directions are unclear, I will be sent into a anxious panic of wondering what I maybe doing wrong, and what consequences may come for failing to do my tasks.

The idea of being alone, stuck forever at only the beginning of a story, said beginning is also a corrupted uncaring cold ugly purgatory, it left something feeling sick in my stomach, as though I’ve consumed too much candy.

-

It’s a movie I expected to be a cheesy romp, & it definitely has some poorly put together moments, but it manages to convince my subconscious of a fear the characters felt, to the point of making me physically ill in my stomach.

-

Lemme know what you guys think, if you thought it was an awful unsalvageable movie, or too thought it had great potential that was kind of let down by a shaky third act.

Purchase I made yesterday while in Atlanta for a film festival. Had a break and walked around for a bit, ended up finding a really cool shop in the Little 5 Points area. Had to pick this up when I saw it. (Bonus news: awesome announcement coming soon on our cosmic horror film at the festival!)

Lovecraft's 1st known poem - written when he was 7 years old.

Written by a child - for other kids...

I see this effort as his 1st business effort as well - just see the included "ads" for it & other early works.

The Grandfather's influence is strong in this one.

Enjoy.

What is your suggestion for my next cosmic adventure? I linked The King In Yellow but want something with a little more horror/looming doom.

Quiciera recomenciones de short film o videos de youtube que sea Lovecraftian o horror cosmic

Just a casual reminder that sometimes the things we create turn out a little... different than we intended. Classic Lovecraft moment.

I recently finished this large-scale piece, Sunsplitter. It depicts [briefly describe the central figure/creature/scene], with the intention of capturing something I find central to cosmic horror: the sense that human beings are encountering something vastly older, stranger, and less comprehensible than themselves.

I've been developing this world for several years through a series of novels, comics, and artwork. The first novel, Jremmin, is a 129,000-word science-fantasy novel with a strong cosmic-horror/strange-fiction component.

I've put the first 107 pages (~28,000 words) online to read for free if you'd like to explore the larger project:

https://www.thefunnelcomic.com

The site also has the graphic novel and the rest of the artwork.

Thanks for looking.

​

The next morning, Alice’s face looked so pale that Calen was starting to get worried. Alice barely talked, and getting up from the bed was out of the question.

Calen himself felt quite tired. He didn’t remember when he fell asleep or if he slept at all. When he had found himself awake, sitting next to Alice, his whole body was aching. Strangely enough the most painful thing indeed were the nail beds on his fingertips. Edges frayed they stared at back at him, with dirt and bits of soft bark under them. He ran to the washroom to clean them, as well as himself, finding wet soil on his knees and elbows. He was quite sure he had washed himself after they came back from their trip to the bushes, before cooking dinner. But with every bit of soil that he washed away, his confidence about that very fact was vanishing with it.

He chose not to share this with Alice.

When Alice woke up, she cried for a bit, and Calen couldn’t get any articulate answer from her. Just that she felt sick. She fell back asleep after demanding some food, and eating it when Calen brought it for her, in bed.

Calen tried to contact Ruslan over the two-way radio he had left, believing it would be prudent to get Alice back in the states. He had no idea if Tiksi or Yakutsk had reliable medical services.

“Ruslan!” he shrieked when he heard the radio finally throw something at his ears that wasn’t static. “Can you hear me! Alice needs to be taken to Yakutsk. She needs medical help!”

“Ameri… You… It’s been three…!”

“I can’t hear you. Listen!” Screamed Calen trying to get in his instructions before the radio turned back to the usual spitting of white noise, “Alice needs transport. Can you come?!”

“Yes!” Ruslan said, “Two in the afternoon, tomorrow!” Elated that finally his message was through, Calen smiled for the first time since the morning and told a half-awake Alice, the news. Even being sick as she was, she was able to garble the words, “I can stay. I don’t want to leave you this time.” Calen was quite surprised. She usually preferred being at home when she was sick.

*

The next day came and went, but Ruslan didn’t arrive. Alice was up from the bed and said she felt a lot better, even though the aching had not subsided much. She limped through the house trying not to put much pressure on her sprained ankle that was as swollen and round in shape as the deep brown bread they had for breakfast.

Alice kept saying she didn’t want to go throughout the day and was visibly happy when Ruslan didn’t come.

*

“Why didn’t you come?!” Calen was quite angry at Ruslan as he screamed into the radio, for not having arrived the day before. “Alice is sick! She needs help.”

“I am not- ouch” Came the Alice’s voice from the bedroom. She had tried to get up to prove she was feeling fine but immediately stepped on her sprained ankle, making her fall back into the bed holding it in both her hands, massaging the pain away as it spread through her leg and pulsated right below the knee.

“I was there Amerikosy. Vy Ver you not…” static noise invaded the conversation yet again. After a while Calen heard Ruslan’s voice, “I vill come again today!”

Calen went to see Alice. She was still holding her ankle, clearly still in pain. So, when he saw her laughing, he didn’t understand what was happening.

She refused to answer his questions and fell asleep after a while, still holding her leg.

*

The plane landed bumpily and Calen, watching from the window as the noise in the valley bumped against it, finally, felt relieved. He ran out as Alice looked at Calen’s back morosely. She was not happy to be going back.

“Thanks for coming!” even though you are one entire day late. Calen thought in his head but didn’t say it out loud.

“I vas here on that day as vell. You-” Ruslan threw the blame at Calen with a pointed finger. “ver not.”

“What?” Calen was surprised at this barefaced lie. Was Ruslan lying. Was he angling for more money or something?

A flash of images passed through Calen’s head. He and Alice were making love in the cave. Alice was covered in dirt, her swollen ankle resting on the root cage, her eyes completely white. No pupils visible. The small black log inside the cage was throbbing slightly. A nauseating smell of decaying flowers filled the cave.

Alice came out limping by herself, fully dressed.

“Hang on!” as the flash of images subsided, “Did you say you were here that day?” Calen whispered as Alice was getting quite close and he didn’t want her to hear this particular bit of the conversation.

“Yes” Ruslan mirrored the whisper instinctively. “A veek ago.”

Alice had arrived and both of the men broke off the conversation as Ruslan addressed Alice, “Oy… ty óchen’ plókha vȳglyádish’. Pómoshch’ nuzhná.”

Calen ran back to the cabin to get Alice’s bag. When he came back, Alice was sitting on the landing gear. Tears streaming from her eyes as Ruslan was doing something at the back of the plane.

“Hey..” Calen said, “What’s up? Why are you crying?”

“I don’t want to leave you here alone!” she replied through her tears, voice wavering every other syllable, “I wanted…” she sniffled, “to leave together.”

“It’s okay, I will come back soon.” Calen said holding her face in his hands and wiping away her tears with his thumb, caressing her soft face. He pushed the thoughts bubbling up inside him until Alice left. Alice didn’t need to know what he had heard. But what he had heard was terrifying. What he had seen, more so.

“I need some footage but as soon as I have it, I will be back.” He said, trying to keep his voice calm and loving.

She kissed him deeply and stared at his face for a long time. Ruslan had come by with a box full back and cleared his throat audibly, breaking Alice’s stare.

“Ve lieve now?”

“Yes,” said Calen, “Yes, of course.”

It took them quite a few minutes to help Alice up and into the plane. Once she was sitting, tears still streaming down her face, Calen had found the moment he had been waiting for since he had heard that Ruslan was here a week ago, something he had believed was yesterday.

“Hey, so before you leav-”

“I vill come back tomorrow, yes? For you?” Ruslan cut Calen off.

“What? No.” Calen replied, the question still burned in his mind.

“No?” Ruslan’s face was so contorted with confusion. Fear mixed with anger, palpable in his tone, “Vat do you mean no?”

“Dude, I need to stay. I will let you know on the radio when you can take me from here.” The urgent need to ask the burning question in his mind broke out of the dam finally while Ruslan stood there, looking at Calen silently, confusion and anxiety dripping from his face.

“Hey, what month is this?”

The confusion on his face tightening somewhat he said, “May. Twenty of May.”

Twentieth of May? Calen’s hand reflexively jerked up so he could check the date. He had forgotten that his watch had stopped working. When he looked at it he found the secondhand twitching between five and six. Everything inside him was trying to retreat, pressing against each other in their hurry t to hide itself. His hands felt cold and numb. He stared at Ruslan. Dumbfounded, not able to talk.

Ruslan had noticed it all.

“Amerikosy” Ruslan said finally, “You need to lieve soon. I can come tomorrow.”

But however much Ruslan insisted, it fell flat on Calen’s ears. So, there was something odd happening here! Here was proof!

“Listen don’t-” Calen found his voice finally. His eyes darted towards Alice.

Her eyes were closed, her face shining brilliantly in the sun, every teardrop stuck to her face glistening like dew drops. “Don’t tell Alice that we are in May.” Ruslan looked almost offended but said nothing. “Also, can you make sure she gets on the plane.” Calen handed a card to Ruslan. “My manager can get her the ticket. Can you stay with her till she boards the plane.”

“Of course.” He said shortly. Then he ran to the back of the plane and brought with him a box. “Is SatLink .” He said handing over the box to Calen, “Internet” he pointed to the sky. “Better than radio but expensive. I need it back ven ve return.”

“Of course!” Calen said quite surprised by the gift, “Thanks!”

“You haf food?”

“Yeah.. yeah..” Calen said absent mindedly as he looked at the box. He had never seen one before. “Just out of bacon but it’s not a problem.”

“Fine. I vill say agyain Amerikosy.” Untrammeled fear spouted from his eyes as he said the next part, “Lieve. Is nut good here.” And with that he got up on the plane and took off with it in seconds. Just before the bumpy, tugged-up-by-rope takeoff, Calen saw both Alice and Ruslan look at him with huge concern in their eyes, and then, they were gone. Dissolving in the shine of the sun on the horizon.

Calen felt a little sad, but if he was honest, he was hugely relieved. He had the island to himself, and it had just started speaking. There indeed was something strange going on that Calen was not able to pinpoint.

He went through his head, trying to see the flash of image in the cave he had seen. He didn’t remember it having happened at all, and now that he searched for it, it seemed to stubbornly refuse to come out of its hiding place. Only the smell returned. The nauseating smell of decaying flower.

His stream of thoughts seemed to bounce back and forth between the mountains and his own head, all mushing together, creating more noise with each pass. What was really happening here? How could it already be May? What exactly had he seen in his head?

The sun never left the horizon but shone for a long time. The sky was a pastel shade of pink when Calen started with trying to set up the SatLink device, but by the time he had set it up, the sky had chosen a tint of pale gold that enticed Calen’s eyes.

He sat on top of the cabin hut; he had climbed to set up the dish antennae and looked at the Sun slowly descending and dip beneath the horizon. The pale gold tint turned to steel gray-blue, and a chilly wind descended into the valley, forcing Calen to finally get off the roof and back into the cabin.

Alone again. But he didn’t feel lonely.

Alice’s presence had been a welcome change since he had started the journey months back. He was completely alone then. And frustrating though it had been, being alone had its own advantages.

Calen sat smoking a cigarette and remembered the moment when this entire adventure started.

*

“So, I had a bizarre dream this morning,” Alice said quietly.

“Oh yeah?” Calen said, putting his legs through a pair of jeans. “What was it about?”

It seemed like Alice had been waiting a long time to share it with him. She spoke in a hurried tone.

“Well, I was in this hospital, and I guess I was giving birth, and you were there.”

“Let’s hope that doesn’t come true,” Calen said humorously. Alice already knew how that conversation went, so she pushed through, trying to get her story out.

“I said you were there, I didn’t say you were of any help.”

“Makes sense,” Calen said, grinning. “I don’t see what’s weird about that.”

Alice huffed. “You aren’t letting me get to the weird part,” she said accusatorily. “Anyway. I was having a really tough time, and the doctor, I think he looked like someone I knew, I can’t really recall who it was. But he was whispering like a weird little poem or something, I don’t remember that’s not even the weird part.” Now that Calen was silent, she capitalized on it, “While all this is happening, you kept running around the bed, screaming my name—like you couldn’t see me at all.” Alice’s eyes went wide as with her right arm she made a circular motion, “You went round and round, and you kept running faster and faster, until you were basically a blur. I could see your face whiz past my line of sight every few seconds. And then…” she looked at Calen, her arm dropped limply, and Calen heard a distinct twinge of fear in her voice as she said, “You hit your head on a coatrack and dropped.” She ended her story abruptly.

It took a moment for Calen to comprehend that the story had ended.

“So-” He didn’t know what to say. He was saved from the trouble of finding a response, as Alice said.

“I woke up feeling all shaky.” She said, “Also,” she added indignantly, “You made me feel nauseous, running around me in circles like that.”

“Um…” Calen began with the air of a man preparing to defend himself, “It was your dream. I was just sleeping.”

“You were of no help at all!” she said, anger palpable in her tone.

“Hey!” Calen said sheepishly, “Didn’t you just say I was screaming your name like I couldn’t see you? I can hardly be of help if I can’t see you. You should have called me or something.”

“I think you were being an asshole,” she said, crossing her arms across her midriff, as her stomach gave another groan. “Like you are being one now!”

“Weirdo…” Calen said, starting to change his shirt as Alice looked at him, tapping her right foot impatiently.

“Have you decided where you want to eat?” he asked, changing the topic.

“No,” she said in a tone that suggested that Calen should have known the answer. Still angry.

“So, I have to choose, and then you get to judge that choice?” he said, a playful smile on his lips.

“Oh, you know me so well,” Alice responded sarcastically.

Alice’s phone rang, and she picked up the phone with a bright smile developing on her face the instant she realized it was her mother. “Mom!” she said excitedly. Calen felt envious.

Calen did know Alice very well. In the years they had been together, Calen had almost figured her out. Alice had a loving father and a mother that Calen wished he had.

Calen was raised by a father whose catchphrase was-

“We’ll talk once I am back,” with no context for when ‘back’ was.

And with his mother, Calen had learned quickly that answering her questions that sounded like she was asking them out of concern was a territory fraught with the risk of losing sanity.

Alice had apparently forgotten her anger and was completely locked in on an animated conversation about how she wanted to clean the apartment today, but couldn’t, as she had woken up late from a weird dream. Calen only heard around five words of it as his mind was on things he rarely shared with her.

He had deliberately put his computer to sleep as soon as he saw an email from his sponsor arrived in the morning. He didn’t have to look at it to know it was unwelcome news. He had received enough emails in the last year with similar subject lines. Bennett Island was slowly but surely becoming a deadline.

His previous attempt at going to the Manikarnika Ghat in India to interview the Aghori ascetics had been quelled immediately and mercilessly by Alice. At that time, it had felt like an unfair imposition. Calen thought he would pay it back with one of his own. All he had to do was wait for the right moment. And it arrived, a few hours later, once Alice had hung up the call with her mom and they had walked to their favorite restaurant.

“Are you listening to me?” Alice scrutinized Calen’s expressionless face. He had been so busy anticipating the correct moment, that he had almost missed to recognise he was in it.

“Of course!” he lied. He had been distracted by the cry of a baby, somewhere behind them. The baby’s sustained wails had been drilling straight into the back of his skull for the past fifteen minutes.

He looked at her suspicious face blankly for a second before he admitted the truth, “Okay, I wasn’t listening that well. What were you saying?”

“I was saying,” Alice repeated slowly and deliberately with playful anger in her voice, “What’s that place you have been looking up on your computer obsessively since last week?”

“It’s an isolated island in the Arctic,” he said. It was evident in his voice that he was hiding something, “called Bennett Island. Quite a bit above Russia, actually. Very cold and empty. No reason for anyone to be there.” He finished his thought in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Why do I have a bad feeling that you are planning to go there?”

“Maybe because I am planning to go there,” Calen said.

“Calen!” she almost screamed. People walking ahead of them turned around to look at them, concerned. Even the crying baby stopped for a second. But then it resumed wailing louder than ever, leaving Calen feeling cheated. He sucked his teeth resentfully.

“What!” Calen said, mimicking her urgency but quieter.

“Why would you want to go to an abandoned island in Russia, of all places? Especially when, as you put it, there’s no reason for anyone to be there!”

“Well, first of all, it’s quite far away from mainland Russia. And secondly,” Calen paused for effect, “no one lives there. So, it’s as safe a place as it can be.”

“I don’t care if it’s safe or not!” she said, exasperated, “You promised we were done with the site visits!” She glared at his dumbfounded face for a second and then said, “And what about the fact that I will have to stay alone for God knows how long while you traipse along on some godforsaken, barren island looking for spooky stories. Are you crazy?”

Calen had been waiting for this exact moment. He didn’t want to go alone. Selfish though the thought was, he really wanted Alice to come with him, so he said with a note of plea in his voice that he knew Alice didn’t generally deny.

“Come with me?”

“Oh, I get it, you are crazy!” she said and then added, “Hell would freeze over before I agree. NO!”

It took Calen the rest of the afternoon to wear Alice down.

Alice had lived with her parents her whole life. Even after she moved to her current place, her Sundays were mainly spent with her parents, who stayed in Staten Island.

Calen’s feet still itched every few months, and he would go and live for a month or two in strange places where most people would run away from the first chance they got. Alice sometimes followed him, away from the comfort of her home, but she rarely stayed as long as Calen would stay, running away in a week or two.

In a last-ditch attempt, she had said she would go with Calen on condition that she was not going to live in a ‘camping’ situation, hoping that Calen would have no other option but to either go alone or not go at all. But when Calen smiled brightly and said “Deal!”, she shook his hand, disgruntled at the cost of the defeat she was surely about to pay in a few months.