Hi, I'm Kristen.

And I'm her little brother, William.

We're from the podcast Guide to the Unknown,

where we only talk about scary stuff and have a good time doing it.

Come join the scary fun, everyone.

Wherever you get your podcast, you'll find Guide to the Unknown.

Down here.

Those were the words my friend whispered to me that night,

and though a year has passed, they fester in my mind, shapeless and meandering

like a blinding fog.

When I entered his house, the lights at the front were off.

Outside, the weather was still, the air thick and muggy, as if

waiting for a breath. It seemed as though the summer had been building towards that evening, stifled, sweat-drenched, sleepless nights one after the other, we just needed a little

rain to clear the air.

Forecasts warned us that we were in for a lot worse than that, but they had been wrong so often that many in our little

suburb did not listen.

I was one of them.

I had received a phone call from Alya an hour earlier.

It had been a while since we had spoken, a couple of years, in fact.

When I answered the call, there was a momentary silence before she spoke.

Her words trembled with nervousness.

I put this down to anxiety.

...