“It’ll get you too, you know. I can already smell it on you. You’ll slide down with us all.” With that, she ran her tongue up my face and crawled away out of sight. A moment later, Tommy had pushed me back down on the floor and they were gone.

When the police arrived, I just told them I had found a young couple in the house naked and that they had been acting strangely. That they had run off before the cops got there, and I didn’t know where they went. All of that was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. I kept parts of it to myself for the same reason I didn’t tell Jack more when he started questioning me a couple of days ago about if I’d seen anything strange.

I didn’t know who to trust, including myself. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m pretty sure I’m really locked in this trunk and that I found what was left of poor Jenny’s body tonight, I’d lay even odds that I’m just going crazy. And maybe I am, but if I am, I think the world is coming along with me.

Either way, I…

Wait. I just heard something. The latch just popped. Someone opened the trunk.

****

I’ve listened to my recordings again to transcribe them, and what I’m writing now is the beginning of my account of what followed my time in the trunk. As with all of this, it is not perfect, but it is my best effort in remembering and telling so many impossible, but true, things. And we’ll start with something very true and very impossible: What I saw when I opened the trunk.

There were four small creatures, two of them raised up on their hind feet, waiting for me on the asphalt of the dark street. In the glow of the overhead moon, I could make out their silhouettes and some finer detail, but what I saw made little sense. They looked like large rats but…different. Fake, somehow. I shined the dim light of my phone’s screen toward them and let out a small gasp. They were all wearing some kind of armor or clothing to look like rats. Ornate and glittering, it would have been amazing if it weren’t so horrifying.

Worse was what lay beneath the armor. Pulsating hairless skin of pink shot through with a deep black that glistened in the meager light. And then there was the one without its helmet. Its head was bare, revealing a smooth oval lump punctuated with twin sets of black eyes on each side and a narrow nose that flared out into a mouth not unlike pictures I’ve seen of lampreys. I was trying to hold my terror in check long enough to find the best way to clear the trunk and the monsters—hopefully without them touching me with their jeweled claws or the fleshy tendrils that likely lay underneath—when the one with the bare head spoke, gnashing that terrible mouth together to somehow produce a soft but intelligent voice.