Gary missed the imaginary friends he used to have as a child in stately old Victorian home, with whom he would spend the nights making up scary stories and whispering beneath the plush blankets until the morning rustling of his parents banished his friends to silence.

When he later learned the police pulled no fewer than a dozen bodies from the crawlspaces in between the walls of the old house, Gary wept with unfathomable grief, partly out of guilt for his complicity in the crimes, however unwittingly, and partly because even now, he missed the voices still.

When I opened my eyes I saw that a knife was poised over my throat, held in a hand; my Hand, but I had utterly no control over it, since it floated unattached in the air. As I opened my mouth to scream, I realized that my Voice was not with me, but in the corner of the room and I heard it say, "Farewell!" as I watched it walk out the door.

The large albino wolf pounced on me quickly, his large maw opened wide, his sharp carnassial teeth ripped through my chest like a hot knife to butter. I stared in deathly horror watching him chew my heart before he changed into a man and said, "Now, you will roam the land in search of prey."

Voice a monotone whisper she says, I was hugging Hannah close, rocking, murmuring, crooning, crying hard right along with her..seemed like hours. Staring at endless nothing, she continues, When she finally stopped, I was so happy she had finally fallen asleep...so happy.

It was a dark, cold evening and the barest sliver of moonlit filled my room as I opened my eyes to find, poised precariously close and above me, a creature whose large fangs took overwhelming prominence in his hollowed, chiseled face. As he stared at me with eyes the color of black coal, I knew he had come to claim me as his own, and life as I knew it would change forevermore as I began to forge a path of despair and evil with this creature from the darkness.