Disclaimer: The following is ponderous, fucking ponderous. The author of this post is doing too much!
I recently chanced upon an eleven-hour Eric The Medically Proportionate Actor playlist and listened to it over the course of a few days. That incorrigible, concupiscent, libidinal, coquettish, credulous, conspiratorial, churlish, dissatisfied little angel was truly one of a kind, and for better or for worse, there will never be another ETM.
Can I tell you my favorite Eric story real quick? I was once driving to Oakland from Los Angeles. It’s about a 5-hour drive - but, it can be up to noine with traffic. I had an Eric playlist going, and about four hours into it, where the turn-off for Sacramento is, Eric’s obituary episode came on. I was driving past this sprawling, preplanned, northern California, cookie-cutter community, the kind I always imagined Eric and Sweet Jon lived in. I’m driving past that and listening to Yawn Yawson talk about his dead friend and his lugubrious final days and, no lie Robin, I had to pull over to the side of the road I was crying so hard.
This ain’t The Astrophysical Journal, pal, but, in a shense, in “The Stern Universe”, Howard is the sun — everything revolves around him. Benjy is a black hole, Fred is the cold vacuum of space, and Robin is Uranus, but ETM was a planet, too. And as a planet, he had many satellites in his orbit.
Part of what Made (emphasis on the past participle) the Stern Show so great was that it was a collection of misfits and serious freaks that came together organically to create something original and beautiful and Eric, not for nothin’, was the most beautiful freak of them all.
On GP one in pink, you’ll find my assorted thoughts on aforementioned satellites.
TL;DR - My opinion on some of Eric The Actor’s friends, foes, foils, and fellators.
Shuli Egar (Friend): As insufferable as Shuli can be, his Wack Pack Contributions are huuuuuuuuge. Plus, he got Eric’s goodie bag back at the block party in San Diego - Eric definitely appreciated that. 6.5/10
Ralph Cirella (Foe): Shut up, berry-faced idiot. 3.5/10
Howard Stern (Foil): Despite what you see today, astute fans may remember that Howital was once the greatest radio performer of all time. When I was sixteen, I heard Lesbian Dial-a-Date and I knew this man revolutionalized radio. Howard played with Eric like LeBron James plays with a basketball. 10/10
Arthur Lange (Foil): Can I tell you a quick story? My dad (not a Stern fan) played on an amateur softball team with Artie in NYC in the 90s. He says Artie was the nicest, funniest guy he ever met. Even though he canceled his show and was costin' Sequoia money, his interactions with Eric are the stuff of legend. Thanks for calling, Eric. Aaaaand, next caller. 10/10
Johnny Fratto (Friend): Boy, oh boy. This is a hard one. Johnny has been pissing me off lately. He really was one of the most annoying callers: that grating accent; long, boring stories about his gay kids (I’m sorry I called your kids gay); constant interrupting with shameless, creepy plugs. But, he also facilitated many of Eric’s greatest performances. 5/10
Kendra (Fellator): I've been thinking about, and... she’s like, the meanest girl in the world. 0/10
Gary Dell’abitio (Foil): Gary’s (and Eric's) greatest weakness is that he has zero ability to recognize when he’s being messed with. They played off each other perfectly because they both truly believed it was all real. 10/10
Fred Norris (Foe): If you press that button… one more time. (10/10)
Vince From LA (Foe): Maybe the worst caller in the history of the show (close race between him and Pittsburg Pete), but wow could he get under Eric’s skin. Probably a bodybuilder on steroids. 4/10
Gonzo Shitcock - not to be confused with “Gonzo Stern” on Facebook (Foil): Too self-aware to ever truly be entertaining, still pretty funny. 6/10
We want to hear from you! Did I miss anyone, what other space junk was floating around Eric?
Bye for now.

Today Cherokee Nation remembrance day - remembering all those murdered by the Americans, and those who survived the Trail of Tears
https://i.redd.it/w2b2uti64rpa1.jpg
Navajo Tech 1st among tribal universities to offer PhD
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2023/03/24/navajo-tech-1st-among-tribal-universities-to-offer-phd.html
A university on the largest Native American reservation in the U.S. launched its accredited doctoral program, becoming the first among more than 30 accredited tribal colleges and universities across the country to offer such a high level degree.
The program at Navajo Technical University will be dedicated to sustaining Diné culture and language. Diné is the Navajo word meaning “the people” and is commonly what tribal members call themselves.
A celebration is planned on the Crownpoint campus in western New Mexico in April, and the school already started accepting applications for the fall semester.
The offering marks a milestone for the university, which already has more than 30 degree and certificate programs spanning science, technology, engineering, business and liberal arts, Navajo Tech President Elmer Guy said.
Guy told The Associated Press on Friday that he believes the program in which students will receive a Ph.D. in Diné Culture and Language Sustainability will have a profound impact on the future of the tribe’s language and culture. He said he’s excited to see how students shape their dissertations.
The idea was to create a program that would lead to employment opportunities and effect change for Navajo communities on the reservation that stretches into New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.
“I thought it would be important to make that connection,” Guy said, explaining that it’s a step beyond the call by tribal leaders for their people to learn the language and stay engaged with their culture. “Individuals will get a degree and they’ll be professionals. You have to make it applicable. By making it more meaningful, people will have an interest in it.“
The effort is paying off. About 20 students have applied so far and will be vying for five coveted spots in the inaugural class, said Wafa Hozien, an administrator who helped with the program’s creation.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT A collaboration with other academic institutions and community partners, the doctoral program was developed with the help of tribal elders, university professors and linguistic experts. Community-based research and internships will be part of the curriculum so students gain practical experience they can apply in the real world.
Guy said he’s hopeful this inspires other tribal colleges and universities to create their own programs.
Hozien said Navajo Tech’s program represents a paradigm shift in that learning through a Diné lens — with culture and language — creates leaders who can advocate for their people in the judicial system, education, land management, business, technology and health care, for example.
Guy said the work done by the university to train court reporters to document Navajo testimony and translators to help with reading ballots during election season already has addressed some of the pressing needs within communities.
The possibilities will be even greater as students earn doctoral degrees, he said.
“They will be part of solving problems,” Guy said. “These students have energy and creativity, and our job is to give them the tools.”
Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, author of ‘Moore’s Law’ that helped drive computer revolution, dies at 94

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/24/tech/gordon-moore-obituary/index.html

Principal fired after Florida students shown Michelangelo statue

A principal of a Florida school has been forced to resign after a parent complained that students were exposed to pornography.
The complaint arose from a Renaissance art lesson where students were shown Michelangelo's statue of David.
The iconic statue is one of the most famous in Western history.
But one parent complained the material was pornographic and two others said they wanted to know about the class before it was taught.
The lesson also included references to Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" painting and Botticelli's "Birth of Venus".
Principal Hope Carrasaquilla of Tallahassee Classical School said she resigned after she was given an ultimatum by the school board to resign or be fired.
Local media reported that Ms Carrasquilla did not know the reason she was asked to resign, but believed it was related to the complaints over the lesson.
They also said Ms Carrasquilla had been principal for less than one year.
On Thursday, Florida's governor moved to expand a law that banned public schools from teaching sexual education and gender identity.
Teachers who violate the law face being suspended or losing their teaching licences.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65071989

The Internet Archive has lost its first fight to scan and lend e-books like a library — A federal judge has ruled against the Internet Archive in a lawsuit brought by four book publishers

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/24/23655804/internet-archive-hatchette-publisher-ebook-library-lawsuit
Excerpt from the linked content¹ by Jay Peters and Sean Hollister:

A federal judge has ruled against the Internet Archive in Hatchette v. Internet Archive, a lawsuit brought against it by four book publishers, deciding that the website does not have the right to scan books and lend them out like a library.
The lawsuit came from the Internet Archive’s decision to launch the “National Emergency Library” early in the covid pandemic, which let people read from 1.4 million digitized books with no waitlist.
In his ruling, Judge Koetl considered whether the Internet Archive was operating under the principle of Fair Use, which previously protected a digital preservation project by Google Books and HathiTrust in 2014.
Fair Use considers whether using a copyrighted work is good for the public, how much it’ll impact the copyright holder, and whether the use has “transformed” a copyrighted thing into something new, among other things.
But Koetl wrote that any “alleged benefits” from the Internet Archive’s library “cannot outweigh the market harm to the publishers.”
Judge John G. Koeltl decided that the Internet Archive had done nothing more than create “derivative works,” and so would have needed authorization from the books’ copyright holders — the publishers — before lending them out through its National Emergency Library program.

¹ Jay Peters and Sean Hollister for The Verge/Vox Media, 24 Mar. 2023, https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/24/23655804/internet-archive-hatchette-publisher-ebook-library-lawsuit
https://www.reddit.com/technology/comments/1214mv6/the_internet_archive_has_lost_its_first_fight_to/jdkbxvo/

Parent demands removal of bible from school using republicans “pornographic” law

https://i.redd.it/m8y0wj4j5qpa1.jpg
https://www.reddit.com/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/120j6uparent_demands_removal_of_bible_from_school_using/
[MENTAL HEALTH]

1 in 8 People Worldwide Live with a Mental Health Disorder, But Stigma Prevents Help-Seeking

https://blog.mdpi.com/2023/03/14/help-seeking-behavio
https://www.reddit.com/psychology/comments/120i8rj/1_in_8_people_worldwide_live_with_a_mental_health/

[Giannis Antetokounmpo] I know not everyone who needs mental health care has access to it, which is why I’ve partnered with @AntidoteAI to bring FREE mental health care services to Milwaukee. To find out if you are eligible and to sign up visit http://antidotehealth.com/caff

https://www.reddit.com/MkeBucks/comments/120thg4/giannis_antetokounmpo_i_know_not_everyone_who/
https://www.reddit.com/milwaukee/comments/120thxz/giannis_antetokounmpo_i_know_not_everyone_who/

Hello voles forum. I am using a new account in fear of reparations. I won’t mention where I am writing this from, but I just have to let somebody else know what has been happening these past few weeks. First, a little backstory. I am what most people would pretty well much call a normal folk-type, I am originally from New Mexico, but have been living about an hour outside of Reno, Nevada for the past twelve years. Like many of you, I am close friends with Bunhein. About a month back, I invited Bun to go to a Shen Yun performance to which he readily accepted.
Fast forward to the night of the show, we arrive, take our seats, and the show starts. About fifteen minutes into the show I noticed that Bun was more fidgety than usual. I asked him what was wrong, but he just shhh’d me and I continued watching the show. Another twenty minutes went by when I noticed Bun sweating, his eyes darting back and forth, scanning for someone, or something. This time I pushed him harder for an answer as to what was wrong with him, that is when he showed me the gun he was holding tight. My eyes went wide and I nervously asked what in the Sam Hill he was doing in a hushed voice. He replied with certainty in his voice that something was watching him, and that he had to be prepared. I looked around, trying to look for whoever it was that Bun thought was watching him. I looked for a solid five minutes before I told Bun that nobody was watching us. His eyes widened even more than they already were, staring blankly into the distance. I could tell something was wrong with him, so I grabbed him by the arm and tried to reassure him that he was safe. He started yelling, screaming, shouting that Hard Leon was coming, I was confused and Bun started running for the door. I tried to stop him, but at this point the music had stopped playing and everyone was staring at us. Bun burst out of the auditorium as I followed him out the door. He looked both ways, running across the street and into a nearby alley. Once Bun stopped running I just stood staring at him, he looked back, the panic slowly subsiding from his face. I shouted at him, asking him what the hell he was doing, why he ran away, and why the hell he a gun on him. Bun looked somber, and I could tell immediately that something was wrong. He spoke after about thirty seconds of silence and said he was sorry, he told me there was nothing to worry about and that he would talk to me later. I grabbed him by the shoulder, trying to stop him from leaving, but he was strong enough to push me away. In the end I let him go though, I shouldn’t have let him leave, but I did.
The next day I got a message from Bun, he said he was sorry for the way he had acted the previous night, and even invited me to watch the super bowl with him. Unfortunately, I had already made prior engagements, so I let him know that I couldn’t make it. He seemed slightly upset, but got over it soon enough. I told him that I would try to make the drive down to him the day after the superbowl, to which he agreed. I let him know that I would text him when I was close so he could lock his pets up for me, as I have severe allergies.
Fast forward to the day we were supposed to meet, and I wake up to a text from Bun, he told me that he wasn’t sure if I should come after all, stating that he had a feeling that something was wrong. I sent him a message back, telling him to loosen up, and that nothing was wrong. I got in my truck and started driving to Bun’s trailer in Tonopah, about 3 hours away from where I live. When I was close to his home I texted him, letting him know that I was nearly there and that he should start locking up the animals. Now usually Bun would reply within three to five minutes, but as I was driving down the road to his house I checked my phone and realized he hadn’t replied. I thought it was strange, but considered that maybe his phone was dead or something, I park outside of his house and get out. I made my way to his front door, but when I went to knock I realized that his door was already slightly ajar. Taking a step back I decided against knocking and tried calling Bun. From the open window I heard what sounded like buzzing, I tried looking through the window, but the screen door blocked most of my view. I contemplated turning around, but in the end opened the door to his trailer.
The first thing I noticed, upon entering his trailer, was the distinct smell of marijuana, nothing too strange, I knew Bun was a frequent smoker, but this time the smell was overwhelming. I walked into the living room and saw what looked like a small pile of green leaves with a smoldering pile of weed sitting on his table, Bun’s phone was on the floor next to the table, I went to pick it up, but felt that if something had happened here, the last thing I would want is my fingerprints all over the place. I made my way into Bun’s kitchen, and found a bunch of hand scribbled notes stuck to the fridge with magnets. Carefully grabbing only the papers I tugged them off of the fridge door. I didn’t stop to read them, but put them in my pocket to read later. I exited his kitchen, but stopped when I looked across the living room and saw that his bathroom door was now open, I felt my heart skip a beat as I slowly inched my way towards the bathroom. I peaked my head inside, and my cheeks went flush when I saw Bun’s pets, at least what was left of them, strewn about the place, awash with blood. I nearly passed out as I looked upon the mangled bodies of his animals. I rushed out of his trailer and made for my car, tripping over Bun’s trash on the way out. As I pushed myself off the ground I felt my hand press against a bundled up A&W wrapper. It was mangled and bloody, but I could make out something written on it in marker- “Hard Leon- transformation possible”. I had no time to think at this point, I just got up off the ground and ran for the safety of my car. I noticed, from the corner of my eye, that the curtains to Bun’s kitchen were now wide open. I distinctly remember them being closed, but I was in such a rush that I didn’t care to think about it at the time. I just put the keys in the ignition and hauled ass down the road from Bun’s trailer.
Making my way into town I spotted Bun’s truck pulled into the parking lot of his favorite donut place. I sighed in relief realizing that Bun was alright, so I pulled into the spot next to him and turned off my car. As I made my way up to Bun’s truck, I realized that the door was open already, and a trail of blood was leading away from the truck. Worried, I followed what was presumably Bun’s blood to a hidden door behind and underneath the donut shop. Hell, I don’t even know if the owners of that shop knew about this place. Lucky for me, the door was unlocked and I made my way inside. It was dark so I had to use my lighter to make my way down a ladder inside. When I got to the bottom I was able to make my way without the lighter, thanks to dimly burning lights. Cans of open food were strewn about, and posters of football teams hung the walls. He had really made a home out of this bunker. As I made my way into the center of the room, the light illuminating the far wall, I gasped. My chest suddenly strained, I found myself unable to breathe. Leaning against the wall was what was left of Bun, his stomach had been sliced pretty badly and his arms were hanging limply as if he was trying to keep the wound together with his bare hands. I tried to check his pulse, but he was already gone. I fell to the ground, nearly vomiting at the sight. I gathered myself and reached for the small journal hanging at Bun’s side. I pretty well much ripped the thing off his belt as I noticed the drawings of a coyote, but it’s face was drawn as if the thing had been smashed in with a cinder block. This same picture was on most of the pages, as I began to read I felt my stomach lurch.
As I’m sure you’ve heard him mention, Bun was always bringing up a cryptid he’d called “Hard Leon”. I had always laughed it off thinking him to just be acting like his normal aloof self, but now I started to realize how serious Bun had been about it all. I flipped through the pages, landing on the last one, the date read February 13th, today. At the bottom of the page was a number with the name Gordon listed next to it. I went to reach for my cell phone, but I had stupidly left it in my car. I placed a blanket I found in the room over Bun’s body, as I made my way back up the ladder.
As I exited the door leading outside I felt that presence again, as if something was staring at me. I hurried my way to my car, but stopped in my tracks when I realized my window was broken. I opened my door and rummaged through my car trying to find my phone, but realized that whoever had broken my window must have taken it. I nearly started panicking, but was able to remain calm for the most part. Sweeping the broken glass off of the driver's seat, I got in my car and made my way to the nearest motel. It was a gimmicky place, a clown motel, but I didn’t have any other options, so I booked a night. I made my way into my room and immediately went to dial the number I had found in Bun’s journal. You might ask why I didn’t call the cops, but to be honest I don’t trust the police all that much, and coupled with the circumstances surrounding Bun’s death, I doubt they would have believed my story.
I began dialing the number in Bun’s journal and waited for an answer, but none came. I decided to try again, and luckily this time Gordon picked up. First there was silence, but a second later I heard, “Hey, this is Gordon D! Who’s this?”
I waited a moment before telling him I was Bun’s friend. Asking why I was calling him, I ended up explaining everything that had just happened. The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening, and after what felt like an eternity, I asked if he was there. “I’m still here,” he replied, but I could hear the tears forming in his throat. “Where are you?” Gordon asked, catching his breath again. I let him know which motel I was staying at, and he said he’d be there in a few hours before abruptly hanging up.
And so I waited. This had to be the most agonizing six hours and twenty seven minutes of my life. I sat in this damned clown motel, pretty well much having Krusty the clown stare me down, it was around 8 in the evening when I heard three short knocks on my door. I cautiously made my way to the door, staring out the peephole I saw a middle aged man, who I assumed was Gordon. Opening the door, I asked his name and he replied in a sarcastic manner, telling me I was a dumbass for even asking. This guy was a grade-A asshole, I don’t know how such a kind hearted soul like Bun would have even known this guy, but here we are. I tossed Gordon the notebook, and he took a good long look at the thing. Muttering to himself, as he read, he took a pause before he spoke to me.
“Bun- he got himself into deep s&*t. I don’t think he will be getting himself out of it this time. If you didn’t believe in Hard Leon before, you best be begging for his mercy now. To make a long story short, Hard Leon got Bun. Killed him, twisted him up, ripped him apart however you saw. Before this, I knew what Hard Leon was capable of. He could take the form of other things. One moment, I see a damn tangue vermin hangin’ about around the trailer, after Hard Leon’s had his way with the thing, tell you what, you’ll still see the same damn tangue vermin around, but not the same mentally. Pretty well much what I am trying to say is Hard Leon took the shape of whatever he killed. I never thought he would have it in him to go after humans, but I guess he decided to prove me wrong today. Now Bun never believed me when I told him my theory of Hard Leon being able to take the form of his victims. I guess he ought to have changed his mind by now. Hard Leon done and killed Bun, and is now trying to impersonate him.” I stared at Gordon for what felt like hours, but in reality could have been no more than twenty seconds.
The silence was broken by a swift punch to my stomach from Gordon, he started laughing and said, “Hey dumbass, you there, why you staring like a damn fool,” I replied, “Sorry, just trying to figure out what in the sam hill you are talking about.” Gordon replied sarcastically, “A little slow in the heard, are ya? Need me to spell it out for you? Hard Leon killed Bun,” he said slowly, emphasizing how dumb he thought I was.
I tried to punch him back, but he easily dodged, and hit me again, this time a lot harder. I fell to my ass, and yelled at him to stop hitting me. I stood up and asked, “So, what do we do now? Now that Bun’s gone, do you think Hard Leon will come after you and me next?” Gordon laughed saying, “I hope he comes for me, bastard will be sent to the grave in about half a second flat.” I muttered an alright and asked about what to do if he comes after me, Gordon replied, “You’re pretty well much f*$#%*d if that happens.” My heart fluttered and I tried to ask what he meant, but Gordon only continued speaking, “Listen, what happened to Bun, it’s a real shame, but it also presents us with an opportunity,” I tried to hide my look of skepticism as I spoke, “Opportunity? What do you mean?” Gordon looked me in the eyes, all sense of humor gone from his voice he said, “A chance for us, to kill Hard Leon.” My voice came out weakly, “Kill… Hard Leon? How are we supposed to do that?”
Gordon smirked this time and laughed, “Now, you aren’t gonna like the sound of this one. Since Hard Leon presumably took the shape of Bun, well, we are gonna have to kill whatever monster it is that he’s made out of Bun.” This is when the realization hit me. Gordon wanted to kill Bun a second time. As I stared in shock, he continued, “I never have seen Hard Leon take a human, like I said, but we’ve got to make this the last time Hard Leon has this kind of power. I don’t know what he wants out of taking the shape of Bun, but I think for now, we will have to let this one set, and see what plans Hard Leon has. When the time is right, we will know when to strike back.”
And so it went. Gordon set up base in the motel with me, and we waited for the storm to hit. The first thing we noticed was Bun’s internet presence. He pretty well much fell off the face of the Earth for about a week. The Voles forum noticed his absence, users were concerned, but we couldn’t let them know what happened. We sat there, as hopeless and lost as the rest of everyone on the forum until a week later, Bun, or whatever creature he had become had made his return online. It started with him liking a couple of tweets on his account, and eventually him posting to the forum, squashing the “rumors” of his death that had started in his absence. Dear god, if only the users had known what truly happened. Everyone rejoiced, everyone was happy to see Bun back online, everyone but Gordon and I.
Of course, Gordon and I still participated in the forum with “Bun”. We would talk to him, but we noticed he wasn’t the same as he used to be. He was cold and harsh toward Gordon, who used to be one of Bun’s closest friends, but now he seemed to have made an enemy of Gordon. Gordon tried to post hints to the truth onto the forum. He faked a news article and an obituary for Bun’s death, but of course, with Hard Leon in control of the account, those were readily denied. I’m not quite sure how Hard Leon did it, he seemed to have matched the past Bun perfectly, in voice, in tone, in the way that he interacted with the fans. But this was most certainly not the same Bun I ever knew. The Bun I knew was dead and rotting under a donut shop in Tonopah, and he would be disgusted by the way this creature was abusing his power, tricking all of his friends and fans, slowly luring them into his trap.
A few days ago, Gordon had managed his way into a conference call with Bun and some of the fans of the forum. I sat and watched from afar, as I listened to perhaps the most sickening event I had ever seen play out before me. All Gordon did was play an audio clip, one that he was sure would help to convince the fans that the Bun they were talking to wasn’t Bun at all. It started with Gordon speaking, letting the fans know that he was taking over the show for a moment. He was trying to rile Hard Leon up a bit, calling Bun the dumbest redneck out of Tonopah, and the like. It was playing with fire truly, but we knew that this was the best way to get Hard Leon to shine through and show people the truth. And that was it, Hard Leon came out that night in a way we had never seen before. “Bun” had flipped out at the truthful accusations Gordon threw at him, breaking the rules of his own forum and disappointing everyone in the room. I know what I heard that night, I know what I had been hearing for the past month. I know that what I knew of my friend Bun is no more, but now I just need everyone else to know. We need to avoid Hard Leon before it’s too late. I know, I’m still torn up about losing Bun, pretty well much just like the rest of you. But the truth is out there, and the fact of the matter is, the more we play into Hard Leon’s game, the faster he is going to take each and every one of us, leaving us dead and rotting the same way he did Bun. Hard Leon wants to take over the forum. He wants everyone’s soul in the forum. I don’t know why, but I know it is happening. So please, spread this message. It is what Bun would have wanted. What the REAL Bun would have wanted.

Chapter 1
Legal Disclaimer
Truth or lies will be the first part. Things I find interesting second for those who are interested. And My opinions/observations last. (Working on how to format this, and everything is temporary while I work through the book. I will add to it as I find more.)
Truth or Lies:
"Still, I don’t think I heard those stories until much later. Or maybe I heard them and they didn’t register. To me Balmoral was always simply Paradise."
•Harry loves Balmoral. Most of the Royals have expressed this sentiment, including Prince William about himself and Harry. I haven't found a similar direct quote from Harry, although he does mention enjoying himself their in the documentaries Diana: 7 Days, and Diana: Our Mother (47:40). I hunted up a few pictures out of curiosity.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
•Most of the royal family was there. For varying amounts of time in August, most of them leaving at the same time on the Royal yacht. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-queen-with-some-other-members-of-the-royal-family-on-news-photo/829941260?phrase=Peter%20Phillips%20
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/prince-philip-helps-his-grandaughter-princess-eugene-board-news-photo/829943388

 "Actually, we’d been with Mummy weeks earlier when she first met him, in St. Tropez." 

•St Tropez was the first time Dodi and Diana met. Dodi Fayed's obituary states they met at Polo match in 1986. I couldn't find any pictures, quotes or articles about this. I did find pictures of Dodi sitting three seats away from her and Prince William at a 1988 Polo match that was sponsored by his father whom she was seated next to and conversing with. Diana and Charles attended many Polo events sponsored by Harrods and the Al-Fayad's, often with William and Harry. Diana would socialize and entertain while Charles played Polo. Dodi often played for or accompanied his father at these matches. They ran in similar social circles, and found themselves at similar charity events. And Diana's Stepmother Raine Spencer, was on the board at Harrods. She became closer to her when she split from Prince Charles.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-dodi-fayed-1237096.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raine_Spencer,_Countess_Spencer
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/the-crown-diana-first-meet-dodi-mohamed-al-fayed/
https://youtu.be/FEgjudgEZE0
https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/polo-event-guards-club-sponsored-by-mohammed-1348334a
https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/search/al-fayed-polo
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/princess-diana-windsor-polo.html?sortBy=relevant
•Harry and Prince William had only just met Dodi Fayed? See the information above
•Harry vacationed with his mother in July, and drove Jet skis Multiple pictures of this. 1
2
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•Planned to stay for another, as they did every year. They did visit Balmoral every year. I didn't find any traditional length or specific dates. Just that it was every summer.
Multiple sources close to Diana stated she was returning to London on August 31, to meet with her boys when they returned that day to spend the final week together before school began. As well as press, and newspapers. (A few listed in the comments. Links won't let you into see the article itself unless you sign up so I screenshot them.)
In the Documentary Diana: 7 Days That Shook The World, Diana's personal chauffeur stated he was supposed to pick Diana up on August 31, 1997.
The boys returned to school on Sept. 10, 1997, but no word on whether that was when school let back in or, they began attending again. And no source lists the term dates in 1997. Upcoming term dates list the first week of September as starting dates. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1997/09/10/Young-princes-return-to-school/7865873864000/
•Been at Balmoral Castle one week. Here's where things get tricky. In Mid July Princess Diana took the boys on vacation to St. Tropez, which was cut short by the murder, and later funeral of Gianna Versace, causing Diana to return to London with them to make the funeral in Milan on the 22nd.
"There is evidence in comments that the Princess of Wales made to friends on her return that she enjoyed this holiday. She flew back to England with her sons on Sunday 20 July 1997" - Operation Paget Report
The family usually leaves for Balmoral in August:
+Aug 1, 1997 - Charles Playing Polo in London
+Aug 2, 1997 - Charles Playing Polo in London
+Aug 4, 1997 - The Queen Mother's birthday
+Aug 7, 1997 - Royals board the Yacht for Balmoral
+Aug 11, 1997 - C/W/H arrive at Port Askaigh, Islay Isle while royals continue on yacht.
+Aug 12, 1997 - C/W/H photographed on The River Dee on Balmoral Estate
https://youtu.be/2Ij8lGeKm_s (August 12, 1997 W, C, H at balmoral)
+Aug 16, 1997 - C/W/H photographed at the Falls of Muica on Balmoral Estate
(No mention anywhere I've found of C/H from the 16th to the 30th. No pictures, news articles, nothing.)
+Aug 30, 1997 - Last call with Diana, confirmed by William in the ITV special Diana: Our Mother and Her Legacy released in 2017.
So it seemed pretty straight forward. They did their first day Photo Shoots, and enjoyed their vacation. Until I stumbled on this picture.
It's listed in several places with various dates, including August 21, 1997. Although I didn't find anything from that time publicizing it.
So I tracked Diana to see if she was even in London:
-Diana's Schedule
+Aug 1-7, 1997 - "on Thursday 31 July 1997 they flew to Nice and holidayed together on the French and Italian Riviera aboard Mohamed Al Fayed’s yacht, the ‘Jonikal’. It was during this trip that the famous ‘kiss’ photograph was taken by the Italian photographer, Mario Brenna.... The Princess of Wales and Dodi Al Fayed returned to England on Wednesday 6 August 1997." - Operation Paget Report
+Aug. 8-10, 1997 - Landmine Charity trip to Bosnia 1
2
3
+Aug 13, 1997 - Diana and Dodi visit Derbyshire psychic Rita Rogers
+Aug 14-20, 1997 - Diana on a cruise in Greece with friend Rose Monckton.
+Aug 20, 1997 - Diana returns from vacation
+Aug. 21, 1997 - Diana Jogging from the gym.
+Aug. 21-30, 1997 - Diana vacations again on the Fayed's Yacht with Dodi.
+Aug. 30, 1997 - Diana lands in Paris with Dodi. Calls her son's. https://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Diana_Study.pdf (Warning PDF download. Paget Operation Report)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1997/09/03/dianas-boys/e373d4d4-4af7-4f9d-af06-235f585d61a3/ (I know it's the mirror but the events are verified, so it's a good timeline)
Harry says in the ITV Special 'Diana:Our Mother'(45:40) to the two men from Bosnia that "They had seen his mother more recently than he had." (She was in Bosnia August 8-10.) After sitting through several news reports, and documentaries I can't find anything about a lunch other than a couple tabloid articles from after 2015. It's not mentioned in any of the documentaries I saw or by William himself. Being that it was 10 days before her death I'd think it would've been everywhere.
I haven't found any other pictures of Prince William or Diana in those outfits. And again no mention of Harry, William or Charles in the last two weeks of August before Diana's death.
•Dodi gave Diana a diamond bracelet. " Bulgari bracelet On 31 August 1997, the Princess was wearing a Bulgari seed-pearl bracelet that was held at each end with diamond-encrusted dragons which were given to her by Dodi Fayed. It was last worn by the Princess on the day of her death and subsequently became one of the 14 personal effects recovered from the crash scene.[64] It is said that due to the impact of the collision the bracelet broke "scattered on the back seat and floor", what was recovered of the bracelet, in part, was "6 white pearls"." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewels_of_Diana,_Princess_of_Wales (Diana's Jewelry)
Interesting Tidbits (At least to me)

"The long-ago Queen, for instance. Mad with grief, she’d locked herself inside Balmoral Castle and vowed never to come out. And the very proper former prime minister: he’d called the place “surreal” and “utterly freaky.”" 

•The Queen was Queen Victoria following the death of her husband Prince Albert. And the Prime Minister was Tony Blair.
•What Other Royals Have Said About Balmoral. For Queen Victoria, Balmoral was “ my dear paradise in the Highlands.”
Princess Eugenie has called it “the most beautiful place in the world.” -Our Queen At Ninety
“I am never so happy,” King George V once said, “ as when I am fishing the pools of the Dee.”
"He chatted us up. chatted Mummy up. Specifically Mummy. Pointedly Mummy. His eyes plumping into red hearts. •He targeted Diana.
Dodi was a romantic, playboy who was rich-by-daddy. He was married and divorced once already. Had been photographed with a string of Hollywood starlets, though whether he dated them or not was unknown. He was also at the very least in a relationship with an American Model, Kelly Fisher(Ms. Fisher says engaged, and even filed a lawsuit claiming such. Mohammed Al-Fayed (Dodi's Father) claims they were not. (Although he's been embroiled in enough controversies, including the Diana Death Conspiracies which were investigated and ruled false, to make his word questionable at the least.) I don't think there's any way to truly know for sure if Dodi went after Diana, his father orchestrated their relationship or if it just happened.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodi_Fayed
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Al-Fayed
https://newsroom.ap.org/editorial-photos-videos/detail?itemid=79b153d4f20210ad69548676309c9c2b&mediatype=video
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/model-kelly-fisher-admits-to-having-292416
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a41792377/kelly-fisher-dodi-al-fayed-ex-girlfriend-facts/ (Copy of phone transcripts. Warning link is a PDF download.)
•Harry admits his memory is faulty. Are we distancing ourselves, Informing, or making excuses? Noteworthy.

•"We were having a grand time, just the three of us, staying at some old gent’s villa." 

This sounds a bit rude to me. A million dollar ghost writer, and 'we stayed at some old guys mansion' ends up in the book? Who's proofreading this? Not to mention entitled. If someone let you spend two weeks at their 30 bedroom villa, hang out on their yacht and ride their jet skis, you'd think you'd have the decency to at least have a fact checker google their name. Or simply 'we stayed at an older gentlemans villa, an acquaintance of my mothers.' Hostility, maybe?

•"There was much laughter, horseplay, the norm whenever Mummy and Willy and I were together, though even more so on that holiday." 

This could be important for later, so noting it.
•"The whole family, with the exception of Mummy, because Mummy was no longer part of the family."
It may just be me, but again one name for a person. No nicknames. And he continuously calls his mother 'Mummy'. In past interviews, and comments made pre-meghan he calls her 'mum' and only really refers to her as 'Mummy' occasionally when speaking to William. Like the ITV Diana:Our Mother documentary. He was young when she died(Almost 13), but not so young that he'd commonly be referring to her as mummy. I don't know if this is a normal thing for people who lose a parent as a child, a cultural thing that is normal in the UK, or an attempt at manipulation, but it's odd.
•. "Wherever Mummy was, I understood that she was with her new friend. That was the word everyone used. Not boyfriend, not lover. Friend."
Friend would be the right term when speaking to, or in front of a 12 year old boy about his Mom. Especially if you don't know the official status of the relationship.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Diana,_Princess_of_Wales
https://www.crackle.com/watch/2BAED314-7A7B-4DF5-A850-9B3AF794D2FB (Diana: 7 Days. Free but with ads)
https://vimeo.com/252549098 (Diana: Our Mother)

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Dr Daniel Vance was a smart man. Too smart for his own good, maybe. Forty years old, a lecturer in fluid dynamics with a mind made of shapes and numbers. No one knows why but one day, on a whim, he crunched the numbers on the apocalypse and came to a troubling conclusion. He didn’t share exactly what it was he’d deduced, but given that he immediately quit his job and liquidated his many assets, it’s fair to say it wasn’t positive. Swept up in the wake of this tremendous upheaval was his wife, a twenty-four year old PhD student who had grown infatuated with Daniel some time before. She loved the strange bear of a man who could just as easily build a log cabin as he could explain the idiosyncrasies of an asteroid’s orbit. Speaking to Daniel always left you with the profound impression he was right, so when he told her what he wanted to do, she agreed.
Fifteen years and five children later, the Vances were living in the distant woods just beyond my hometown. They were enigmatic, richer than the Pope, and extremely serious about their prepper lifestyle. But they were also funny, easygoing, and incredibly compelling to speak to. Larger than life survivalists who swept into town with bizarre requests that thrilled local businesses. Vast quantities of cement, iron, lead, and steel were all shipped through the remote mountains so that the Vances could build their shelter. The advanced methods they used to keep it secret were legendary. Daniel had once spent six months earning the licence necessary to drive HGVs up to his compound so that no one else would lay eyes on it. And on one occasion when a company had refused his request for GPS tracker-free vehicles, he bought them out wholesale so that they had no choice.
So when they stopped appearing in town during the pandemic, when requests for food and goods stopped and all contact was dropped, most attributed it to lockdown. They had a bunker and had spent their entire lives training to be self-sufficient in the face of civilisation’s collapse. Even Alexander, the youngest at just three, was already collecting firewood as a chore, and learning what local plants were edible. Most of us just assumed that if anyone could ride out Covid without breaking a sweat, it would be the Vances.
The reality turned out to be something else.
When the worst came to light, we discovered that Daniel had used the pandemic as an excuse for a dry-run. The family intended to spend six months in lockdown and essentially beta test their fallout bunker. Three months in and the Sheriff received a distress call on the radio. Coordinates were provided by the hushed voice of a sobbing child that most assume was Alexander, even though that’s never been proven.
The police arrived and found the bunker still sealed. It took hours for emergency responders to cut into the door, all the while efforts were made to contact the family within but to no avail. Once inside, police were left dumbfounded. There was no one to be rescued. No bodies. No survivors. There was evidence the door’s locking mechanism had failed and trapped the Vances inside with no way out, but if so where had they gone?
Beds and cots lay everywhere with mouldering yellow sheets, buckets close to hand with stains all around them. Some doors were barred, others smashed to pieces. There was even evidence of makeshift quarantines and, in places, what looked like violence. The police, usually a fantastic source of gossip, were not forthcoming until the town demanded answers and the Sheriff was forced to offer only the barest of outlines.
An outbreak of a waterborne illness had struck the Vances down not long after they were locked inside and unable to seek help. Rumours of contagion were overstated, fuelled by the unrelated rise of Covid. Whatever contaminant had killed the Vances, it was non-organic in nature. No need to panic. The Vances loved-ones had been notified. The bunker was going to be demolished, and we could all put this terrible tragedy behind us.
Of course we still had questions. A thousand of them. Why hadn’t the family called for help? They had radios, computers, smartphones too. They were survivalists, not Amish. And where were they? What had happened to their bodies? Why hadn’t they simply left? We shouted these and more at the town meeting but the police simply refused to comment. For most of us the excitement lasted another week or two until we realised we weren’t getting answers any time soon. Besides, the pandemic was in full swing and most of us had other things to worry about. The tragic story eventually faded until it was just one of those awful things in the town’s history that we didn’t talk about. I was as guilty as anyone else of just forgetting about it.
I certainly never expected to find the bunker out there in the woods, faded police tape still on the open door that hung wide open with scorch marks around the lock. It stood out in the woods like someone had cut a hole right in the fabric of reality, the darkness so deep and black it almost ached to look at. The sight of it made my heart drop into my stomach. It radiated pain. Does that make sense? I think some part of my lizard brain picked out details that wouldn’t become apparent to me until I got closer, like the bloody finger streaks that stained the handle from where someone had scrabbled furiously at the lock without success. And the tiny viewing window had been smashed with a hammer that still lay nearby. I needed only to glimpse it to imagine the family taking turns to stand there and scream into the woods desperate for rescue.
Under any other circumstances, I would have run.
But I’d gone there looking for my dog, and my light revealed a few wet paw prints making their way down the dusty concrete tunnel. Half Bernese and half collie, Ripley is the sort of dog who trembles in my arms when a storm buffets the windows and needs his paws held when we brush him. I love him. I do not have much of a family, or a wife, or even many friends. But I have Ripley, and I could no more have turned around and gone home to an empty apartment where I would have to sob my grief away than I could flap my arms and fly. He was my dog and I’d raised him since he was a puppy, and I wasn’t going to leave him out in those woods.
I went in after him.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Whatever the police had found, they’d not only kept most of the morbid details to themselves, they had also lied. The bunker was not demolished, or even sealed off. In fact, looking at the occasional blue latex glove tossed aside and the one or two broken police-issue flashlights, it seemed like the last people inside had been in a hurry to get out. Given this was where seven people had presumably died, I assumed it was someone’s job to clean it all up. But the corridor looked largely untouched. Just a few metres in and manic writing started to cover the walls, the desperate scrawls of a lone survivor left there to be rediscovered like cave paintings. Most were deliberations on how to get out. Diagrams. Blueprints. Equations and formulae. All focused on the door and the circuits responsible for its faulty lock. I instinctively assumed they belonged to Daniel and that he’d been the last to die. What a God awful fate for a man to outlive his children. And yet it got worse. Slowly the writing changed from equations and plans to a desperate scrawl. The same few phrases repeated over and over.
Five doors. Five. Not six. Six. Didn’t make it. Didn’t make it. Six doors. Six.
It seemed like the kind of thing you’d find in an asylum. A psychotic rambling punctuated only by six paragraphs right at the end. Each letter was impeccably neat, and each small paragraph was topped with a beautifully drawn Christian cross.
Elliott Vance aged fifteen. A gifted guitarist. He liked boys even though he thought I did not know. I loved him with everything I had. He would have made a great man.
Alicia Vance aged fourteen. She liked to paint and to shoot. She had her mother’s mean streak. It would have served her well in the future.
Elijah Vance aged eight. The smartest of us all…
These were Daniel’s memorials to his family, and seeing the words lit up by my torch was a haunting insight into the overwhelming despair he’d endured. He must have realised he wouldn’t get the chance to speak at his family’s funerals or to write their obituaries. This was his last desperate way of making sure the world might one day know them as he did - as real people.
The words marked the end of the tunnel, standing adjacent to a trapdoor in the ground. It was not open but the tunnel came to a dead end immediately afterwards and Ripley’s prints disappeared at the hatch. I feared he might be in danger, but still I stopped and looked at the bunker door twenty metres behind me. The once gloomy forest looked so bright, even on this cloudy day, the air dotted with rain. A part of me felt like I was leaving the whole world behind as I began to climb the ladder down.
I entered a large circular living space that was packed with furniture and little nooks and crannies. The walls were covered with folding beds and tables and every inch was multifunctional. A dining space could become a sitting space, which in turn might be where someone slept, or even exercised. It all depended on what particular bit of furniture you unfolded or unclipped or unfurled. Seven people in close quarters, nowhere near enough privacy, it made sense they went with this cluttered overlapping use of space. But it was still a large room, bigger than most studio apartments. And there were a few corridors that led deeper into the Earth telling me the bunker had unseen depths.
I looked for some sign of my dog and soon found his trail, but this far from the rainy copse Ripley’s prints were starting to fade. After barely a few metres they petered out vaguely in the direction of a nearby door. I wanted to follow but stopped myself from rushing onwards. It was unlikely Ripley was getting out any other way, and I’d do us no good getting hurt myself. I decided to take a look around and quickly spotted a dinner table.
If I needed proof the police had not bothered with a clean up, this was it. The plates were still out, the food rotten to a strange blackened husk. A child’s hat lay across one place-setting, the once-creamy fleece turned a sickly green and yellow. The chairs had their backs reinforced with wooden beams fitted with long grooves so that something the width of a nail could slide into them. And on each of the cushions were foul smelling stains that looked oddly like an ass print. I touched one with gloved hands and the material crackled audibly. Whatever it was, similar stains were on the cutlery and plates, and there were even handprints of it placed firmly on the tablecloth. At first I thought it was blood, but that wasn’t quite right. It was too contained to be from leaking blood. On the back of one of the chairs a stain tapered exactly where a woman’s waist would be like a near perfect silhouette. I shivered as I remembered that Miranda Vance had always been a slim woman and wondered how she had left her imprint on the grey fabric.
Using my torch, I saw that these stains repeated in the oddest of places. Yes, there were some on beds and blankets and even patches of plain floor exactly like you might expect in a room full of sick people. But why did one stain on the floor bear such a strong resemblance to a child huddled in the foetal position? And why was the same stuff all over the tv remote, and on books on shelves, and board games too. Everything from sofa cushions to DVD boxes to piles of dirty laundry were covered in the same dried brownish material that gave off a foul coppery miasma.
I found the jigsaw particularly baffling. Someone had set up another table with four chairs, all modified with the same back support as those by the dinner table. And a jigsaw had been lain out with four separate piles, but only one was depleted. The rest looked largely untouched, almost like someone had portioned out pieces for three other people who had absolutely no interest in going along with it. Maybe Daniel had tried to keep up morale while the family were sick? God help me, if that were true I couldn’t help but imagine the poor man sat there with his loved ones close to death, desperately trying to encourage them to click their own pieces into place while they faded in and out of consciousness.
Something about that room emanated madness, and the longer I stayed down there flicking the bright disk of light of my torch from one detail to another, the more I wanted to leave. One door had wooden beams nailed across it. One sofa had been partially disassembled. Multiple beds had been burned. And all the light bulbs had been removed and put in a box on the kitchen counter top. Looking up at the ceiling, I finally had some insight into why the police were so confident the Vances had not survived despite never finding their bodies. Someone had jammed a human finger into one of the empty sockets, almost like they’d expected it to glow with the flick of a switch.
What was it about this place that had caused the police to leave and never return? Not to even take that finger and test it for signs of illness, or even just to confirm who it belonged to?
I decided it was time to hurry up and find my dog. People had died in that place, and while I’m not superstitious, I can’t be the only sceptic who has done the calculations in his head and realised it costs nothing to be respectful of ghosts. That bunker was cramped, terrifying, and the air stank so bad I started to worry I’d get sick myself. It served no one any good to linger. But I’d be damned if I’d just walk away and leave Ripley to rot down there. It’s not like he could climb a ladder and get out on his own (even if I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten down there in the first place).
Summoning what little bravery I had left I called out and broke the silence, something which felt like a terrible taboo in that God awful place, like screaming in a graveyard.
“Ripley!”
I waited and hoped to hell I’d hear the pitter patter of his paws, but for the longest of moments there was only the kind of silence that makes you wonder if someone or something in the darkness is holding its breath trying to look like just another patch of nothing. Biding its time until you finally turn around and show it your back…
The TV came on with a blurt of white noise that was so loud and so sudden I cried, threw my arms up, and nearly fell backwards onto a rolled-out sleeping bag that looked like it had spent a week in the sewer. By the time I realised what had caused the noise, I could already hear a tinny rendition of Daniel Vance’s voice.
…I realise the issue here. I need to emphasise just how little I understand anything that’s…
I frowned at the screen as I approached. It showed a greenish infrared view of the bunker with Daniel upfront, and the dinner table behind him. It was grainy and hard to see, but I could clearly tell that his family were sitting in those chairs.
…Miranda was first to fall ill. Looking back it makes perfect sense. Miranda often went into storage to fetch food for cooking and we found it behind one of the refrigerators. So that’s–ah shit..
One of the figures in the background slumped onto the table with a loud clank and sent a plate spinning off onto the ground.
Shit shit shit, Daniel muttered as he got up and grabbed the woman by the shoulders and sat her upright. Miranda never did like my cooking! He snorted a laugh as he fussed with something at the back of the chair. The rods are much better than tape. All those hours spent taping them upright to the chairs. Never worked. But the rods… they fit right into the spine and with a little modification I can just slot them into the chairs. That way everyone is able to join in for dinner. I’m working on something similar for family game night.
Daniel wandered over to the camera and with a grin he lifted it from the tripod and scanned the dinner table. What I saw nearly made me drop my torch.
His family were long dead. Gaunt faces. Missing noses. Lips that had receded to reveal awful grins. These were corpses, plain as day, even when viewed through such a low resolution image. The only thing that made them seem remotely alive was the way their eyes still reflected the infrared back so that they glowed in the dark. And yet Daniel seemed oblivious to it all. He tousled Elliot’s hair. Kissed his wife on the cheek. Run a hand across one young girl’s shoulder. He even picked the young Alexander up from his high chair and I assume he coddled him. I don’t know for sure because I looked away, unwilling to see the poor boy up close.
Eyes averted from the screen, I couldn’t help but pan my torch across to that same dinner table and shiver as I finally realised what all those stains were. Not quite blood. But close. Liquefying flesh. Left alone for months, Daniel had not put his family’s bodies to rest. Instead he had moved them around from place to place and puppeted them, living life as if nothing had really changed. Looking at where those stains had settled I saw a clear pattern emerge. He had put them to bed. He had set them dinner. He had propped them up to watch TV, or gave them their favourite books. They even sat there as lifeless husks while Daniel waited for them complete a fucking jigsaw. The idea horrified me to my core.
…back to work. It’s obviously not part of the original designs. No room on the other side, not on the blueprints. Elliot didn’t believe me and why would he? I made every inch of this place, but I did not install that door in storage on the bottom level. I checked the cameras and some of the photos I took during the build and the wall is just blank. But the door is there now and it must lead somewhere. I don’t know when or why it opens, but it does and the next time I’ll be ready. Because I have to know what’s on the other side, and why it did this to us. Alone down here, often all asleep at once. Anything could have slit our throats and been done with it. But it didn’t. It took its time and I have to know why!
It took our radios and computers and phones. One by one. None of us noticing until it was far too late. I kept telling the kids they needed to take better care of their things, and even as they complained I just assumed the phones were lying behind some shelf. Where else could they go in a locked bunker? But it wasn’t the children at all. Looking back there are so many signs… who kept taking away the lights? Who kept draining the batteries in our torches? How long did we live with it before we finally realised we weren’t alone? Was it here every step of the way?
A door out of nothing that leads to nowhere, at least most of the time. Because I know for a fact it does not always open onto a blank wall. There is something behind it. I can hear it shuffling around in there, wet breath rattling in its lungs, a horrible sound I hear roaming these halls when it thinks I’m asleep…
I listened to Daniel, fascinated by this strangely compelling rant, when movement caught my eye. An infrared camera running in the dark, its image a roiling mess of uniform noise. What was it I’d seen? I paused the tape and rewound. Squinting, I saw two pinpricks of light in the darkness just over Daniel’s shoulder. Slowly, the image resolved itself in my mind. I knew what I was seeing and it turned my blood to ice.
Miranda Vance had turned her head, and her lifeless eyes glowed as she fixed them on the back of Daniel’s head.
…not even any point leaving at this stage. I’m no doctor, but that door is giving off enough radiation to… well, to kill a family of seven. If none of us had touched it… Being in the same room is risky, but not lethal. But given how sick we’ve become, it’s pretty obvious our curiosity got the better of us, one by one, and we all got too close. Or maybe not. Maybe that thing on the other side came through and did this. I don’t even kn… wait… what was that?
Daniel turned and the camera stopped recording. The image it froze on was of a lone man, bright as a star in the camera’s lens, facing off against unknowable darkness broken only by six pairs of white, glowing eyes.
I became painfully aware of my position relative to the table and I had the painful premonition that if I turned, those chairs would not be empty. I would see the Vances, all of them, Daniel as well, waiting for me. Heads turned. Bodies left to rot for years in the dark. Behind me something shifted. It breathed. Loud. Quick. I knew what it was. I knew. It came at me so fast that when I felt something hot and wet touch my hand I screamed, only for the presence to suddenly recoil. But then, without hesitation, it leapt at me and bore me to the ground.
I wept as Ripley licked my face. He was shivering and, worst of all, silent which was not normal. He was not a quiet dog, not when greeting me and not when excited like he was now. But whatever he’d seen down here, he clung to me and dug his paws into my shoulders like he wanted to be cradled over the shoulder, something he has been too big to do for years.
“Oh you fucking idiot,” I cooed in a soft whisper and even in the dark I could feel his tail wagging. Joking aside, I felt nothing but relief at finding him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I picked him up, straining a little under the weight but refusing to give into tired muscles, and made for the ladder. It wasn’t easy climbing the three or four rungs to the hatch, but I managed it and gave the hatch a shove. First one hand, then two. Again and again, with everything I had, but still that hatch refused to budge.
“Shit!” I cried while pounding at it with my fists, but all I achieved was a sore wrist. The hatch had jammed when, somehow, the handle had been snapped clean off. Now I’d need a pair of pliers or something to cut through the metal bar locking it shut. My fingers couldn’t move it, nor could I brute force the hatch open. The metal bar was an inch thick and, at the very least, I’d need some tools to get at it from this side.
At least it’s fixable, I thought as I climbed back down and caught my breath. On one wall I noticed a simple diagram of the bunker made in chalk. It had three floors. The bottom was storage–Daniel had mentioned that before, and I noticed that he had drawn through it with a large red X–and the top floor was labelled Quarters, where I stood now. But the middle floor was labelled workshops and it was there I realised that I’d find what I needed.
There was one door that opened onto a concrete stairwell and, standing at the top, I shone my light down the spiralling guard rails unsure of what it was I hoped to see. There were only harsh shadows and the sense of something foul rising up on the air. A smell that tickled my throat and burned a little in my lungs. Had the police even gone down this far? Had they seen what I’d seen on that TV and just left? Somehow I thought it was unlikely that had been enough to send the entire Sheriff’s department running, so was it something else that had done it. Something that had been enough to terrify dozens of armed men. Something that was almost definitely down there.
The door…
I went down quietly. At first I considered leaving Ripley behind, but after losing him the first time I decided I’d rather risk it just to know that he was right next to me. Besides, he was being quieter than I was, and I didn’t feel much like going down those stairs on my own. He accompanied me with only the quiet click clack of his paws on concrete, a sound I found deeply comforting as I barely managed to keep my torch from shaking in my hand and my breathing steady.
Down one floor and I found the workshop exactly as you might expect. A large space filled with generators and fuel and water tanks and boilers and heaters and pretty much anything and everything that you’d need to survive but which you couldn’t put outside due to fallout. Wires pipes and tubes ran from one end of the room to the other and even years later, most of the machinery still hummed in the pitch black emptiness, an idea I found deeply unsettling. Taking one look at that strange tangle of harsh shapes and industrial figures looming out of the walls and floor, I shivered and looked around, quickly finding a small area Daniel had cordoned off for his own use. About a fifth of the total floor space, there was a large workbench and some seriously high end machining equipment, all very well used. Lathes. Buzzsaws. Drills. Belt sanders. Welding torches. Everything a man needed to do-it-himself.
And Daniel had been busy.
I’m not sure exactly what it was he’d been working, but there was an arm on the bench. It sat atop a pile of papers that had slowly turned brown over the years until the whole thing looked like it had been soaked in tobacco spit. On the whiteboard was a faded but still visible diagram of what looked to me like a ball-and-socket joint. I thought of the tape, of Daniel’s little mechanism to keep his family upright, and then looked at the arm and suppressed a momentary gag reflex. I don’t know if Dan had been working on posable limbs, or just a way to put the decomposing remains back together after they’d started to fall apart, but the size of the arm suggested a pre-teen child, and he’d left it out on the surface like it was a disassembled clock. It was also missing a finger. Just how fucking crazy was he? I wondered as I pinched my nose with one hand and began overturning boxes looking for a hefty pair of pliers, or maybe a hacksaw. Ripley backed away from the noise, but once I made sure he wasn’t going anywhere I carried on grabbing and pulling at box after box hoping I’d find what I was looking for. Anything to break that fucking metal bar.
In the end I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters, a crowbar, and a heavy duty pair of pliers. One went in my pocket, one went down the back of my jeans, and the other was clutched in my fist, too large to be tucked away in my clothes. The bolt cutters felt hefty in my hand which was a bit of comfort, but that feeling didn’t last long.
Something moved in the darkness, out there in the twisted jungle of shadows cast by all those pipes and wires that ran from one machine to the next. A figure moved. Thin, but unmistakably human in its outline. I couldn’t help but remember what I’d seen on that tape. Surely it couldn’t have been real? Maybe Daniel had rigged something up. Some fishing wire and a motor, maybe? The idea that those bodies had been moving on their own… I couldn’t be sure of that, could I? It was a frightening idea, one my mind had latched onto out of sheer panic. That was all…
And then I saw them. A pair of white pin-pricks reflecting back at me from the depths of that cluttered room. Ripley, already behind me, head nuzzled into my leg, pushed even closer against me and let out a barely audible whine under his breath. The behaviour of a dog who was terrified, close to pissing himself with fear.
Just a bit of metal, I told myself as the light shook so violently in my hand I struggled to see straight. Just two shiny bits of metal…
They blinked and began to come towards me. If I had any doubts left, they were dispersed by the sight of a pale white hand emerging into the light.
I ran straight to the stairs and went to climb them, but only one or two steps in and I saw something gripping the handrail on the top floor. A mouldy clump of flesh only just recognisable as a fist, the flesh withered until the fingers were basically bone. Without meaning to, I brought my light up out of habit and I saw the bloated face of a hairless corpse glaring down at me. I couldn’t even tell you if it had been a teenage girl or the sixty-year-old Daniel, either way I instinctively turned and found another body shambling towards me out of the workshop. I was trapped. Nowhere to go. By the feel of warm fluid on the back of my leg I could tell Ripley had finally pissed himself. An adult dog, tail between his legs, shivering like a puppy and desperate to be picked up. God I needed him to just stay together for a little longer. I couldn’t take him in my arms, but I couldn’t leave him behind either…
With nowhere to go I ran down and entered storage. There was the temptation to stop once I hit the bottom. Down here the air was thicker and the sounds of my breathing were muted, somehow distant. But I only had to look back up to see three pairs of eyes glaring down at me, so without giving any of it much further thought I barreled down the corridor and stumbled onto a door at random. Opening it, I saw what looked like your standard storage room, only most of the shelves had been overturned and the food left to rot on the floor. One or two shelving units were still upright though, and their shelves were covered in tall opaque boxes that made them a fantastic hiding spot. That, I decided, would have to be where I crouched down and turned off my light.
I was already inside when I realised that wasn’t all that was in there…
The door almost looked normal. I could see why Daniel must have been confused by it because it looked a little bit like all the other doors down there, but it was different too. It was too tall and too wide, about a foot and a half off the ground, and the metal rusted in its entirety like it had aged out of sync with everything else down there. All around the jamb was a profusion of wet soppy moss like the kind you find hanging off trees in a swamp, and every few seconds the door would leak something strange and oily, like the kind of thing you find in a parking lot on a rainy day. Of course that wasn’t too strange in itself, but the leak was horizontal, defying gravity so that every few seconds a large glob of the stuff would whip across the room and slap into the wall opposite creating a puddle about the size of a man that defied all reason.
Remembering Daniel’s words about radiation, I instinctively inched away from this puddle and the door on the opposite wall, backing myself into the darkest quietest corner I could while I pulled Ripley behind me and hoped to hell he wouldn’t give me away. Once I was in there I turned off my light and waited.
I must have taken longer than I’d thought to hide spot because it was barely two seconds later when a few figures entered the room. It was pitch black after I’d turned off my torch, but they made enough noise to let me know that at least two of them had stumbled in after me. I stayed there, unable to see anything, not sure if they were heading straight for me or just getting ready to leave, forced to hold out and let luck decide my fate. When I finally heard something scrape against the wall barely two feet from where I stood, I gave up and switched my light on, desperate to know what was coming for me.
The sound had been terribly misleading.
Daniel Vance was no more than six inches from my face.
“Get out,” he hissed from a toothless and cracked mouth. A living corpse just like the others, somehow a flash of intelligence remained in those wide, terrified eyes.
And then I heard it. The creaking of a door. And without even thinking I turned the light and saw it on the wall. I saw it open, and behind the strange steel there was more than just plain old concrete. Much more. I saw a raging gullet of flesh. A ringed tube of pulsing muscle lined with teeth the size of hands. A spiralling descent into madness. Hot foetid air washed into the room, buffeting me and the rotting corpses, all of us paralysed by what we were seeing, even if for most of the figures beside Daniel and myself, they didn’t have eyes to see with.
“What the fuck…?” I muttered, unable to take my eyes from the flesh tube beyond that doorway.
“It’s coming,” Daniel whispered as he grabbed me with one fist and hurled me out of the room. I hit the floor and skidded along a slick fluid left by the Vance’s footprints, the smell of which turned my stomach. Perhaps the worst detail was that it was cold. I don’t know why, I’d just expected whatever oozed them off them to be feverishly hot. But it wasn’t. It soaked my shirt like I’d fallen into a muddy puddle.
“It’s coming.”
This voice wasn’t Daniel’s. I couldn’t say for sure, but it sounded like a child’s whisper. One by one the bodies shuffled over to the open door and knelt before it. I don’t know why but I got the impression the others had lost pretty much everything left of their minds, but Daniel remained aware. He looked back at me once more and spoke before he pressed his head to the floor in supplication with the others.
“The only thing we did wrong was being here for it to torture. It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity. Leave. It won’t let us go. It won’t even let us die. And if it catches you, it won’t let you go either.”
His forehead kissed the dirt.
And then something reached through the door and gripped his head in its palm the way you or I might pick up an apple.
In full panic, I ran over and grabbed my dog and the bolt cutters and I ran like my legs were pistons, machines whose signals of exhaustion and fatigue could not slow me down, or cause me to fall. I had to move. I had to leave. The hand that had grabbed Daniel… the sight of it flushed my mind clean like some kind of enema. It hurt to see the image replay in my mind but there was nothing else in my head echoing around except the sight of fingers with one too many knuckles, and nails as large as a smartphone.
I reached the top floor and nearly collapsed from breathlessness, but I wouldn’t let myself stay down for long. I crawled over to the ladder and climbed up and immediately went to work trying to cut the metal lock. It was hell with just one hand, the other clinging to the torch that I kept frantically pointing at the door behind me, and it wasn’t long before I fumbled one too many times and dropped my only source of light.
“No no no no…” I mewed. But there was no time to look for it. I had to get out and I had to get out fast! I couldn’t see but I was sure I could hear something climbing up those stairs. Not the steady thump thump of human feet. No this was different. This was a rapid pitter patter of a spider, maybe. Something with hundreds of feet or hands, or God knows what, skittering along the floor and walls and ceiling, pulling itself along with a body whose mere shape would offend God.
Using all my strength I leaned hard on the bolt cutters and, at last, the bolt gave. I threw the hatch open and got just enough ambient light to see Ripley hovering at the bottom of the ladder, growling ineffectually at the doorway. I crouched down, scooped him up, and fled up the ladder so quickly that my muscles turned to jelly at the top and I fell over onto hands and knees. But still, I was out. The long corridor covered in writing was ahead of me, and at the very end a doorway capped now by the tired blue light of a full moon.
Ripley needed no encouragement. He whipped down the corridor with canine speed and I followed at a broken and stumbling crawl, eventually shouldering past the open door and collapsing onto the forest floor.
For a few seconds I drifted in and out of consciousness, but when I looked up and saw the canopy overhead moving–the branches backlit by a full moon–I snapped awake and glared down at something gripping my ankle. The hand had reached out of the dark and seized me and was slowly dragging me back into the Earth below. Whatever it was, most of its body lurked out of sight in the shadows behind the doorway, but the hand that crushed my leg was the size of my torso with an arm that looked like it belonged to a mole rat.
I struck it with my own fist. I dug my nails in. I cried and kicked and screamed, but nothing could stop it. From behind the door, something like a face grinned and leered at me with joy. It was taking its time, sure enough, pulling me in so slowly that it gave my mind all the time in the world to appreciate the nightmare that awaited me. I think if, in that moment, you’d given me a gun, I would’ve shot myself because God help me I couldn’t escape the look in Daniel’s eyes, how he’d knelt to worship this thing like a man who knew that hope or pride or joy or anything with even a hint of goodness to it was so far out of reach for him it might as well be a dream. How long was this thing going to keep them down there? How long did it intend to keep me!?
I wept like a child, feeling like my mind was slowly cracking as I tried everything to stop that fucking pulling me into the shadows. I kicked at the earth. I dug into it using my hands looking for a root or a pipe or anything to hold onto. Nothing, nothing, I did would slow it down.
I was no more than a foot from the doorway when Ripley reappeared.
A dog afraid of hoovers and plastic bags and doors that move on their own. A dog who once got stared down by a particularly feisty rabbit who stopped mid chase and turned around, baffling the predator on its tail. A dog you couldn’t even watch scary movies around…
And he lunged at that arm like he was a wolf, like he’d always been one. And while he didn’t quite break the skin, the pressure was enough to make the thing’s grip weaken and I slid my leg out. Unable to stand, I knelt and grabbed the dog and pulled as hard as I could and now that fucking thing bled at last as the pressure of the jaws and the sliding teeth ripped into its flesh. Together, at last, Ripley and I were let go and sent rolling backwards head over hells.
I wasted no time waiting or looking or processing. I heaved the dog to my chest and crawled until I passed out, making it maybe half a kilometre away. Only when I could no longer see the door did I let myself fall to the ground face first and gave up consciousness.
-
The doctors said I had pneumonia, which I suppose made some kind of sense. I might have even believed them were it not for the Sheriff’s visit, asking strange questions of me as I lay in bed about what I may or may not have seen. I dismissed them to the best of my ability. I wasn’t interested in chasing that particular nightmare down, figuring out if it had been real or not, at least not while I lay there half-drowning in my own infection. To be fair, I had at least some sympathy for why the police had done so little to seal that place off. I have, on occasion, thought about going and doing the job myself, but to this day I still have nightmares about being pulled into the dark beyond that door. Not just the bunker door, the one I narrowly avoided at the end, but the one below. What I saw was a kind of madness, I’m sure of it, and I often think of Daniel’s words.
It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity.
Somehow, the Vances were that opportunity. Maybe they built their bunker on a leyline, or a weak spot between dimensions, or the site of former Satanic rituals. I’m not sure it even matters. They went into the dark thinking it’d be a safe place to wait out the world’s troubles, but something had been down there waiting for them, waiting for a chance to get at a family of seven people, to lock them in and deprive them of escape and slowly take from them everything it could.
I’ve moved since then. Couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the memories you see. It was the short-wave radio I kept in my basement. Something my father passed onto me when I was just a boy. God I’d forgotten about it… at least until I woke up one day to the sound of it blaring white noise down in the dark.
And buried in that sound was the faint whispering of a man, his voice barely recognisable, but unmistakably his.
…let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go…

Dr Daniel Vance was a smart man. Too smart for his own good, maybe. Forty years old, a lecturer in fluid dynamics with a mind made of shapes and numbers. No one knows why but one day, on a whim, he crunched the numbers on the apocalypse and came to a troubling conclusion. He didn’t share exactly what it was he’d deduced, but given that he immediately quit his job and liquidated his many assets, it’s fair to say it wasn’t positive. Swept up in the wake of this tremendous upheaval was his wife, a twenty-four year old PhD student who had grown infatuated with Daniel some time before. She loved the strange bear of a man who could just as easily build a log cabin as he could explain the idiosyncrasies of an asteroid’s orbit. Speaking to Daniel always left you with the profound impression he was right, so when he told her what he wanted to do, she agreed.
Fifteen years and five children later, the Vances were living in the distant woods just beyond my hometown. They were enigmatic, richer than the Pope, and extremely serious about their prepper lifestyle. But they were also funny, easygoing, and incredibly compelling to speak to. Larger than life survivalists who swept into town with bizarre requests that thrilled local businesses. Vast quantities of cement, iron, lead, and steel were all shipped through the remote mountains so that the Vances could build their shelter. The advanced methods they used to keep it secret were legendary. Daniel had once spent six months earning the licence necessary to drive HGVs up to his compound so that no one else would lay eyes on it. And on one occasion when a company had refused his request for GPS tracker-free vehicles, he bought them out wholesale so that they had no choice.
So when they stopped appearing in town during the pandemic, when requests for food and goods stopped and all contact was dropped, most attributed it to lockdown. They had a bunker and had spent their entire lives training to be self-sufficient in the face of civilisation’s collapse. Even Alexander, the youngest at just three, was already collecting firewood as a chore, and learning what local plants were edible. Most of us just assumed that if anyone could ride out Covid without breaking a sweat, it would be the Vances.
The reality turned out to be something else.
When the worst came to light, we discovered that Daniel had used the pandemic as an excuse for a dry-run. The family intended to spend six months in lockdown and essentially beta test their fallout bunker. Three months in and the Sheriff received a distress call on the radio. Coordinates were provided by the hushed voice of a sobbing child that most assume was Alexander, even though that’s never been proven.
The police arrived and found the bunker still sealed. It took hours for emergency responders to cut into the door, all the while efforts were made to contact the family within but to no avail. Once inside, police were left dumbfounded. There was no one to be rescued. No bodies. No survivors. There was evidence the door’s locking mechanism had failed and trapped the Vances inside with no way out, but if so where had they gone?
Beds and cots lay everywhere with mouldering yellow sheets, buckets close to hand with stains all around them. Some doors were barred, others smashed to pieces. There was even evidence of makeshift quarantines and, in places, what looked like violence. The police, usually a fantastic source of gossip, were not forthcoming until the town demanded answers and the Sheriff was forced to offer only the barest of outlines.
An outbreak of a waterborne illness had struck the Vances down not long after they were locked inside and unable to seek help. Rumours of contagion were overstated, fuelled by the unrelated rise of Covid. Whatever contaminant had killed the Vances, it was non-organic in nature. No need to panic. The Vances loved-ones had been notified. The bunker was going to be demolished, and we could all put this terrible tragedy behind us.
Of course we still had questions. A thousand of them. Why hadn’t the family called for help? They had radios, computers, smartphones too. They were survivalists, not Amish. And where were they? What had happened to their bodies? Why hadn’t they simply left? We shouted these and more at the town meeting but the police simply refused to comment. For most of us the excitement lasted another week or two until we realised we weren’t getting answers any time soon. Besides, the pandemic was in full swing and most of us had other things to worry about. The tragic story eventually faded until it was just one of those awful things in the town’s history that we didn’t talk about. I was as guilty as anyone else of just forgetting about it.
I certainly never expected to find the bunker out there in the woods, faded police tape still on the open door that hung wide open with scorch marks around the lock. It stood out in the woods like someone had cut a hole right in the fabric of reality, the darkness so deep and black it almost ached to look at. The sight of it made my heart drop into my stomach. It radiated pain. Does that make sense? I think some part of my lizard brain picked out details that wouldn’t become apparent to me until I got closer, like the bloody finger streaks that stained the handle from where someone had scrabbled furiously at the lock without success. And the tiny viewing window had been smashed with a hammer that still lay nearby. I needed only to glimpse it to imagine the family taking turns to stand there and scream into the woods desperate for rescue.
Under any other circumstances, I would have run.
But I’d gone there looking for my dog, and my light revealed a few wet paw prints making their way down the dusty concrete tunnel. Half Bernese and half collie, Ripley is the sort of dog who trembles in my arms when a storm buffets the windows and needs his paws held when we brush him. I love him. I do not have much of a family, or a wife, or even many friends. But I have Ripley, and I could no more have turned around and gone home to an empty apartment where I would have to sob my grief away than I could flap my arms and fly. He was my dog and I’d raised him since he was a puppy, and I wasn’t going to leave him out in those woods.
I went in after him.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Whatever the police had found, they’d not only kept most of the morbid details to themselves, they had also lied. The bunker was not demolished, or even sealed off. In fact, looking at the occasional blue latex glove tossed aside and the one or two broken police-issue flashlights, it seemed like the last people inside had been in a hurry to get out. Given this was where seven people had presumably died, I assumed it was someone’s job to clean it all up. But the corridor looked largely untouched. Just a few metres in and manic writing started to cover the walls, the desperate scrawls of a lone survivor left there to be rediscovered like cave paintings. Most were deliberations on how to get out. Diagrams. Blueprints. Equations and formulae. All focused on the door and the circuits responsible for its faulty lock. I instinctively assumed they belonged to Daniel and that he’d been the last to die. What a God awful fate for a man to outlive his children. And yet it got worse. Slowly the writing changed from equations and plans to a desperate scrawl. The same few phrases repeated over and over.
Five doors. Five. Not six. Six. Didn’t make it. Didn’t make it. Six doors. Six.
It seemed like the kind of thing you’d find in an asylum. A psychotic rambling punctuated only by six paragraphs right at the end. Each letter was impeccably neat, and each small paragraph was topped with a beautifully drawn Christian cross.
Elliott Vance aged fifteen. A gifted guitarist. He liked boys even though he thought I did not know. I loved him with everything I had. He would have made a great man.
Alicia Vance aged fourteen. She liked to paint and to shoot. She had her mother’s mean streak. It would have served her well in the future.
Elijah Vance aged eight. The smartest of us all…
These were Daniel’s memorials to his family, and seeing the words lit up by my torch was a haunting insight into the overwhelming despair he’d endured. He must have realised he wouldn’t get the chance to speak at his family’s funerals or to write their obituaries. This was his last desperate way of making sure the world might one day know them as he did - as real people.
The words marked the end of the tunnel, standing adjacent to a trapdoor in the ground. It was not open but the tunnel came to a dead end immediately afterwards and Ripley’s prints disappeared at the hatch. I feared he might be in danger, but still I stopped and looked at the bunker door twenty metres behind me. The once gloomy forest looked so bright, even on this cloudy day, the air dotted with rain. A part of me felt like I was leaving the whole world behind as I began to climb the ladder down.
I entered a large circular living space that was packed with furniture and little nooks and crannies. The walls were covered with folding beds and tables and every inch was multifunctional. A dining space could become a sitting space, which in turn might be where someone slept, or even exercised. It all depended on what particular bit of furniture you unfolded or unclipped or unfurled. Seven people in close quarters, nowhere near enough privacy, it made sense they went with this cluttered overlapping use of space. But it was still a large room, bigger than most studio apartments. And there were a few corridors that led deeper into the Earth telling me the bunker had unseen depths.
I looked for some sign of my dog and soon found his trail, but this far from the rainy copse Ripley’s prints were starting to fade. After barely a few metres they petered out vaguely in the direction of a nearby door. I wanted to follow but stopped myself from rushing onwards. It was unlikely Ripley was getting out any other way, and I’d do us no good getting hurt myself. I decided to take a look around and quickly spotted a dinner table.
If I needed proof the police had not bothered with a clean up, this was it. The plates were still out, the food rotten to a strange blackened husk. A child’s hat lay across one place-setting, the once-creamy fleece turned a sickly green and yellow. The chairs had their backs reinforced with wooden beams fitted with long grooves so that something the width of a nail could slide into them. And on each of the cushions were foul smelling stains that looked oddly like an ass print. I touched one with gloved hands and the material crackled audibly. Whatever it was, similar stains were on the cutlery and plates, and there were even handprints of it placed firmly on the tablecloth. At first I thought it was blood, but that wasn’t quite right. It was too contained to be from leaking blood. On the back of one of the chairs a stain tapered exactly where a woman’s waist would be like a near perfect silhouette. I shivered as I remembered that Miranda Vance had always been a slim woman and wondered how she had left her imprint on the grey fabric.
Using my torch, I saw that these stains repeated in the oddest of places. Yes, there were some on beds and blankets and even patches of plain floor exactly like you might expect in a room full of sick people. But why did one stain on the floor bear such a strong resemblance to a child huddled in the foetal position? And why was the same stuff all over the tv remote, and on books on shelves, and board games too. Everything from sofa cushions to DVD boxes to piles of dirty laundry were covered in the same dried brownish material that gave off a foul coppery miasma.
I found the jigsaw particularly baffling. Someone had set up another table with four chairs, all modified with the same back support as those by the dinner table. And a jigsaw had been lain out with four separate piles, but only one was depleted. The rest looked largely untouched, almost like someone had portioned out pieces for three other people who had absolutely no interest in going along with it. Maybe Daniel had tried to keep up morale while the family were sick? God help me, if that were true I couldn’t help but imagine the poor man sat there with his loved ones close to death, desperately trying to encourage them to click their own pieces into place while they faded in and out of consciousness.
Something about that room emanated madness, and the longer I stayed down there flicking the bright disk of light of my torch from one detail to another, the more I wanted to leave. One door had wooden beams nailed across it. One sofa had been partially disassembled. Multiple beds had been burned. And all the light bulbs had been removed and put in a box on the kitchen counter top. Looking up at the ceiling, I finally had some insight into why the police were so confident the Vances had not survived despite never finding their bodies. Someone had jammed a human finger into one of the empty sockets, almost like they’d expected it to glow with the flick of a switch.
What was it about this place that had caused the police to leave and never return? Not to even take that finger and test it for signs of illness, or even just to confirm who it belonged to?
I decided it was time to hurry up and find my dog. People had died in that place, and while I’m not superstitious, I can’t be the only sceptic who has done the calculations in his head and realised it costs nothing to be respectful of ghosts. That bunker was cramped, terrifying, and the air stank so bad I started to worry I’d get sick myself. It served no one any good to linger. But I’d be damned if I’d just walk away and leave Ripley to rot down there. It’s not like he could climb a ladder and get out on his own (even if I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten down there in the first place).
Summoning what little bravery I had left I called out and broke the silence, something which felt like a terrible taboo in that God awful place, like screaming in a graveyard.
“Ripley!”
I waited and hoped to hell I’d hear the pitter patter of his paws, but for the longest of moments there was only the kind of silence that makes you wonder if someone or something in the darkness is holding its breath trying to look like just another patch of nothing. Biding its time until you finally turn around and show it your back…
The TV came on with a blurt of white noise that was so loud and so sudden I cried, threw my arms up, and nearly fell backwards onto a rolled-out sleeping bag that looked like it had spent a week in the sewer. By the time I realised what had caused the noise, I could already hear a tinny rendition of Daniel Vance’s voice.
…I realise the issue here. I need to emphasise just how little I understand anything that’s…
I frowned at the screen as I approached. It showed a greenish infrared view of the bunker with Daniel upfront, and the dinner table behind him. It was grainy and hard to see, but I could clearly tell that his family were sitting in those chairs.
…Miranda was first to fall ill. Looking back it makes perfect sense. Miranda often went into storage to fetch food for cooking and we found it behind one of the refrigerators. So that’s–ah shit..
One of the figures in the background slumped onto the table with a loud clank and sent a plate spinning off onto the ground.
Shit shit shit, Daniel muttered as he got up and grabbed the woman by the shoulders and sat her upright. Miranda never did like my cooking! He snorted a laugh as he fussed with something at the back of the chair. The rods are much better than tape. All those hours spent taping them upright to the chairs. Never worked. But the rods… they fit right into the spine and with a little modification I can just slot them into the chairs. That way everyone is able to join in for dinner. I’m working on something similar for family game night.
Daniel wandered over to the camera and with a grin he lifted it from the tripod and scanned the dinner table. What I saw nearly made me drop my torch.
His family were long dead. Gaunt faces. Missing noses. Lips that had receded to reveal awful grins. These were corpses, plain as day, even when viewed through such a low resolution image. The only thing that made them seem remotely alive was the way their eyes still reflected the infrared back so that they glowed in the dark. And yet Daniel seemed oblivious to it all. He tousled Elliot’s hair. Kissed his wife on the cheek. Run a hand across one young girl’s shoulder. He even picked the young Alexander up from his high chair and I assume he coddled him. I don’t know for sure because I looked away, unwilling to see the poor boy up close.
Eyes averted from the screen, I couldn’t help but pan my torch across to that same dinner table and shiver as I finally realised what all those stains were. Not quite blood. But close. Liquefying flesh. Left alone for months, Daniel had not put his family’s bodies to rest. Instead he had moved them around from place to place and puppeted them, living life as if nothing had really changed. Looking at where those stains had settled I saw a clear pattern emerge. He had put them to bed. He had set them dinner. He had propped them up to watch TV, or gave them their favourite books. They even sat there as lifeless husks while Daniel waited for them complete a fucking jigsaw. The idea horrified me to my core.
…back to work. It’s obviously not part of the original designs. No room on the other side, not on the blueprints. Elliot didn’t believe me and why would he? I made every inch of this place, but I did not install that door in storage on the bottom level. I checked the cameras and some of the photos I took during the build and the wall is just blank. But the door is there now and it must lead somewhere. I don’t know when or why it opens, but it does and the next time I’ll be ready. Because I have to know what’s on the other side, and why it did this to us. Alone down here, often all asleep at once. Anything could have slit our throats and been done with it. But it didn’t. It took its time and I have to know why!
It took our radios and computers and phones. One by one. None of us noticing until it was far too late. I kept telling the kids they needed to take better care of their things, and even as they complained I just assumed the phones were lying behind some shelf. Where else could they go in a locked bunker? But it wasn’t the children at all. Looking back there are so many signs… who kept taking away the lights? Who kept draining the batteries in our torches? How long did we live with it before we finally realised we weren’t alone? Was it here every step of the way?
A door out of nothing that leads to nowhere, at least most of the time. Because I know for a fact it does not always open onto a blank wall. There is something behind it. I can hear it shuffling around in there, wet breath rattling in its lungs, a horrible sound I hear roaming these halls when it thinks I’m asleep…
I listened to Daniel, fascinated by this strangely compelling rant, when movement caught my eye. An infrared camera running in the dark, its image a roiling mess of uniform noise. What was it I’d seen? I paused the tape and rewound. Squinting, I saw two pinpricks of light in the darkness just over Daniel’s shoulder. Slowly, the image resolved itself in my mind. I knew what I was seeing and it turned my blood to ice.
Miranda Vance had turned her head, and her lifeless eyes glowed as she fixed them on the back of Daniel’s head.
…not even any point leaving at this stage. I’m no doctor, but that door is giving off enough radiation to… well, to kill a family of seven. If none of us had touched it… Being in the same room is risky, but not lethal. But given how sick we’ve become, it’s pretty obvious our curiosity got the better of us, one by one, and we all got too close. Or maybe not. Maybe that thing on the other side came through and did this. I don’t even kn… wait… what was that?
Daniel turned and the camera stopped recording. The image it froze on was of a lone man, bright as a star in the camera’s lens, facing off against unknowable darkness broken only by six pairs of white, glowing eyes.
I became painfully aware of my position relative to the table and I had the painful premonition that if I turned, those chairs would not be empty. I would see the Vances, all of them, Daniel as well, waiting for me. Heads turned. Bodies left to rot for years in the dark. Behind me something shifted. It breathed. Loud. Quick. I knew what it was. I knew. It came at me so fast that when I felt something hot and wet touch my hand I screamed, only for the presence to suddenly recoil. But then, without hesitation, it leapt at me and bore me to the ground.
I wept as Ripley licked my face. He was shivering and, worst of all, silent which was not normal. He was not a quiet dog, not when greeting me and not when excited like he was now. But whatever he’d seen down here, he clung to me and dug his paws into my shoulders like he wanted to be cradled over the shoulder, something he has been too big to do for years.
“Oh you fucking idiot,” I cooed in a soft whisper and even in the dark I could feel his tail wagging. Joking aside, I felt nothing but relief at finding him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I picked him up, straining a little under the weight but refusing to give into tired muscles, and made for the ladder. It wasn’t easy climbing the three or four rungs to the hatch, but I managed it and gave the hatch a shove. First one hand, then two. Again and again, with everything I had, but still that hatch refused to budge.
“Shit!” I cried while pounding at it with my fists, but all I achieved was a sore wrist. The hatch had jammed when, somehow, the handle had been snapped clean off. Now I’d need a pair of pliers or something to cut through the metal bar locking it shut. My fingers couldn’t move it, nor could I brute force the hatch open. The metal bar was an inch thick and, at the very least, I’d need some tools to get at it from this side.
At least it’s fixable, I thought as I climbed back down and caught my breath. On one wall I noticed a simple diagram of the bunker made in chalk. It had three floors. The bottom was storage–Daniel had mentioned that before, and I noticed that he had drawn through it with a large red X–and the top floor was labelled Quarters, where I stood now. But the middle floor was labelled workshops and it was there I realised that I’d find what I needed.
There was one door that opened onto a concrete stairwell and, standing at the top, I shone my light down the spiralling guard rails unsure of what it was I hoped to see. There were only harsh shadows and the sense of something foul rising up on the air. A smell that tickled my throat and burned a little in my lungs. Had the police even gone down this far? Had they seen what I’d seen on that TV and just left? Somehow I thought it was unlikely that had been enough to send the entire Sheriff’s department running, so was it something else that had done it. Something that had been enough to terrify dozens of armed men. Something that was almost definitely down there.
The door…
I went down quietly. At first I considered leaving Ripley behind, but after losing him the first time I decided I’d rather risk it just to know that he was right next to me. Besides, he was being quieter than I was, and I didn’t feel much like going down those stairs on my own. He accompanied me with only the quiet click clack of his paws on concrete, a sound I found deeply comforting as I barely managed to keep my torch from shaking in my hand and my breathing steady.
Down one floor and I found the workshop exactly as you might expect. A large space filled with generators and fuel and water tanks and boilers and heaters and pretty much anything and everything that you’d need to survive but which you couldn’t put outside due to fallout. Wires pipes and tubes ran from one end of the room to the other and even years later, most of the machinery still hummed in the pitch black emptiness, an idea I found deeply unsettling. Taking one look at that strange tangle of harsh shapes and industrial figures looming out of the walls and floor, I shivered and looked around, quickly finding a small area Daniel had cordoned off for his own use. About a fifth of the total floor space, there was a large workbench and some seriously high end machining equipment, all very well used. Lathes. Buzzsaws. Drills. Belt sanders. Welding torches. Everything a man needed to do-it-himself.
And Daniel had been busy.
I’m not sure exactly what it was he’d been working, but there was an arm on the bench. It sat atop a pile of papers that had slowly turned brown over the years until the whole thing looked like it had been soaked in tobacco spit. On the whiteboard was a faded but still visible diagram of what looked to me like a ball-and-socket joint. I thought of the tape, of Daniel’s little mechanism to keep his family upright, and then looked at the arm and suppressed a momentary gag reflex. I don’t know if Dan had been working on posable limbs, or just a way to put the decomposing remains back together after they’d started to fall apart, but the size of the arm suggested a pre-teen child, and he’d left it out on the surface like it was a disassembled clock. It was also missing a finger. Just how fucking crazy was he? I wondered as I pinched my nose with one hand and began overturning boxes looking for a hefty pair of pliers, or maybe a hacksaw. Ripley backed away from the noise, but once I made sure he wasn’t going anywhere I carried on grabbing and pulling at box after box hoping I’d find what I was looking for. Anything to break that fucking metal bar.
In the end I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters, a crowbar, and a heavy duty pair of pliers. One went in my pocket, one went down the back of my jeans, and the other was clutched in my fist, too large to be tucked away in my clothes. The bolt cutters felt hefty in my hand which was a bit of comfort, but that feeling didn’t last long.
Something moved in the darkness, out there in the twisted jungle of shadows cast by all those pipes and wires that ran from one machine to the next. A figure moved. Thin, but unmistakably human in its outline. I couldn’t help but remember what I’d seen on that tape. Surely it couldn’t have been real? Maybe Daniel had rigged something up. Some fishing wire and a motor, maybe? The idea that those bodies had been moving on their own… I couldn’t be sure of that, could I? It was a frightening idea, one my mind had latched onto out of sheer panic. That was all…
And then I saw them. A pair of white pin-pricks reflecting back at me from the depths of that cluttered room. Ripley, already behind me, head nuzzled into my leg, pushed even closer against me and let out a barely audible whine under his breath. The behaviour of a dog who was terrified, close to pissing himself with fear.
Just a bit of metal, I told myself as the light shook so violently in my hand I struggled to see straight. Just two shiny bits of metal…
They blinked and began to come towards me. If I had any doubts left, they were dispersed by the sight of a pale white hand emerging into the light.
I ran straight to the stairs and went to climb them, but only one or two steps in and I saw something gripping the handrail on the top floor. A mouldy clump of flesh only just recognisable as a fist, the flesh withered until the fingers were basically bone. Without meaning to, I brought my light up out of habit and I saw the bloated face of a hairless corpse glaring down at me. I couldn’t even tell you if it had been a teenage girl or the sixty-year-old Daniel, either way I instinctively turned and found another body shambling towards me out of the workshop. I was trapped. Nowhere to go. By the feel of warm fluid on the back of my leg I could tell Ripley had finally pissed himself. An adult dog, tail between his legs, shivering like a puppy and desperate to be picked up. God I needed him to just stay together for a little longer. I couldn’t take him in my arms, but I couldn’t leave him behind either…
With nowhere to go I ran down and entered storage. There was the temptation to stop once I hit the bottom. Down here the air was thicker and the sounds of my breathing were muted, somehow distant. But I only had to look back up to see three pairs of eyes glaring down at me, so without giving any of it much further thought I barreled down the corridor and stumbled onto a door at random. Opening it, I saw what looked like your standard storage room, only most of the shelves had been overturned and the food left to rot on the floor. One or two shelving units were still upright though, and their shelves were covered in tall opaque boxes that made them a fantastic hiding spot. That, I decided, would have to be where I crouched down and turned off my light.
I was already inside when I realised that wasn’t all that was in there…
The door almost looked normal. I could see why Daniel must have been confused by it because it looked a little bit like all the other doors down there, but it was different too. It was too tall and too wide, about a foot and a half off the ground, and the metal rusted in its entirety like it had aged out of sync with everything else down there. All around the jamb was a profusion of wet soppy moss like the kind you find hanging off trees in a swamp, and every few seconds the door would leak something strange and oily, like the kind of thing you find in a parking lot on a rainy day. Of course that wasn’t too strange in itself, but the leak was horizontal, defying gravity so that every few seconds a large glob of the stuff would whip across the room and slap into the wall opposite creating a puddle about the size of a man that defied all reason.
Remembering Daniel’s words about radiation, I instinctively inched away from this puddle and the door on the opposite wall, backing myself into the darkest quietest corner I could while I pulled Ripley behind me and hoped to hell he wouldn’t give me away. Once I was in there I turned off my light and waited.
I must have taken longer than I’d thought to hide spot because it was barely two seconds later when a few figures entered the room. It was pitch black after I’d turned off my torch, but they made enough noise to let me know that at least two of them had stumbled in after me. I stayed there, unable to see anything, not sure if they were heading straight for me or just getting ready to leave, forced to hold out and let luck decide my fate. When I finally heard something scrape against the wall barely two feet from where I stood, I gave up and switched my light on, desperate to know what was coming for me.
The sound had been terribly misleading.
Daniel Vance was no more than six inches from my face.
“Get out,” he hissed from a toothless and cracked mouth. A living corpse just like the others, somehow a flash of intelligence remained in those wide, terrified eyes.
And then I heard it. The creaking of a door. And without even thinking I turned the light and saw it on the wall. I saw it open, and behind the strange steel there was more than just plain old concrete. Much more. I saw a raging gullet of flesh. A ringed tube of pulsing muscle lined with teeth the size of hands. A spiralling descent into madness. Hot foetid air washed into the room, buffeting me and the rotting corpses, all of us paralysed by what we were seeing, even if for most of the figures beside Daniel and myself, they didn’t have eyes to see with.
“What the fuck…?” I muttered, unable to take my eyes from the flesh tube beyond that doorway.
“It’s coming,” Daniel whispered as he grabbed me with one fist and hurled me out of the room. I hit the floor and skidded along a slick fluid left by the Vance’s footprints, the smell of which turned my stomach. Perhaps the worst detail was that it was cold. I don’t know why, I’d just expected whatever oozed them off them to be feverishly hot. But it wasn’t. It soaked my shirt like I’d fallen into a muddy puddle.
“It’s coming.”
This voice wasn’t Daniel’s. I couldn’t say for sure, but it sounded like a child’s whisper. One by one the bodies shuffled over to the open door and knelt before it. I don’t know why but I got the impression the others had lost pretty much everything left of their minds, but Daniel remained aware. He looked back at me once more and spoke before he pressed his head to the floor in supplication with the others.
“The only thing we did wrong was being here for it to torture. It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity. Leave. It won’t let us go. It won’t even let us die. And if it catches you, it won’t let you go either.”
His forehead kissed the dirt.
And then something reached through the door and gripped his head in its palm the way you or I might pick up an apple.
In full panic, I ran over and grabbed my dog and the bolt cutters and I ran like my legs were pistons, machines whose signals of exhaustion and fatigue could not slow me down, or cause me to fall. I had to move. I had to leave. The hand that had grabbed Daniel… the sight of it flushed my mind clean like some kind of enema. It hurt to see the image replay in my mind but there was nothing else in my head echoing around except the sight of fingers with one too many knuckles, and nails as large as a smartphone.
I reached the top floor and nearly collapsed from breathlessness, but I wouldn’t let myself stay down for long. I crawled over to the ladder and climbed up and immediately went to work trying to cut the metal lock. It was hell with just one hand, the other clinging to the torch that I kept frantically pointing at the door behind me, and it wasn’t long before I fumbled one too many times and dropped my only source of light.
“No no no no…” I mewed. But there was no time to look for it. I had to get out and I had to get out fast! I couldn’t see but I was sure I could hear something climbing up those stairs. Not the steady thump thump of human feet. No this was different. This was a rapid pitter patter of a spider, maybe. Something with hundreds of feet or hands, or God knows what, skittering along the floor and walls and ceiling, pulling itself along with a body whose mere shape would offend God.
Using all my strength I leaned hard on the bolt cutters and, at last, the bolt gave. I threw the hatch open and got just enough ambient light to see Ripley hovering at the bottom of the ladder, growling ineffectually at the doorway. I crouched down, scooped him up, and fled up the ladder so quickly that my muscles turned to jelly at the top and I fell over onto hands and knees. But still, I was out. The long corridor covered in writing was ahead of me, and at the very end a doorway capped now by the tired blue light of a full moon.
Ripley needed no encouragement. He whipped down the corridor with canine speed and I followed at a broken and stumbling crawl, eventually shouldering past the open door and collapsing onto the forest floor.
For a few seconds I drifted in and out of consciousness, but when I looked up and saw the canopy overhead moving–the branches backlit by a full moon–I snapped awake and glared down at something gripping my ankle. The hand had reached out of the dark and seized me and was slowly dragging me back into the Earth below. Whatever it was, most of its body lurked out of sight in the shadows behind the doorway, but the hand that crushed my leg was the size of my torso with an arm that looked like it belonged to a mole rat.
I struck it with my own fist. I dug my nails in. I cried and kicked and screamed, but nothing could stop it. From behind the door, something like a face grinned and leered at me with joy. It was taking its time, sure enough, pulling me in so slowly that it gave my mind all the time in the world to appreciate the nightmare that awaited me. I think if, in that moment, you’d given me a gun, I would’ve shot myself because God help me I couldn’t escape the look in Daniel’s eyes, how he’d knelt to worship this thing like a man who knew that hope or pride or joy or anything with even a hint of goodness to it was so far out of reach for him it might as well be a dream. How long was this thing going to keep them down there? How long did it intend to keep me!?
I wept like a child, feeling like my mind was slowly cracking as I tried everything to stop that fucking pulling me into the shadows. I kicked at the earth. I dug into it using my hands looking for a root or a pipe or anything to hold onto. Nothing, nothing, I did would slow it down.
I was no more than a foot from the doorway when Ripley reappeared.
A dog afraid of hoovers and plastic bags and doors that move on their own. A dog who once got stared down by a particularly feisty rabbit who stopped mid chase and turned around, baffling the predator on its tail. A dog you couldn’t even watch scary movies around…
And he lunged at that arm like he was a wolf, like he’d always been one. And while he didn’t quite break the skin, the pressure was enough to make the thing’s grip weaken and I slid my leg out. Unable to stand, I knelt and grabbed the dog and pulled as hard as I could and now that fucking thing bled at last as the pressure of the jaws and the sliding teeth ripped into its flesh. Together, at last, Ripley and I were let go and sent rolling backwards head over hells.
I wasted no time waiting or looking or processing. I heaved the dog to my chest and crawled until I passed out, making it maybe half a kilometre away. Only when I could no longer see the door did I let myself fall to the ground face first and gave up consciousness.
-
The doctors said I had pneumonia, which I suppose made some kind of sense. I might have even believed them were it not for the Sheriff’s visit, asking strange questions of me as I lay in bed about what I may or may not have seen. I dismissed them to the best of my ability. I wasn’t interested in chasing that particular nightmare down, figuring out if it had been real or not, at least not while I lay there half-drowning in my own infection. To be fair, I had at least some sympathy for why the police had done so little to seal that place off. I have, on occasion, thought about going and doing the job myself, but to this day I still have nightmares about being pulled into the dark beyond that door. Not just the bunker door, the one I narrowly avoided at the end, but the one below. What I saw was a kind of madness, I’m sure of it, and I often think of Daniel’s words.
It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity.
Somehow, the Vances were that opportunity. Maybe they built their bunker on a leyline, or a weak spot between dimensions, or the site of former Satanic rituals. I’m not sure it even matters. They went into the dark thinking it’d be a safe place to wait out the world’s troubles, but something had been down there waiting for them, waiting for a chance to get at a family of seven people, to lock them in and deprive them of escape and slowly take from them everything it could.
I’ve moved since then. Couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the memories you see. It was the short-wave radio I kept in my basement. Something my father passed onto me when I was just a boy. God I’d forgotten about it… at least until I woke up one day to the sound of it blaring white noise down in the dark.
And buried in that sound was the faint whispering of a man, his voice barely recognisable, but unmistakably his.
…let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go…

Can anyone provide me the obituary page for the Long Beach Press-Telegram for September 23, 1941?
TYIA!

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/at-20th-anniversary-of-u-s-invasion-of-iraq-we-renew-our-call-for-reparations-and-accountability
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement:
Twenty years after the U.S. government invaded Iraq, we renew our call for reparations for those harmed as a result of the U.S.’s unlawful act of aggression in its cruel, senseless, and baseless war-for-profit. Ten years ago, we teamed up with Iraqi civil society groups and U.S. service members to demand redress, and this need only becomes more urgent as the incalculable human toll of the war continues to grow: hundreds of thousands dead, some two million disabled, some nine million displaced, environmental devastation, countless people tortured, traumatized, or otherwise harmed in ways unseen, occupation and embrace of torture as policy in the so-called “war on terror,” and an entire generation that was born and raised in only war. Reparations are rooted in precedent and international law, as well as a strong tradition of justice-based organizing by civil rights movements, and we should not let the difficulty of securing justice deter us from seeking it – for Iraqis and for all others harmed by U.S. imperialism, exploitation, and genocide.
Justice also entails accountability for the perpetrators of these horrific crimes, including those responsible for the torture at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers in Iraq, as well as those tortured and detained in the larger “war on terror.” Since 2004, we have filed three separate lawsuits against U.S-based military contractors on behalf of Iraqis tortured in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. In Al Shimari v. CACI, three Iraqis enter the 15th year of their effort to seek damages from a company whose employees directed and participated in a conspiracy to commit numerous illegal and depraved acts, from abuse involving dogs, to sexual assault, to beatings that broke bones and injured genitals. We sued another private contractor, Erik Prince and his company Blackwater, for killing and injuring Iraqi civilians, obtaining a settlement on behalf of some victims of the Nisour Square massacre. Legal efforts against high-level political and military leaders for the invasion itself and the many crimes committed in the “war on terror” pose a different set of challenges, as demonstrated by our efforts to hold high-level Bush-administration officials accountable at the International Criminal Court for crimes in or arising out of the war in Afghanistan or under universal jurisdiction. Those of us pursuing accountability can draw inspiration from activists in other countries like Argentina and Guatemala who waged successful campaigns over several decades.
As we call for justice for Iraqis, we stand in solidarity with all people who live in countries targeted by U.S. imperialism, and in particular, in Afghanistan, whose civilians have been subjected to endless war and destruction, politicization, and then abandonment of human rights protections, and state-facilitated humanitarian suffering. They include not only those killed and maimed by the U.S. military and its proxies but also those harmed by U.S. sanctions and coups, corporate plunder and extraction, and austerity regimes imposed by U.S.-dominated colonial institutions like the IMF. It also includes Palestinians, who are subjugated by Israel, a U.S. imperial outpost. Grounded in white supremacy and driven by the imperatives of capitalism, U.S. imperialism often receives broad support, including from some who identify as anti-war.
Indeed, Congress continues its overbroad authorizations for use of military force. Such authorizations must be repealed, and the unlawful policies of endless war and militarization must be replaced with international-law-based, rights-respecting policies and practices. But just this month, the House voted 414-2 to maintain unilateral sanctions on Syria even though – or because – they have caused widespread suffering and hindered earthquake relief efforts. The U.S. has imposed similar deadly sanctions on Cuba for decades. Such manifestations of imperialism differ from the war on Iraq only in degree. Indeed, deadly sanctions on Iraq were a precursor to the U.S. invasion.
We also stand with people in the U.S. harmed by imperialism. The trillions of dollars spent on militarism and criminalization abroad and in the U.S. must be reallocated to address the material needs and fulfill the human rights of our most marginalized communities. Furthermore, and in feeding Islamophobia, the U.S. “war on terror” has always faced inward as well as outward as the government uses it to reinforce oppression through immigration restrictions, racial and religious profiling, and mass surveillance. Meanwhile, U.S police are increasingly employing the tactics and weapons of war, often honed through collaborative trainings with other countries’ militaries. In response to the 2020 uprising against police violence, political leaders and police departments dubbed Black Lives Matter protesters “terrorists” and proposed to “hunt them down the way we do those in the Middle East.” Militarism threatens Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color in the United States in another way: by incubating white nationalist killers. U.S. warmaking has long fed fascism at home. It’s no wonder, then, that some of the strongest domestic opposition to wars can be found in communities of color and social justice movements. Oppression in the United States and imperialism are intertwined, and resistance to each, must be as well.
On this ignominious anniversary, we recommit to our vision of a world in which revolutionary movements across countries and continents struggle together for liberation from U.S. imperialism and all other oppressive systems of power.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. CCR is committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.