Chapter 1

before they get you

Before I say anything I want you to remember these three words: White. Biscuit. Denominator.

Read them thrice or twenty times or even a hundred times. Doesn't matter how many times, don't rush.

You've memorized them now? Go read it again. Be patient. These three words could save your life.

Once you're confident enough that you absolutely wouldn't forget these words, continue reading.

***

I'm writing this at 4:52 in the morning because twenty minutes ago I tried to say my sister's name and couldn't. I know her name. I've known it my whole life. I opened my mouth to call her and there was just nothing there, a hole where a word used to be, and I sat on the edge of my bed for a full minute with my heart going and going before it came back to me. Sarah. That's her name. Obviously that's her name.

I haven't slept since.

So I'm doing the thing I do now, which is write this down and hope one more person memorizes those three words before I lose the ability to explain why they matter. I've done this four times already, on four different forums, in four different phrasings. Two of them got taken down. I don't know why. I don't know who's taking them down.

I found the original post almost two years ago, on some low-traffic paranormal board I'd bookmarked and forgotten about, the kind of place with maybe forty active users and half of them arguing about EVPs. The post had eleven replies, most of them jokes. It was short. Two words, stacked on top of each other like a grocery list:

White.

Biscuit.

Underneath, in smaller text: *Memorize these. If you suddenly forget one, don't panic. Read the words again. That's it.*

I laughed. I want to be honest about that, because it matters later. I didn't take it seriously, I didn't memorize anything, I read it once the way you read a fortune cookie and closed the tab and went to bed thinking about something else entirely.

Three hours later I went to text a friend and couldn't remember what color his car was. Not important information. The kind of thing you'd never think to memorize on purpose. But I stood there with my thumb over the keyboard feeling the exact shape of the memory without any of its content, like a word on the tip of your tongue except it wasn't a word, it was a color, and colors don't just leave you.

I went looking for the post. It wasn't there. Not deleted, I know what a deleted thread looks like on that kind of board, there's usually a placeholder, a little "this content has been removed" ghost of itself. This was just gone, like the URL had never existed, like I'd made the whole board up. I spent twenty minutes on it before I told myself I was being stupid and went back to bed.

Nothing happened that night. I want to be clear about that too, because I think it's supposed to make you relax, and I don't think that's an accident.

Three days later, brushing my teeth, the second word came back to me on its own. *Biscuit.* I actually laughed around the toothbrush, said it out loud, felt briefly, stupidly proud of myself for remembering something I hadn't even tried to hold onto.

That's when I remembered the rest of the instruction. The part I'd skimmed past because it hadn't seemed important yet.

*If you suddenly forget one, don't panic.*

I'd forgotten the color of a car. I'd gotten it back. I told myself those were two unrelated things and I mostly believed it, for a while.

The date doesn't seem to matter, mine wasn't marked by anything, no anniversary, no full moon, nothing I could find a pattern in afterward no matter how hard I looked. What I can tell you is that it happens between midnight and three. I checked my phone before I fell asleep. 12:41. I remember because I almost texted someone the time, as a joke, *if I disappear it happened around now,* and then I didn't, because it felt stupid to type out.

There was no dream before it. No sense of drifting off or waking up. I was in my bed and then I was standing, fully upright, fully awake, on a wooden stage I'd never seen before, in a room so dark I couldn't find its edges.

One light. It was on him.

I don't have a clean word for his face. Melted is the closest I've gotten and I've had two years to think about it. His skin looked like something that had been left too near a heat source and pulled slowly downward while it was still soft, his cheeks hanging further than a face should let them, his mouth stretched into something that used to be a smile before whatever happened to him kept pulling it sideways. One eye sat higher than the other. The lower one was nearly shut. I couldn't see it move and I knew, immediately and with total certainty, that it was on me.

There were children somewhere behind the light. I never saw them clearly, not once, in any of the three times, just motion at the very edge of what I could make out, small shapes crossing and recrossing, a kind of laughter that didn't sound quite right, not cruel exactly but not entirely like children either.

Don't look at them. I need you to actually hear that, not just read it. I looked once. I'll tell you what happened, but not yet, I don't think I can write it and keep writing after, not tonight.

Keep your eyes on him. On the man. He is, as far as I can tell, the only reason I'm still here to write this, though I'll admit I've never fully worked out why that should be true. He's never told me. I've never asked. Some part of me doesn't want to know what the honest answer would sound like.

If you slip and catch a child's eyes, look back at him immediately. Don't wait. Don't apologize, don't react, just look back and hope it doesn't decide to come closer. I don't know what happens if one gets close enough. I've been lucky, or careful, or both, and I'd like to keep it that way for both of us.

There's someone behind you too. You'll know when she arrives, she doesn't announce herself so much as you'll simply become aware, all at once, that you're no longer alone back there. A hand on your shoulder sometimes. Sometimes just breath, close enough to your ear that you'll feel it before you register the sound of her laughing, quiet, almost fond, like she's in on something you aren't.

Don't turn around. I know how obvious that sounds written down in a well-lit room at five in the morning. It stops sounding obvious the moment you're actually standing there and every instinct you own is screaming at you to just look, just once, just to know. Don't. I mean that as much as I've ever meant anything.

She gets closer every time you blink. I've never been able to prove that to myself in any rigorous way, maybe she's always closing the distance and blinking just happens to be when you notice her having moved, but either explanation ends the same place, so: don't blink more than you have to. Let your eyes water. It's better than the alternative.

You have fifteen minutes, and this is where the words stop being a formality.

Say the words to yourself. Not out loud, you don't need to, and I'd rather you didn't. Say them slowly, in order, and somewhere around the second pass the word you lost will simply be there again, whole and obvious, and you'll feel briefly ridiculous for having panicked over something so easy to reclaim.

Then you build a joke out of it. Doesn't have to be good. Has to be yours, that's the only rule that seems to matter to him. Tell it. If he laughs, it's over, you're back in your bed before you understand what just happened.

If he doesn't laugh, he throws an egg.

I need to describe the smell because I think it's important and no one ever mentions it: it isn't just rotten, it's *specifically* rotten, sulfur and something sweeter underneath that's worse than the sulfur, and I've smelled it exactly three times in my life and I can still call it up perfectly if I think about it too long. It means he's heard the joke. Somewhere, from someone, at some point, he's heard it, and you have to make another one, same word, and it doesn't matter if it's worse than the first, it only has to be a joke no one has told him yet.

I've done this three times. Survived three times. The first took eleven minutes. The second, eight. The third…

I'm going to skip the third for now. I don't think I'm supposed to write about it, though I couldn't tell you who decided that, or why I believe it so completely that I'm stopping mid-sentence to obey it.

Here's the part I haven't said yet, and I've been putting it off because I don't fully understand it myself: the first post only ever had two words on it. White. Biscuit. I've gone back through my own memory of that night more times than I can count and I cannot find the moment Denominator entered it. It was simply there, already memorized, by the time I needed it on that stage. I don't know if I found it somewhere between the first trial and the second, or if it was never mine to find and it was given to me, and if so, by whom, and why that word, out of every word there is.

I used to think that not knowing was the scariest part. I don't think that anymore. I think the scariest part is that it's never once occurred to me to be afraid of not knowing. It should. It just doesn't, and that bothers me more than the man's face does, if I'm being honest, more than the woman behind me, more than any of it.

If you're reading this because a word just fell out of your head somewhere it shouldn't have — your dog's name, the street you grew up on, something that's been yours for years — don't panic yet. You have time. Probably more than I did, since I'm telling you now instead of letting you find out the way I did.

Just don't lose these.

White.

Biscuit.

Denominator.

When you're standing on that stage, look at the man. Not the children. Not whatever is behind you, no matter what it says into your ear, no matter how much it sounds like it means you well.

He's the only one who's ever let me leave. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway. I've never once asked why he does it, and it occurs to me, writing that sentence, that maybe I should have.

If I never post again, you'll know.

One more thing before you close this. Read the words again. Just to be sure.

White.

Denominator.

Sarah.

I'm sorry. That's not… that isn't right.

White. Broom. Denominator.

You still remember those, don't you?