Chapter 1

I applied for this maintenance position online a little over a month ago. The job listing was incredibly vague. It asked for basic electrical knowledge, comfort with extreme heights, a willingness to work in isolation, and the ability to follow strict operational protocols. The pay offered was staggeringly high. It was the kind of money that clears all your debts in a single year. I was desperate, broke, and entirely out of options, so I ignored the glaring red flags and accepted the position.

The employer did not give me an office address for an interview. They just sent an automated email confirming my start date and told me a hired driver would pick me up from my apartment.

The driver arrived in a dark SUV with tinted windows. He did not speak to me. He just opened the back door, waited for me to throw my duffel bag inside, and started driving. We drove for eight hours into a remote, high-altitude mountain range. I do not even know what state we ended up in. We crossed state lines at least twice, but the roads eventually turned from asphalt to gravel, and then to dirt. We wound endlessly upward through incredibly dense pine forests until we reached a massive, flat clearing cut directly out of the trees.

In the center of the clearing stood a communications tower. It was a massive steel structure, stretching hundreds of feet into the sky, covered in satellite dishes and blinking aviation lights. At the base of the tower was a tall chain-link perimeter fence topped with razor wire. Inside the fence was a square, windowless concrete building.

That was the ground-level maintenance bunker. And that is where I met my trainer.

The driver parked outside the gate, unlocked the doors, and drove away the second my boots hit the dirt.

My trainer was standing on the other side of the chain-link fence. He looked like a man who had not slept a full night in a decade. His skin was leathery and pale, his eyes were completely bloodshot, and he flinched at the sound of the SUV driving away. He did not introduce himself, or even offer his name, and he did not ask for mine. He just unlocked the gate, ushered me inside, locked it behind me, and handed me a clipboard with a laminated checklist.

"You check the fuel levels in the back generator every morning,"

he said, his voice raspy and exhausted.

"You climb the tower and calibrate the uplink dishes at noon. You walk the perimeter fence and check for breaches before the sun goes down. That is the routine. You do not deviate from it."

I nodded, looking around the desolate, silent clearing. The wind whistling through the tower struts was the only sound.

"Are we the only ones up here?"

"Yes,"

he replied, his eyes constantly darting toward the dense tree line surrounding the fence.

"We are the only humans within fifty miles. No one is coming up here to check on us. It is just you and me."

He took me inside the bunker to show me the layout.

The bunker was strictly utilitarian and built to withstand a bomb blast. There were no windows. The walls were thick, poured concrete. The interior was divided into two main sections. The front section was the living quarters. It had harsh fluorescent lights, two metal cots, a small kitchenette with canned food, a bathroom stall, and a large desk holding a two-way radio console.

The main entrance to the living quarters was a massive steel access door that led outside to the clearing. It had three sliding deadbolts on the inside.

The back section of the bunker was the generator room. It was separated from the living quarters by a secondary reinforced metal door. Inside the back room sat a massive, deafeningly loud industrial diesel generator that provided power to the entire facility and the tower outside.

There was also a secondary way in and out of the bunker. In the ceiling of the living quarters, right above the desk, was a metal roof hatch. A steel ladder went from the floor, straight up the wall, and opened onto the flat roof of the bunker. From the roof, you could directly access the metal stairs leading up the exterior of the radio tower.

Before we went to sleep on that first night, my trainer sat me down at the small metal table in the kitchenette. He looked entirely serious. His hands were shaking slightly.

"There is one rule you never break while you are stationed here,"

he said, leaning forward.

"Sometimes, a thick fog rolls over this mountain. It does not happen like normal weather. It happens instantly. When you see the fog drop, you get inside this bunker, and you lock the main steel access door."

"Okay,"

I said, thinking it was some kind of severe high-altitude weather hazard.

"Is it a temperature drop thing? Does the air get too thin?"

"No,"

he said flatly, his bloodshot eyes staring right through me.

"Just listen to me. You lock the door. And no matter what you hear outside, you do not open it."

I frowned, confused by his phrasing.

"What do you mean, no matter what I hear?"

"You will hear things in the fog,"

he said.

"Voices. People asking for help. People screaming. You ignore them. You stay inside, you keep the deadbolts thrown, and you wait until the fog lifts."

I thought he was trying to haze the new guy. I thought it was a joke to scare me on my first night in the middle of nowhere.

"When does the fog normally come?"

I asked, expecting a punchline.

My trainer laughed. It was a dry, hollow, terrifying sound. "No one knows. It comes when they are hungry."

I did not understand what he meant, but I agreed to the rule just to end the conversation.

For the next three weeks, everything was completely normal. The work was incredibly boring but physically demanding. Every morning, I went into the back room to check the diesel lines. At noon, I climbed the dizzying metal stairs of the tower to scrape ice off the satellite dishes. In the evening, I walked the inside of the perimeter fence, looking for broken links or signs of animal damage.

My trainer rarely spoke to me during those three weeks. He was deeply withdrawn. He spent hours locked in the back generator room by himself. Even over the roar of the diesel engine, I could hear a strange scraping sound echoing through the metal door. It sounded like someone dragging a sharp screwdriver across a steel plate, over and over again. When I asked him what he was doing in there, he just glared at me and told me to focus on my checklists.

He was always anxious. He constantly watched the tree line when we were outside. He even kept a loaded shotgun leaning against the wall next to his cot. I started to think he was suffering from extreme paranoia, a psychological break caused by the intense isolation of the job. I planned to request a transfer the moment my first month was up.

A week ago, we had a false alarm. I was eating lunch at the desk when the temperature in the room suddenly dropped. My trainer leaped out of his cot, racked the shotgun, and sprinted to the main steel door, slamming the deadbolts shut. He stood with his back against the metal, breathing heavily. But no fog came. It was just a normal storm rolling over the peaks. He stayed by the door for three hours, gripping the gun, refusing to speak.

That incident made me realize how broken he was. He was terrified of something out there.

Yesterday afternoon, the routine shattered permanently.

It was around two o'clock. The sky was entirely clear, and the sun was shining brightly over the mountains. I was on the flat roof of the bunker, sorting through a toolbox to find a specific wrench for the tower uplink.

My trainer had gone outside to walk the perimeter fence. He carried his handheld two-way radio on his belt. The base station radio was turned on inside the bunker right below me.

I looked down over the edge of the roof and saw him standing near the southern corner of the chain-link fence, examining a section of wire.

Then, the air changed.

One second, the sky was perfectly clear. The next second, a dense, unnatural, blinding gray fog dropped over the entire mountain. It was so thick and sudden that it looked like a gray sheet being thrown over a camera lens. `instantly. The temperature plummeted so fast my breath turned to vapor, and a suffocating silence fell over the clearing. The wind just stopped.

I remembered his one rule.

I dropped my tools on the roof, ran to the metal roof hatch, grabbed the handle, and pulled it open. I scrambled down the internal ladder, dropping straight down the shaft into the bunker's living quarters.

I hit the concrete floor and immediately slammed the roof hatch shut above me, spinning the locking wheel tight.

I turned around, expecting my trainer to be sitting on his cot, or standing by the desk.

But the room was completely empty.

I looked at the main steel access door leading outside to the clearing. It was opened so I closed it and the three heavy deadbolts were thrown into the locked position.

Before I could even process his absence, the radio console on the desk erupted with piercing static.

Then, I heard his voice.

"Help!"

my trainer screamed through the radio speaker.

"Open the door! Oh god, please, open the door!"

I froze entirely. I stared at the locked door. I grabbed the radio microphone from the desk.

"Where are you?"

I yelled into the mic.

"I am inside! The door is locked!"

"I am right outside!"

he shrieked. The panic in his voice was raw, guttural, and absolutely terrifying. It sounded like a man who was experiencing unimaginable agony.

"I am bleeding out! My leg is gone! It took my leg! Please, just throw the bolts and help me!"

I stood paralyzed. I remembered his warning from my first night.

“No matter what you hear outside, you do not open it. You will hear people screaming. You ignore them.”

But this was not a random voice in the mist. This was my partner. This was a real person, communicating with me through the company radio, and he was dying just a few feet away from me. I could hear the wet, tearing sounds of him dragging his body against the dirt outside the bunker. I could hear him sobbing.

I could not just stand there in the warm, well-lit room and listen to him bleed to death in the freezing fog. I threw the rule completely out of my mind, and convinced myself the rule was meant for strangers, not for my partner.

I ran to the main access door, grabbed the top deadbolt and threw it back, then grabbed the middle bolt and threw it back, and finally I unlocked the bottom bolt.

I grabbed the metal handle and pulled the door open.

A wall of thick, freezing gray mist poured into the bunker, rolling across the concrete floor. I could not see anything past the doorframe.

"Reach out!"

I screamed into the fog, squinting against the mist. "Grab my hand! I cannot see you!"

A hand emerged from the gray fog.

It was pale, incredibly long, and covered in gray dirt.

I reached out and grabbed it.

The moment my fingers wrapped tightly around the wrist, every instinct in my brain screamed that I had made a fatal mistake. The skin was freezing cold, completely devoid of body heat. The joint felt rigid, stiff, and unnatural, like gripping a thick wooden branch wrapped in wet leather.

But the adrenaline was pumping too hard for my muscles to stop the momentum. I planted my boots firmly on the concrete floor, leaned my entire body weight backward, and yanked the figure inside the bunker with all the strength I had.

The tall figure stumbled past me, crossing the threshold and entering the brightly lit room.

I did not look at it right away. I threw my weight against the steel door, slamming it shut to block out the fog. I threw all three deadbolts back into the locked position, then turned around, gasping for air, expecting to see my trainer collapsed on the floor, bleeding from a severed leg.

That is not what I saw.

Standing in the center of the room, under the harsh, flickering fluorescent lights of the bunker, was not a human being.

It was a towering, emaciated entity. It stood at least eight feet tall, forcing it to hunch its upper back unnaturally just to fit beneath the ceiling. Its skin was entirely pale, slick, and hairless, looking like wet silicone stretched too tightly over sharp, jagged bones.

Its limbs were horrifyingly wrong. The arms hung down past its knees, but they had too many joints. They bent in zigzag patterns, possessing extra elbows that angled in ways that defied basic anatomy. The fingers were incredibly long, ending in sharp, bone-white points.

But the most terrifying part of the creature was its head.

It had no face. There were no eyes, no nose, no mouth, and no ears. The front of its skull was a perfectly smooth, featureless slope of pale skin.

Instead of a face, the front of its long, pale neck was split wide open. Inside the split flesh was a complex, pulsing, wet organ made of vibrating membranes, shifting cartilage, and thick vocal cords.

The entity stood perfectly still in the center of the living quarters. It did not breathe. The organ in its open neck vibrated rapidly, the membranes fluttering together.

"I am bleeding out! My leg is gone! It took my leg! Please, just throw the bolts and help me!"

The voice echoing in the small room was flawless. It was a perfect, crystal-clear recording of my trainer’s terrified screams.

I backed away slowly, sliding my shoulders along the concrete wall. My entire body went numb with paralyzing shock.

The creature slowly turned its smooth, featureless head toward me. It lacked eyes, but I knew it was staring directly at me. It slowly raised one of its multi-jointed arms, the sharp fingers twitching rhythmically.

It took a slow, dragging step forward.

I did not scream. I knew screaming would not help. I turned and sprinted toward the back of the bunker.

I ran toward the generator room, grabbed the handle of the secondary metal door, and threw it open. I threw myself inside the deafeningly loud room and slammed the door shut behind me. I spun the heavy locking wheel in the center of the door, driving the interior bolts deep into the frame, sealing myself inside.

The massive diesel generator was humming loudly in the center of the floor, vibrating the entire room.

A second later, a massive impact hit the door.

The entire metal frame buckled slightly inward. The creature was slamming its weight against the steel.

"Help!"

the voice screamed from the other side, muffled slightly by the metal.

"Open the door! Please!"

I backed away from the door until my shoulders hit the far wall. The generator room was incredibly cramped. There was the massive metal generator housing, a stack of red toolboxes, and the wall behind me.

I felt a rough, uneven texture pressing against my back.

I turned around and looked closely at the wall.

The steel plates covering the walls of the room were covered in thousands of tiny, frantic, jagged scratches.

I grabbed a flashlight from the top of the toolbox and shined the beam directly onto the wall. The scratches were words, sentences, and paragraphs. Entire daily logs etched deeply into the metal with a sharp screwdriver.

This was the scraping sound I had heard my trainer making over the past three weeks.

I stepped closer and started reading the etched words.

“August 12th. They are called Sky-Fishers. I know now that they live in the highest peaks of the range, create the fog to blind us, and emit it from their pores like smoke. They mimic our voices to lure us out of the safe zones, but they do not eat the flesh, I saw them leave the meat to rot in the mud, and only harvest the vocal cords. They rip the throat out while you are still screaming, so they can record the agony, and then add the voices to their collection to hunt the next one. Do not listen to the screams.”

I moved the flashlight beam to the next metal panel. The handwriting here became more erratic, dug much deeper into the steel, as if he was angry when he wrote it.

“October 4th. The agency knows they are here. The people who hired us know exactly what lives in this fog. They built this bunker specifically for this exact purpose. I think the radio tower is a sonic jammer, broadcasting a high-frequency that keeps the creatures from spreading down the mountain toward the populated valleys. We are the wardens. We are the watchers. If the creatures ever bypass the fence and move toward the towns, we have a red button under the desk. We are supposed to press it, call the airstrike, and die with them. We are just expendable guards.”

A loud, screeching sound echoed through the small room. The entity on the other side of the door was dragging its sharp, bone-white fingers down the outside of the metal, trying to find a weak seam to pry open.

"I am inside! The door is locked!"

the entity shouted, perfectly replaying my own voice back to me.

I ignored the horror of hearing my own voice and moved the flashlight to the final panel of etchings, located right next to the diesel tank. My blood ran completely cold as I read the words.

“November 2nd. I have been here for nine years. I cannot take the silence anymore, cannot take the isolation, and the constant fear of the fog. I asked the agency for a transfer three times this year, but they said no. They said nobody leaves this post. You leave in a body bag, or you stay until you die. I have watched countless recruits die out there because I followed the rules and kept the door shut. They screamed for hours in the mist, and the agency does not care. They just send a new guy a week later to replace the dead one.

November 20th. I am sorry to whoever reads this. I am so genuinely sorry. But I figured out how they hunt. I have watched them from the roof, and I think I can out run them, but the problem, my horror, my true horror is the agency, they won’t let me leave, they need someone here to guard, so unless there is someone, they will hunt me down. I have to be dead to them. I have to get them my replacement. I sent a message to the agency requesting a new recruit, and told them the generator needed major repairs. I lied.

When the fog comes next, I will try to run, I have a personal vehicle stashed two miles down the dirt road, hidden under a tarp. I am going to finally go home. I know it is an evil thing to do. I know I am condemning an innocent kid to a horrific fate. But I am done being the warden.”

I stared at the heavily scratched words, reading the final paragraph twice to make sure I understood it.

The door separating us groaned violently under another massive impact. The creature threw its entire weight against the steel again, but the frame did not buckle.

I slid down the wall and pulled my knees to my chest, sitting right next to the roaring diesel generator.

For the next eight hours, I endured the torture.

The entity stayed right outside that steel door in the living quarters. It realized brute force wasn't working, so it switched to its real weapon. It used the voices.

"Please!"

it screamed, replaying my trainer’s terrified voice perfectly

. "It's grabbing me! Open the door!"

Then the vocal organ shifted.

"Where are you? I am inside! The door is locked!"

It cycled through them on a continuous, agonizing loop. Sometimes it would layer the recordings, creating a chorus of two men screaming for their lives in the tight, concrete room. When the voices didn't provoke me to open the lock, it resorted to physical sounds. I sat with my hands over my ears as it dragged its sharp, bone-white fingers up and down the steel door, producing a high-pitched, metallic screech that cut right through the mechanical hum of the generator.

I sat in the cramped space, breathing in the faint smell of diesel exhaust, reading my dead trainer's metal logs over and over again with my flashlight just to keep my mind grounded in reality.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the scratching stopped.

The screaming stopped.

I looked at my watch. It was 6:00 AM.

I didn't dare open the metal door to the living quarters. I didn't know if the creature was just standing in silence, waiting for me to make a mistake. Instead, I looked at the vertical escape ladder in the corner of the room. It went straight up a narrow concrete shaft, leading directly to the secondary roof hatch.

I grabbed the metal rungs and climbed the ladder slowly, my arms shaking from exhaustion and fear. I reached the top, unlatched the hatch, and pushed it open just a few inches to peek outside.

The unnatural gray fog was gone. It had thinned out and dissolved into the morning air, vanishing just as quickly as it had appeared, revealing the dense pine trees and the winding dirt road far below.

I pushed the hatch fully open and crawled out onto the roof.

The clearing was completely quiet now. There were no more voices asking for help. The main steel access door below me was wide open, exactly how I had left it, but the bunker was empty. The creature had retreated back into the high peaks with the dawn.

I climbed the exterior metal stairs of the radio tower until I reached the highest observation deck, three hundred feet in the air. I collapsed onto the metal grating, letting the freezing morning wind hit my face.

I pulled out my phone a few minutes ago. Because of the extreme altitude on this observation deck, and finally had a strong cellular signal. I opened my keypad. I was going to dial emergency services. I was going to call the state police, tell them about the monster, and demand a rescue helicopter.

But before I dialed, I looked down at the dirt road winding up the side of the mountain.

Three dark SUVs are currently driving up the steep switchbacks, heading directly for the clearing. They do not have police markings, or even emergency light bars on their roofs. They are just matte black vehicles with tinted windows, moving in a tight, coordinated convoy.

I remembered the words etched deeply into the metal wall next to the generator.

“The agency knows they are here. The people who hired us know exactly what lives in this fog. We are the wardens.”

They know there was an incident, and they are driving up here to assess the damage and reset the trap.

I am sitting on the highest point of the mountain, writing this post as fast as I could, as the wind is freezing my face. The black cars will reach the perimeter gate in less than five minutes.

I am not going to fight the men arriving in the black cars or run into the woods, because I know what lives out there in the high peaks now. I am going to climb down this radio tower, stand in the living quarters, and demand the men in the suits close the gate.

Because if what my trainer scratched into that wall is true, there are more of those things living in the clouds above us. They are incredibly smart, can sound exactly like the people you trust, and they are still very hungry. Someone has to maintain the sonic jammer. Someone has to lock the door when the fog rolls in.

It looks like I am the new guard now.