I was aimlessly staring at the deep cracks in the oak ceiling beams when the large clock on the stairwell behind me struck one. I glanced at the time and date on my laptop. August 11, 2025. 1:11AM. The Witching hour.

  “You’re eleven minutes off,” I chided the old clock.

  The clock didn’t reply, ticking ominously.

  The 1861 Gothic Revival mansion packed to the brim with dark wood paneling, curved stained glass arches, and far too many rooms for one person creaked ever so slightly, settling as the night brought cool air from the Pacific.

  "Aight. Let’s do just one more tweak," I muttered, rolling over to my laptop.

  My project on using CrawdGPT5 to mass-generate personalized cover letters and resumes to automatically submit them via LinkedIn was still misfiring slightly.

  The laptop screen covered in a few fingerprints reflected my tired face as I wiggled the keypad touchpad to wake up the screen.

  “Quest,” I narrated wryly. “Locate a well-paying electrical engineer job within one sixty miles driving distance of 171 Rossgoyle Street. Reward - paying my bills on time.”

  The inheritance of the aforementioned location had come at an opportune time. Rent on the Pacific Rim was getting hell-a expensive, and my savings barely covered ramen and coffee. When Grandpa Archie passed, leaving me the family semi-decrepit estate, it seemed like a blessing. Free housing, suspiciously low taxes, plenty of space for forest walks, a driveway through the pine wood that'd probably take a thousand years to shovel when winter came.

  Compared to the overcrowded student campus at UOFSE, the isolation provided by the old mansion in the woods was… nice.

  The nearest neighbor was seven miles down the winding road, and the small town of Cascade was a fifteen-minute drive through dense pine Darkbrook forest valley. The house itself sat perilously close to the edge of Darkfall Valley, where the land simply dropped away into a misty abyss, surrounded on three sides by glacier mountains and hugged by the Pacific Ocean.

  My eyes drifted to the stack of semi-unpacked boxes in the corner.

  I've been here three days and was nowhere close to truly claiming the house as a home, preoccupied with finding work to pay the bills and future renovation costs of this monstrosity of a house. The ornate moldings, the stained glass transoms above each doorway, the creeping sensation that the carved figures in the banisters turned to watch me when I passed, all of it felt like it belonged to another, long gone place and time.

  The scratching beneath me started softly at first.

  A gentle scrape against wood. I dismissed it as the house settling again.

  Unfortunately for me, it came more insistently. This time, deliberate, rhythmic scratching resonated from beneath my dark gothic columned, four poster bed.

  Something… alive and annoying was trying to claw its way across the floor from underneath.

  Great. Just what I needed. Some kind of wild animal had found its way inside the old decrepit estate with more entry points than I could count.

  I moved on the bed, tiredly praying one last time for the noise to be just a figment of my sleep-deprived imagination.

  The scratching paused for a split second, then resumed, more insistently.

  Oh, you picked the wrong mansion to invade tonight, buddy, I thought as I reached for the bedside table. I've got a large broom somewhere and the animal control one Goodle search away.

  My fingers closed around my X-TORC tablet, the brick of a phone-tablet, waterproof and drop-proof. I ordered the tablet from Gbay as I was prone to dropping things out of my hands when distracted and managed to smash my previous phone screen into a glitchy dark spiderweb at the end of summer.

  Most importantly, the worker-man’s tablet had an industrial-grade LED dual flashlight that, according to the marketing description, illuminated a power line a hundred feet in the air.

  Let's see if you're Team Mouse, Squirrel, Raccoon, or Possum. Place your bets now! Drumroll…

  I pressed on the orange flashlight button, aiming it toward the floor as I leaned over.

  The two 50’000 lumens triangles on the back of the device ignited with the intensity of a small sun, filling the room with harsh white light.

  "FUCK, what the fuck that's so bright!" a female voice yelped.

  The first thing I saw was the antlers. I dropped the tablet onto the thing sticking out halfway from under my bed when I heard it speak.

  “Ackk!” The antlered-girl cried out as the brick of a device landed on her forehead.

  I reached down and picked up the tablet, my face slack at my unexpected bedroom invader.

  Two long, spindly arms shot out from beneath the bed frame, rubbing furiously at the black forehead dotted with silver stars. Black mane composed from dark feathers splayed across the floor. More fur populated an elongated face that gradually transitioned from a void-black nose to star-like silver freckles along gray-black cheeks.

  Worst of all, antlers, yes, actual goddamn antlers stretched out from her head, covered in the same black and silver stardust fuzz.

  As the thing rubbed its forehead, I simply stared, struggling to process what I was seeing.

  The alien on my floor had the general shape of a woman, but her face was elongated, almost like an elk skull, features too sharp and angular. Large hands with spindly, long fingers that ended in Vantablack claws covered tightly shut eyes struggling to block out the blinding light.

  My brain crashed, rebooted, and then presented me with a single shocking thought: Cryptids are fucking real.

  Then another thought followed: One million dollars.

  The James Randi Foundation. The paranormal challenge. Proof of supernatural beings. A million-dollar prize.

  My fingers fumbled with the X-TORC, switching from flashlight to camera mode. The triangles winked away, leaving us in the dim, pale glow of my laptop.

  "Slayer, dude, you trying to burn away my retinas?" the cryptid groaned, slowly uncovering her eyes. They were large and silver, glowing from within like those of a cat, currently featuring an unmistakably annoyed look.

  Either this was a genuine fucking cryptid and I’d just won the lottery to cover all of my bills or this… was some kind of a stupid prank by an ass who just broke into my home dressed in all black makeup and an elk skull.

  The second conclusion put a bit of damper on my million dollar merriment.

  I started snapping photos, the flash going off in rapid succession. She hissed, once again blinded.

  I glanced at the screen and then my brain skittered sideways into the abyss.

  The display wasn't showing the alien, antlered skull beast. Instead, each photo showed a massive black dog lying on its back, paws covering its face from the light, eyes flashing silver-red.

  The enormous dog reminded me of a Black Shuck, aka the harbinger of disaster from the book of monsters my grandfather had read to me long ago, illustrated with the kind of creepy art that guaranteed children nightmares.

  I looked wildly between the tablet screen and the actual creature.

  On the floor: a naked furry girl with fucking antlers. On my screen: demonic black dog, captured with each brilliant flash.

  "Ash! Stahhhp blinding me already, fuck!" She hissed, swatting at the phone.

  Her claws managed to dislodge the tablet from my hand and it dropped on her face again with a thwack of reinforced, 2-inch thick plastic meeting flesh for a second time.

  "Motherffff…!” A string of creative profanities followed as she clutched at her face. "What the everloving fu…!?"

  She squirmed fully out from under the bed, one hand still rubbing at her face while the other pushed against the hardwood floor. As she rose to her full height, I scrambled backward until I hit the headboard.

  She was fucking tall, easily seven feet, maybe more, revealed to me in all her cryptid glory as she straightened to her full height, antlers looming overhead. Her body was alien and feminine, with curves that might have been attractive if they weren't attached to something that looked like it had walked straight out of a creepypasta.

  Her ankles were raised off the ground in a digitigrade anatomy quirk found in deer or dogs, paws tipped with wicked black claws clicking against the wooden floor as she moved about.

  "Motherfucking OW!" she continued in a voice completely at odds with her monstrous appearance, sounding like a twenty-something girl who'd just been smacked in the face twice by industrial equipment. "What did you just drop on me, you knob?”

  I pressed myself further into the headboard, staring at the eldritch horror that was now agitatedly hissing and hopping from one foot to the other, defeated by a phone.

  “A tablet?” She finally stopped whimpering and hopping after a minute. She bent down to pick up my tablet, spinning the device in her pointy claws, glowing silver eyes flickering in the dark. “Was this thing made to survive the nuclear apocalypse or something? Why the everloving fuck is it so thicc?”

  “What are you, some kind of a runaway SCP?” I finally let out.

  “Eh?”

  “A euclid class humanoid creature,” I voiced, struggling to sound like I wasn’t batshit terrified.

  She didn’t look as spooky-slenderman under the bed. Slenderwoman?

  “Still a nerd, hum?” She tilted her skull-like head like a dog, pure white, sharp canines glinting as she smiled.

  “Do we… know each other?” I squinted at her, calculating how quickly I could escape through the door down the stairwell if she decided to lunge for my throat.

  “Come on Ash,” she huffed, stepping closer and sliding the tablet onto the bed. “You don't remember your bestie… Shady?”

  "Shady..." I repeated, my heart stopping.

  The name ignited a plethora of long suppressed memories.

  My childhood. Games in the forest behind Grandpa Archi's mansion. Building cardboard forts, fighting with stick swords and telling ghost stories under a blanket fort illuminated by harvested Christmas lights.

  But those games had been with a… friend that could not possibly exist.

  A friend my parents had been very concerned about.

  "You can't be real," I choked. "You were my imaginary friend, Starshade. Shit… guess I’m having another psychotic episode, huh? Thought I was over them years ago.”

  Glowing eyes widened, then narrowed into slits. "Imaginary? Are you fucking kidding me? What the shit did they do to you?”

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  “They… Put me on antipsychotic pills so I could get better and stop ranting about you to the other, less insane children,” I crossed my arms. “You know I haven’t thought about you in like 13 years. Maybe more! Guess I gotta call Dr. Marsgrove and ask to renew my prescription, huh?"

  "Who the fuck is Dr. Marsgrove?" Shady demanded.

  "My… therapist. The one my parents took me to after I kept talking about my best friend with antlers who lived in the woods behind Grandpa's house."

  Shady's jaw dropped open, revealing even more sharp, white teeth. "They took you to a shrink because of me? Fucking hell, Ash, that’s tough."

  I nodded.

  “So what, this quack convinced you I was all in your head? That the girl who taught you how to climb the giant oak next to the cliff side and showed you fae circles was just some figment of your imagination?"

  “Yes,” I said.

  I attempted to ignore the hallucination. It was hard. Shady was an incredibly imposing presence, nothing like my lanky, thin, fuzzy 9-year-old bestie.

  She gritted her teeth, spun the tablet around and snapped a selfie sticking out her tongue to the side, the flash illuminating her face. Then, she squinted at the screen to examine the photo before tossing it at my chest. "Photographic evidence, bitch.”

  I caught the tablet and looked down at the screen. The photo showed the same massive black dog from before, but this time with its tongue lolling out in a demonic grin.

  “Why are you a dog?” I asked, flipping through the photos of the Black Shuck.

  "Your human-made jank-ass cameras don't capture my stunning beauty, don’t you remember?” She grinned.

  I switched the camera to video mode. It showed a dog standing on hind legs pawing at the front of the bed. I looked back at Shady who was now leaning against the bed.

  “Is this a digital thing? What about chemical-based cameras from the 90s?” I asked.

  “Same thing.” she shrugged. “In fact, I look like a big dog to most humans.”

  “Except for me?”

  “You’re Ash,” she said as if that explained anything.

  “Meaning what?” I outputted after a minute of silent staring. “Why can I see you? Am I a wizard? Where’s my owl, Shades?”

  Starshade chortled. “You wish, nerd. Though I'd pay good money to see you in Hogwarts robes. You'd prolly look like a depressed bat. Def’ got a… uhhh… Snape vibe going on. Should really wash your hair more often."

  "Oh, piss off, I'll have you know I'd make an excellent Ravenclaw," I said, then immediately regretted engaging with this hallucination. "Wait, why am I arguing about fictional magical school houses with my fictional friend?"

  “Rude.” She sat on the bed, making it creak. A tail covered in dark feathers tipped with silver stars swayed back and forth.

  “I recall you being skinnier, smaller, and wearing a dress,” I said. “No giant-ass antlers either.”

  “It’s called growing up, Ashy. You’re bigger in… some parts too.” She leered down at me.

  "If you're real," I challenged, "then why did you disappear for thirteen years only to show up under my bed like some discount boogeyman?"

  "Discount?" She clutched her chest in mock offense. "I'll have you know I'm a premium boogeyman. Top shelf. The Macallan 325-year of things that go bump in the night!”

  I couldn't help the snort that fled my mouth. "Answer the damn question."

  Shady sighed. Her antlers drooped slightly, casting unnerving, wobbling, long shadows on the ceiling. "I didn't disappear. You did. Your parents packed you up one summer and never brought you back again. Quite sadge really. I’ve been checking on this place every summer, yet you never came. Till today. Seeing your red jank-ass car in the driveway was the top event of my evening."

  I opened my mouth and closed it.

  More memories bubbled up out of my worn out, swampy, extra-foggy psyche.

  Grade 4. When I wouldn't shut up about my bestie Starshade, the dark, alien Princess from Omnithornia. Parents driving me to a psychiatrist. Getting prescribed anti-psychotics which made me feel drowsy and confused for years.

  Wait. Proof. I had proof. Photographic evidence.

  I grabbed my tablet and sent the photo of Shade-dog to one of my friends from Eastern Europe who was currently online on telegram. Dax replied pretty quickly.

  [Daxagon(╯°Д°）╯]: sup A. You got a dog?

  [AshLawd ?_?]: Uhhh… I guess. She was hiding under my bed at the Clifford estate.

  [Daxagon(╯°Д°）╯]: sheet, das a big doggaww. What breed?

  [AshLawd ?_?]: fuck if i know man

  [Daxagon(╯°Д°）╯]: cool beans, gib her many pets 4 me

  Warm breath ticked the back of my neck. Shady moved unnervingly close, large, deep, silver eyes peering at my phone. “See? I’m real.”

  A real dog maybe. Did my hallucinations extend to text messages?

  "Seriously, why were you under my bed?" I went on the offensive.

  Shady suddenly became very interested in examining her claws. "No reason."

  "Starshade…"

  "Fine! I was going to scare the absolute bejesus out of you as a welcome home prank," she admitted, then added, cheeks flashing with silver sparks. “Except, I fell asleep like an idiot cus you weren’t coming up, just typedy-typing on your laptop downstairs. Finally heard you moving above me on the bed, woke up, made noises climbing out and got blinded and smacked in the face… twice.”

  “You a nocturnal critter or something?”

  “What? No! M’ crepuscular!”

  That’s a word I haven’t heard in ages. “You’re creepy allright.”

  “It means I’m most active at twilight, dumbass,” she rolled her eyes.

  "I knew that," I fired back.

  "Sure, Mr. Electrical Engineering graduate," she snorted.

  I squinted at her. "How do you even know about my diploma and car color?"

  "Hello? Social media exists? Your Instagram is public, and your LinkedIn profile might as well be a billboard. 'Ashcroft Clifford, future electrical engineer, caffeine addict, occasional existential crisis haver.' I even liked a couple of your photos where you sat on your car hood in front of the SF bridge trying to look cool and not nerdy."

  "You have... social media?" I asked incredulously. "What do you even post? 'Today's forest aesthetic: dead squirrel and mysterious glowing mushrooms'? Whoever even let you on the internet?”

  “I let myself on the internet. Anyone can sign up for Instagram. Darkbrook public library has a computer lab that’s pretty easy to sneak into at 12 AM.”

  I suddenly pictured the ‘On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog’ meme, as I imagined a security guard noticing Starshade using the computer lab via the camera feed.

  "So you've been lurking around Darkbrook for over a decade, breaking into libraries, and waiting for me to come back?"

  “I don’t 'lurk', dude. I 'maintain a strategic presence.'"

  I pictured Starshade hunched comically over a small library computer in the dead of night, massive antlers barely clearing the ceiling, claws click-clacking against the human-sized keyboard as she scrolled through my Instagram, liking random pics.

  “So you’ve been stalking me online?”

  "Not the whole time. Just… sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  “To keep track of my bestie.” She stretched out on the bed, one lanky hand grabbing at my thigh and petting softly. “I missed you, dude. Come on, tell me how much you missed me!”

  She felt warm and soft. Inhumanly so. Fuzzy. Fussy hands with jet-black paw pads. I looked at her through the phone’s screen. A massive black dog was lying across the bed, one paw on my thigh. I reached out and prodded an antler that didn’t exist on the viewfinder. Shady let out a soft ‘burr’ noise.

  “Fuck my life. Are… cryptids real or do I need to call my psychiatrist tomorrow,” I muttered mostly to myself, rubbing my face tiredly.

  “Ashy stahhhp askin’ dum’ questions and lie down. I wanna cuddle. You know, like, old times in our blanket fort?”

  She wasn’t real. Starshade just couldn’t be real. The absurdity of a massive cryptid demanding cuddles only made me lean towards the hypothesis that I was completely insane.

  Occam’s razor suggested that my grandfather left a dog in the house and my overworked, sleep deprived mind was hallucinating or dreaming up this whole batshit crazy conversation.

  “Shade, seriously what the fuck are you? Some kind of deer-person?"

  “I’m whatevs you want me to be, Ashy.”

  “That’s not an answer, damn it. Are you a local-born monsteress or a space alien? Is Omnithornia real?”

  “Like, chairs are real, right?” She yawned. “But if I close my eyes… no chairs.”

  “That’s not how reality works.”

  “Bold of you to assume how reality works,” she said, and then reached out and pulled me down into her fuzzy embrace.

  “Hey, you can’t just...”

  “Dibs,” she announced, settling her silver star-dusted fuzz against my side.

  “What?”

  “Princess law. I called dibs on you ages ago. Very binding.”

  “That’s not a thing.”

  “Can’t prove it isn’t.” She wiggled against me, smooshing me deeper into her embrace. “The paperwork’s in another dimension.”

  “Shady…”

  She yawned again, tail curling around me. “Night, Ashy. Try not to dream about War-Gunner and spreadsheets.”

  As her breathing evened out, I stared at her oversized body and wondered if this was what madness felt like: warm, fuzzy, and deeply committed to smothering me in her embrace.

  My mind refused to go to sleep, working overtime trying to rationalize what was happening:

  Hypothesis 1: Complete psychotic break. The stress of unemployment, the isolation of the mansion combined with the sleep deprivation produced a mental health speedrun. Except psychotic episodes didn't usually come with consistent physical sensations. The soft fuzz against my skin, the weight of her arm across my chest, the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing. It was all too coherent, too persistent.

  Hypothesis 2: Carbon monoxide poisoning. Old house, probably ancient heating system. I made a mental note to check for CO detectors in the morning. If I survived the night.

  Hypothesis 3: I'd fallen asleep beside my laptop and this was all an elaborate stress dream. Except I could feel the individual threads of my worn, gray t-shirt, smell the faint pine scent clinging to Shady's fur, hear and see the old clock in the hall ticking eleven minutes behind schedule. Dreams weren't usually this granular, and didn't portray clocks properly.

  Hypothesis 4: Starshade was some kind of supernatural entity that only I could properly perceive. Which meant either I was special in some cosmic horror protagonist way, or...

  "Dude, your brain's making that whirring noise again," Shady mumbled against my shoulder without opening her eyes.

  "My brain doesn't make noise."

  "Does to me. Like… Whirrrrr-click-click-whirrrr. Very distracting when I'm trying to sleep."

  I tried to shift away, but her tail was wrapped tight around my leg. "How can you hear my thoughts?"

  “Brain hooks catch onto stray thoughts.”

  “What?”

  She didn’t reply, seemingly asleep.

  Hypothesis 5: Starshade was some kind of extraterrestrial entity. An alien scout, perhaps, sent to study human behavior through prolonged observation. It would explain the weirdly casual familiarity with human pop culture, the Instagram stalking, the Garry Cotter references. Maybe she was like those aliens from Third Stone from the Sun, fumbling through human social conventions while gathering intelligence for some intergalactic survey. The way she spoke, all modern slang and stupid teasing jokes felt less like a forest cryptid and more like someone who'd learned English from binge-watching Netflix and scrolling through social media. Surely, no genuine self-respecting cryptid would make Bogwarts house jokes or call dibs on someone using "Princess law."

  "Ughhhhh," Shady made a long, bothered groan, swatting at me half-heartedly. “Shhh. You're thinking too loud.”

  Her words triggered something deep in my memory, like a key turning in a long-unused lock.

  "You're thinking too loud! Pipe down!" Nine-year-old Starshade said, small fuzzy hands making swirling motions in the air between us. She'd been wearing a black dress dotted with silver stars, antlers just tiny nubs poking through her wild, feathery mane. "My brain hooks are like... invisible fishing lines. They float around looking for thoughts to grab onto."

  “Well, don’t grab onto me.”

  "I can’t control it. It’s like… breathing, you kno’? Like, you're thinking about... chocolate chip cookies now!"

  I had indeed been thinking about the cookies.

  “Try to think about nothing.”

  “And that'll work?”

  “Just try, Ashy. After you learn to think about nothing, you gotta learn to split your mind into two. Front thinks about random nonsense. Back thinks about stuff you actually want to do. This way we can play games without me hooking all the thoughts outta you and ruining the fun!”

  The memory hung there like it had been waiting thirteen years for me to need it again. It was connected to other memories of Shady smacking me with her tail, forcing me to practice splitting my mind again and again.

  I closed my eyes, trying to summon the old mental gymnastics routine which my younger self had apparently mastered.

  “Front mind, back mind. Like separating egg whites from yolk,” she stated. “The trick is to let the front part go all floaty and stupid while the back part does the real hidden thinking! I’ll pry some stuff apart with my hooks in your head to help you along, but you gotta be the one who actually divides your brain in half!”

  I started with breathing. Deep, slow breaths that reminded me of those summer afternoons in the blanket fort, sunlight filtering through the trees outside while Shady taught me her alien mind games. Or what my therapist would have called "dissociative episodes brought on by childhood trauma." Except I hadn't had any trauma.

  Just a cryptid best friend who could somehow hear my thoughts.

  The front of my mind began to fill with white noise. Something akin to TV static mixed with the mental equivalent of elevator music. Harmless, meaningless fuzz. Behind such, my genuine thoughts continued their analysis.

  Hypothesis: Mind reading magic is real. I split my mind with Starshade’s help thirteen years ago. Now I could use this skill to protect myself from things like her if more of her kind existed out there. Things that went bump in the night and read human thoughts.

  It was disturbingly easy, like my brain had been waiting for permission to split itself again. The muscle memory of madness, perfectly preserved. Just like learning to ride a bike, the mental skill snapped back into existence.

  Can you still hear me? I thought deliberately, keeping it in the back section of my mind.

  No response. Just her steady breathing.

  Testing, testing, one-two-three. Starshade is a giant dork who probably practices her dramatic entrances in the mirror.

  Still nothing. Her tail twitched slightly, but that could have been coincidence.

  Despite the escalating lunacy of my situation, exhaustion won out. Shady’s warmth enveloped me like a living blanket.

  I fought to keep my eyes open, a million more questions, hypotheticals and plans swirling in my mind, but eventually exhaustion claimed me.

  Tomorrow… surely everything would make sense tomorrow.

  Drawing art for this book on Twitch:

  Lenika,

  More fun stuff about the art for this series:

  VERY specialized, smaller, personal tool, made entirely from .

  a diffusion process like this [a custom image generative network that's trained from scratch using my own data]. This model utilizes madelbulb renders + 10 terabytes of photography I shot over past 20 years in my urbex trips across Canada, USA, Europe and Siberia + 800 gigabytes of 3d models designed or 3d scanned myself + . It is the only one of its kind since it's 100% made by me.

  Shady & Ash in Clifford Estate, concept sketch from Lenika:

  Character concept art dev: