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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Saturdead on 2024-10-05 03:07:21+00:00.
[1] - [2]
For a couple of weeks after our run-in with the contaminated apartment building, there were a lot of people coming and going. Sheriff Mason had called in the cavalry. I saw a couple of unmarked vans, and at one point, a bus - a sort of mobile base. I saw people associated with the DUC once. They were wearing a sort of battery-powered full-cover helmet that looked straight out of a cheap sci-fi flick.
Mason was too busy to be bothered, but I talked a lot with Nick. Apparently, these were the people you called in when there was something you couldn’t normally handle. Things like lactose parasites, a virus that reacted to delta waves, or a being that could camouflage itself so well that you needed a type of paranoid schizophrenia to see them. The stories he told were outright mad, but they were all second or third-hand accounts (and slightly embellished).
“I only met ‘em once back in ’13,” Nick explained. “We got containment duty. Nasty business. An eruption, or ‘localized geological event’, spewed a bunch of cave gunk into the air. Made some kind of thing go wonky. It all sort of smelled like dinner to ‘em.”
“What do you mean ‘thing?”
“I didn’t see ‘em. I just sprayed down the cars and hoped they’d go another way. But we didn’t have enough drainage, so it all just… it was a mess.”
Nick shook his head with a sigh.
“If we got these people around, there’s gonna be problems. But we got bigger problems if they ain’t here.”
Mason didn’t keep us in the loop. Most of the time he sent us out on seemingly random errands. One time we were to sit by a field of blue sunflowers, armed with shotguns, tasked to shoot anything that moved. Anything. Luckily, we didn’t see anything, but still.
Another time, he asked us to go to supermarkets in the area and buy a number of items. We were then to meet up with an associate that would handle the items and double-check for ‘statistical issues’. Didn’t sound all too bad, but I got a bit nervous when the lady we handed it to came fully geared in one of those CDC hazmat suits. There was no patch or mark; she was unaffiliated.
We also had to do bi-daily check-ins on Frog Lake. Both to make sure the frog population was in check, but also to see if someone was swimming around. It was early January, but apparently it was known to happen. The lake had ‘historical significance’ to the area, and people sometimes did strange things in it.
I remember stopping at the local gas station for a hot dog with Nick once. We’d been out to ‘check the trees for red birds’ all day, and I was getting sick and tired of being thrown around town like a wet napkin. This wasn’t policework, and I made my dissatisfaction known; at least to Nick.
“I hear ya’,” he said. “But we don’t have anyone else. The closest fire department is up in St. Cloud, and the less we talk about animal control, the better.”
“I don’t get it,” I sighed. “Sheriff just drops a weird word and all of a sudden it’s high alert for weeks on end?”
“The yearwalk thing,” Nick corrected. “Yeah. It’s gonna be months.”
“So you know what this is? A yearwalk?”
“Right,” he continued, finishing his hot dog. “It’s like an idiot holding up an ‘eat me’ sign and all kinds of weird shit shakes loose to have a bite.”
“And anyone can do this, at any time?”
“Nah, you gotta be in the right place at the right time. There’s gotta be like… an intent.”
He tapped the side of his head.
“And you gotta be an idiot.”
While the Sheriff and the higher-ups kept chasing their tails with big-picture stuff, we were the boots on the ground. Nick and I were kept in the dark about a lot of details, but we were still expected to drop everything at the drop of a hat. I mean, that’s the job, but it’s not what I signed up for.
I contemplated quitting outright. There were other jobs around Tomskog to apply for, and this just didn’t seem worth it. We were always on-call, and sometimes we’d get rung up for the most ridiculous things. Like this one time when I got a call to check on an elderly woman. I was to see if she ‘had something in her ear’. If she didn’t, I was to give her migraine medication. How is that urgent enough to wake me at 2:30 am?
But that’s the thing with Tomskog; no matter the call, it’s a coin flip between nothing, and a nightmare. And we were due for a nightmare.
One day we got a call about someone dumping trash by the side of the road. It wasn’t a priority call, but the sheriff was too busy to hand out any other orders. So yeah, Nick and I checked it out.
It was an early January morning. Sun was still rising and the snow from the previous night was still settling. Not a cloud in sight, just a light mist rising from the warming frost. The kind of weather where it feels like summer but looks like winter.
Nick pulled over and smacked the dashboard. His sunglasses looked more pink than usual.
“Up and at ‘em. We’re here.”
I stepped out to see a washing machine by the side of the road; cables and pipes and all. It looked to be a couple generations behind, but still pretty modern. The only weird thing about it was the color; it was solid black.
“I guess we just haul it off,” I said. “You got a junk yard?”
Nick wasn’t convinced. He walked up to it and opened the hatch.
“Something black inside. Looks like oil.”
“So it’s broken.”
“Then why didn’t they throw it away?”
“How is leaving it by the side of the road not throwing it away?”
Nick nodded, adjusting his pink sunglasses and scratching his head.
“I dunno about this one,” he admitted. “This has weird shit written all over it.”
We called sheriff Mason and got a clear order; to drive the thing out of town and drop it off a cliff. I thought it was an exaggeration, but he made it abundantly clear. Not burn it, not crush it, not dump it at a yard; drive it far out of town and drop it off a steep cliff. It was odd, to say the least, but we were used to it by then.
We tipped the thing over, draining the liquid, and threw it in the back of the car. It was a strange substance; like a watery black pudding. It kept bubbling, despite not being warm. Nick kicked it off the road, threw a rock at it, and we were on our way.
We took a long ride out of town, following a dirt road that’d barely been touched. We drove past lake Attabat and took a turn at what looked like an old quarry. I gave Nick a curious look.
“Boss said drop it off a cliff. So we’re dropping it off a cliff.”
And up we went.
We took the thing out and pushed it all the way up. I could tell this was a sort of gathering for high school kids; the only thing left behind were empty beer cans and half-smoked poorly rolled joints. Nick didn’t seem to notice, or care.
We pushed the washing machine all the way to the edge at the top of the quarry. It’s strange; you don’t know how high up you really are until you look down. Every whiff of wind that passed by made the cliff whistle, and every uneasy step had this long echo to it. Nick didn’t seem all too bothered by it. I started to suspect that maybe he’d been one of the kids who hung out here, once upon a time.
We braced ourselves and gave the washing machine a final push off a cliff.
It wasn’t a straight drop. The thing bounced against the side 2-3 times, gaining in speed, before it splashed into the water far below. It took about a minute before it sunk, and when it did, I could see something black pouring out; puddling on the surface of the water.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Nick smiled. “Let’s get lunch.”
There wasn’t that much going on for the rest of the day. The sheriff was pleased to hear that we’d followed his orders to the letter. Apparently, we’d solved the ‘Hank Byrne’ issue before it even started. He did not elaborate.
As that day came to an end and I changed into my civilian clothes, I found a black spot on my socks. Turns out, a splotch from the washing machine had stuck to them. I didn’t think much about it, I just threw it all into my laundry basket.
I figured I’d deal with it soon enough, but as these things often go, I kind of forgot about it.
We got really busy the next few days. Some of the folks we ran into at the Babin apartment complex were facing complications and had to be hospitalized. We were called in to provide assistance; literally holding some of them down as they were given medication. Even after all this time, some of them still had blue discoloration on their skin.
Nick also made an effort to check in on John Digman and his family. Just dropping by occasionally to check on him from afar; making sure there was nothing strange going on. I couldn’t help but to get the feeling that Nick resented these people. I didn’t quite understand why. Yes, the Digman fellow had started something, but I couldn’t grasp what it was. But the younger guy? He just seemed like a scared kid. Hell, he barely ever left his apartment.
It took me weeks to even get his name – Peter, or using his nickname, ‘Perry’.
It was after a particularly long day that I came home to a strange sensation. I was kicking off my shoes when I felt a salty smell. It took me a while to realize it was coming from the laundry basket.
I hadn’t thought about it for some time, but opening it made a wall of stench wash over me. Pushing some underwear and shirts aside, I found my stained socks. Except it wasn’t just a little black stain stuck to the side anymore; it had grown to the size of a …
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