The day is midnight at noon and the skies are bleeding red yokes.
And the skies and sky scrapers are on fire ./cars on fire with no one at the wheel
and the government\corrupt/ tens of thousands of suicides and the wind is hot
everyone trapped within the belly of this machine and we are screaming. And the machine
is bleeding to death while the flags are all dead on top of all those poles.

In the quiet town of Eldridge, four teenagers—Alex, Jamie, Sam, and Casey—stumbled upon an ancient book hidden in the dusty attic of their school’s library. Bound in worn leather and adorned with strange symbols, the book seemed out of place among the mundane school records and old yearbooks. Intrigued by its mysterious appearance, the group decided to take it to their usual hangout spot, an abandoned cabin in the nearby woods, to explore its contents.

As the sun set and shadows grew long, they gathered around a rickety wooden table, the book’s eerie presence casting an unspoken tension among them. Alex, the group’s natural leader, carefully opened the book. The pages, yellowed with age, were filled with intricate drawings and cryptic text in a language none of them recognized. But what caught their attention was a diagram depicting a series of interlocking circles—what seemed to be different worlds connected by thin, dark lines.

Jamie, the tech-savvy skeptic, used their phone to take pictures of the pages, hoping to decipher the text later with some translation app. Sam, always the curious one, noticed a small inscription at the bottom of the diagram. It read: “Beware the crossings, for they reveal the unseen.” They shrugged it off as an attempt to scare them, but a strange chill settled over the group, as if the words held a hidden truth.

Over the next few days, they delved deeper into the book’s mysteries. Jamie managed to translate some of the text, revealing that the book was a guide to the multiverse—an infinite number of parallel realities, each slightly different from the others. Excited by the discovery, they continued their research, unaware that their curiosity was about to lead them into unimaginable horrors.

One night, while experimenting with an incantation from the book, the air around them began to shimmer and distort. A portal, glowing with an otherworldly light, opened before them. With a mix of fear and excitement, they decided to step through, finding themselves in a world that looked like their own but felt off—darker, colder, and filled with an oppressive sense of dread.

As they explored this parallel world, they noticed subtle yet disturbing differences. The town was eerily silent, with abandoned cars and empty houses. The sky was a permanent shade of twilight, and an unnatural stillness hung in the air. It wasn’t long before they realized they were not alone. Dark figures lurked in the shadows, watching their every move with glowing eyes.

Panic set in when they tried to return through the portal, only to find it had vanished. Stranded in this nightmarish version of Eldridge, they had no choice but to seek refuge in their old hangout spot—the abandoned cabin. There, they regrouped and tried to figure out how to reopen the portal. The book, however, seemed to have lost its power, the once glowing pages now dull and lifeless.
As days turned into weeks, the group struggled to survive. They scavenged for food and avoided the shadowy figures that roamed the town. During one of their expeditions, Casey discovered a journal in the library of this alternate Eldridge. The journal belonged to someone named Dr. Alistair Crowley, who had apparently been studying the multiverse and its horrors for decades.

According to Dr. Crowley’s journal, the shadowy figures were inhabitants of the “Dark Worlds,” parallel universes consumed by evil. He warned that once someone crossed into these worlds, they risked drawing the attention of these malevolent entities. The journal also hinted at a way to escape, but the instructions were incomplete, the final pages torn out.

Desperation took hold as the group faced increasing attacks from the shadowy figures. Each night, the creatures grew bolder, their glowing eyes peering through the cabin’s broken windows. Alex, feeling responsible for their predicament, pushed himself to decode the journal’s cryptic clues. Sleepless nights and constant fear took a toll on him, and he began to hear whispers in the darkness, calling his name.

One evening, as the group huddled together in the cabin, the whispers became too much for Alex to bear. Driven by an unseen force, he wandered into the woods, where he found an ancient stone circle. The symbols carved into the stones matched those in the book. In a trance-like state, he chanted the incantation he had memorized, hoping to summon another portal.

The air crackled with energy as a portal slowly opened within the stone circle. The rest of the group, realizing Alex was missing, followed the strange light to the clearing. They found Alex unconscious but alive, the portal shimmering before them. With no other choice, they carried him through the portal, praying it would lead them back home.

To their relief, they emerged in their own world, but things were not quite the same. They found themselves in an Eldridge that seemed untouched by time, as if they had traveled back to a version of their town from the past. Confused and disoriented, they made their way back to the library, hoping to find answers in the book.

To their horror, the book was gone, replaced by a note that read: “The crossings have consequences. Beware the ripples.” As they pondered the note’s meaning, they realized that their adventure had left a mark on their world. Strange occurrences began to plague the town—people disappearing, mysterious lights in the sky, and whispers in the night.

Haunted by their experiences and the knowledge that the multiverse was real, the group vowed to protect their world from further incursions. They became guardians of the secrets they had uncovered, always watching for signs of otherworldly threats. Their friendship, forged in the crucible of terror, became their greatest strength as they faced the unknown horrors of infinite realities.

:: 06.16.2024 ::