Terms and Conditions

“Don’t you think it’s weird they’re keeping the casket closed?” Avery asked under his breath, leaning in close to make sure no one else could hear.

“Honestly, I think it’s weirder when it’s open,” Mila replied. She scrunched her nose and furrowed her brow as she said it. Avey shook his head.

“No, I know but like… I know Madison wants an open casket. We’ve talked about that kind of stuff. Her exact words were that she wants to ‘look good for the people one last time’.” They laughed a little at that before going quiet.

“That’s pretty morbid pillow talk,” Mila said after a moment, mostly because she didn’t know what else to say.

“You know what she’s like,” Avery replied with a shrug. “She’s never been afraid to talk about anything. She ‘doesn’t believe in TMI’.” They said that last part together, Avery making finger quotes and Mila rolling her eyes and smiling.

They were standing in the greeting line to offer their condolences to her family, which felt pretty weird considering neither one of them believed she was dead. After everything that had happened, Madison’s parents were not especially friendly or forthcoming with them these days. As Madison’s boyfriend and best friend though, they were more or less obligated to attend.

Madison had gone missing 36 days ago. The circumstances under which she disappeared were considered mysterious to law enforcement and the local newspaper. That night, she had been video chatting with Avery and working on a research paper for her Pagan Studies class. He remembered the way she had abruptly cut off what she was saying to focus intently on whatever it was she had been reading.

“What’s up,” he’d asked after a long pause.

“I just found something interesting for my paper. I’m gonna go, babe. I’ve gotta get in the zone so I can finish this before Friday.”

“No problem. You got this. Love you!”

“Love you too, Aves. Talk later!” She’d hung up the call at 7:46pm

Three hours later he received another call from Madison’s cell phone. When he answered, it was her mother.

“Tell Madison she left her phone at home!” She’d said with a knowing smile in her voice.

“Wait, what? Madison’s not here,” he’d replied, confused. “I thought she was doing her paper.”

“I haven’t seen her all night. I thought you must have picked her up and brought her to your house. She left all her homework open on her bed, along with her laptop and phone. And her car’s in the driveway.” They hung up after a couple more exchanges. She was going to call Mila and some other friends. She’d sounded pretty worried by the time they ended the call. Avery was pretty worried too.

No one knew where she’d gone. The first night they searched for her until the sun rose. But there had been no clues, nothing to indicate where she might have gone. The texts on her phone, her emails, all of them were normal. There was no trail to follow.

Until the third day. On the third day, at 3am, Avery had woken up to a chime from his phone. It was set to switch to Do Not Disturb mode at 11pm. It shouldn’t have made a sound. It chimed a second time. A group message with himself, Mila, and a string of numbers too long to be a phone number.

Guys?

The first message had read.

Can you hear me?

Madison??????

Mila had responded faster than Avery could even comprehend what was happening. It had to be Madison. Who else could it have been? His phone rang then. He picked up and Mila was going a mile a minute, barely stopping to take a breath and trying to figure out what was going on. He just let her talk. He hadn’t even known where to start. The two of them sat on the phone all night waiting for a response. It never came. When the sun was high enough in the sky, they’d met at Madison’s house to show her parents.

“She doesn’t have her phone,” her mom had said. Her eyes were puffy from crying and lack of sleep.

“But the texts didn’t come from her phone!” Avery had replied, trying to show her the messages on his own phone. Her father ushered them out the door after ten minutes.

After that they’d tried the police station. The police were more receptive at first, but when they tried to trace the number the computers kept crashing. They accused Mila and Avery of trying to hack government equipment and were ordered to leave the premises.

The messages came through like clockwork every third day at 3am. The texts were pretty similar most of the time. Some iteration of her trying to break through and have a conversation with them but never able to respond by the time it turned to 3:01.

Aves, I really need to talk to you!

I’m right here Madi! Where are you?

If you guys can hear me, please tell my mom I’m okay!

You need to tell us where you are, Madison!

ʅȝԵ ʍȝ ρԹՏՏ, ʅȝԵ ʍȝ ԵɧՐԾՄԳɧ. ɿ Թʍ ɧՄʍԹՌ. աɧԹԵ ԹՐȝ ՎԾՄ?

What does that mean?? Are you okay??

No matter what they asked, she never responded to their questions. It was like she didn’t even know they were receiving the messages. And some of her texts came in strange, unreadable characters. A language other than English.

“I think I recognize this language,” Mila said on the phone one morning. It had been the 33rd day since Madison had gone missing, and they’d received one of those strange text messages. “It reminds me of something I saw in one of my grandmother’s journals. Like, a great, great one. I’ll have to ask my mom.”

That same day, around 7am, Madison’s parents reached out to both of them despite their recently strained relationships. At 3:33 that morning, Madison’s body was found by a jogger in the park. Her parents had not let Avery or Mila see her body. They said it was her, without a doubt, but later on they learned the autopsy showed no cause of death. The toxicology tests came back clean and she had no injuries. Based on the level of decomposition she had been dead for less than 24 hours, but definitely more than 33 minutes. Her father had told them it looked like she was asleep until he felt her skin. That’s why Avery thought it was so strange the casket was closed. He could understand if she’d been maimed, dismembered, broken in any way at all. He’d seen her sleeping a thousand times. What were they hiding?

The morning of her funeral was the 36th day and again, like clockwork, Avery and Mila received another text from the strange, not-phone number.

It’s not me.

The message said. And then another came through right before the clock ticked to 3:01.

Don’t believe them.

They had learned quickly not to bother her family with these messages. Even though they were the most solid proof of the fact that Madison could not be dead, her family refused to hear it. So, because they didn’t know what else to do, Avery and Mila showed up to the funeral.

Their exchange of condolences with her parents and her siblings were cold. They moved through the line quickly and retreated to the back of the chapel, eager to get away from her family’s judgmental glaring.

“You’d think we killed her ourselves,” Mila whispered, elbowing him in the side. He shook his head, confusion and sorrow making his heart feel heavy and his stomach clench.

“I have to piss,” was all he said back.

He went into the bathroom and chose the farthest stall from the door. He didn’t really need to use the bathroom, but he felt like he might be sick. He sat on the toilet and put his forehead in his hands. A few minutes later the bathroom door opened and a voice floated into the stall where he was sitting. He recognized the voice of Madison’s uncle. Without stopping to think he lifted his feet off the floor and rested them silently against the stall door.

“I thought you told me you were going to do an open casket,” her uncle was saying with a low voice.

“We planned to,” a voice replied. Her father. “But this morning, when the funeral home was preparing to transport her, she…” his voice was shaking and Avery could tell he was crying. “She was… breaking down.” His voice broke off into quiet sobbing before he resumed speaking. “The funeral home swore they embalmed her. It shouldn’t be possible.”

“Those fuckers must have lied to you. What fucking scammers. You better not pay those scumbags a dime. Fucking scammers. Fucking disgraceful.” His voice was gruff over Madison’s dad’s shuddering breaths. Avery was not convinced. He knew the Cavanaughs. The whole town did. Everybody and their mother did their funeral business with them. They were fair, not too expensive, and everyone in town loved to support local business. The funeral home had been passed down for four generations. There was no way they would do something like that. No. This was definitely mysterious.

Avery waited for about ten minutes after they left the bathroom before he followed. He stopped at the sink to splash water on his face and calm himself down. He grabbed a paper towel and began to dry his face when he saw something in the mirror that made him freeze. It wasn’t himself he saw reflected there.

It was Madison.

She was staring at him, un-moving, but with a soft smile on her face like she was admiring him. Even though it didn’t make sense, he spun around to see if she was behind him somehow. There was no one, of course, and when he turned back around it was only himself in the mirror.

The service had already begun by the time he left the bathroom. He felt like a zombie walking himself back to the pew to sit down next to Mila and wondered if hallucinations were one of the stages of grief. When he numbly took his seat at her side, she looked at him with an expression similar to how he felt seeing Madison’s face in front of him in the mirror. Her eyes were wide and her skin pale. He leaned in to ask her what was wrong, but she put a finger to her lips and tapped on her phone then pointed to where his was in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw she had texted him.

I swear to God I just saw Madison walk by the window.

His fingers flew across his phone screen as he responded to her message.

I just saw her in the bathroom mirror.

Mila’s hand clenched his forearm as she read his message before she furiously typed something back.

What the fuck is going on?!?!?!?!

We have to get out of here.

As if on cue, his phone started ringing. Loudly. Despite being set to silent. He hit the volume down button to silence it but it didn’t work. People were turning to glare at him. He couldn’t silence the call or end it, and then he noticed the number that was calling. A long string of random numbers that was becoming as familiar to him as breathing. He turned his phone to show Mila before jumping from his seat and speed walking out of the chapel with her close behind him. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him. They would forgive him when he brought Madison back from wherever the fuck she’d gone.

“I didn’t think I would need to remind anyone to silence their cell phones, but please do so now if you haven’t already,” Avery heard the pastor saying as the door was closing behind them. They ran through the lobby and out the front door, the ringing on his phone growing louder and louder. Once outside, he spun around to face Mila with his finger already hitting the answer button. He put the call on speaker phone and held it up between them.

“Madison,” Mila yelled at the phone, the pitch of her voice unnaturally high. “Madison, please tell me that’s you. Please tell me you’re alive Madison, please! I swear to God I will go hiking with you any time you ask me. Please just tell me you’re okay, Madi, please.” Her voice cracked as tears began to well up in her eyes.

The noise coming from the phone was muffled and distorted by static. The person speaking sounded far away. Every one of Avery’s hairs was standing on end as his skin became gooseflesh. A buzzing electrical sound began behind him and he spun around just in time to see something he was desperate to believe was real. The air was lighting up with blue and green shocks of electricity, and each zap brought shape to the form appearing in its center.

It was Madison again. She was see through, not physically there, and in the same clothes she had been wearing the night she disappeared. Her mouth was moving, but he couldn’t hear her, until he realized her voice was coming through his phone. As her shape became clear, so did her words. She was speaking frantically, her hands gesturing wildly like they always did when she was stressed.

“-have to get everyone out of there right now!” She was yelling to them, terror in her eyes.

“Madi, wait, slow down! I can’t understand what you’re saying,” Avery said, trying to remain calm. Madison’s expression softened when she realized they could hear her. She reached out to touch his hand, but all he felt was a zap of static that caused him to jerk it away.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “You just shocked me. What’s going on, Madison? Where are you?”

“I fucked up.” She was slowing down now. “I found something in my research that I don’t think I was supposed to know. It was this weird website, not even the kind I could use in my sources, but there was a contact page to reach out for more information.” She shook her head and looked away as she recalled what happened 36 days ago.

“I put in my email and typed a quick message just asking for some info. I had to check a box agreeing that I understood the terms. I didn’t even read them. Who the fuck does? But when I hit send I just got… zapped away. To this weird place, I don’t even know where it is.”

“Wait,” Mila snapped suddenly. “What class was this for?”

“It was my Pagan Studies class.” Mila’s face dropped.

“And you said you made an agreement,” she asked slowly, putting it together in her head. She was clenching and unclenching her fists. “I think I know where you are… It’s called the Otherworld. I read about it when I was a kid, in those old journals my mom has. I… I never believed in that stuff before. Madi, please tell me you didn’t piss off the fae.” Madison looked sheepish.

“They’re definitely pissed. Not just at me. At everyone. The whole town I think. They used to live here until we cut down their forest. I think we used to coexist with them too, but something happened. They call it The Great Death.” She looked at them intensely, the urgency returning to her voice.

“Everyone inside that church is in danger. There’s a portal in the park where they found that body. It’s not my body. I’m my body. You have to get everyone out before it’s too late. I don’t know what’s gonna happen to them, but-” A scream pierced the air and stopped her in her tracks.

“Was that my mom?” She asked with wide eyes. Another scream came, definitely from the church. “I was too late. Fuck, I was too late. I’ve been trying so hard to reach you guys, I-” she shook her head again and stopped herself. Mila was already using her phone to call 911.

“They’re not gonna be able to help. Whatever, just drop your phone on the ground. I think they can trace the call. You guys have to get to the park. Now. They didn’t even lock me up. I think they think humans are too stupid to figure out how this place works. I think I can get you in. We might still be able to fix this. There’s a king, or maybe it's a god I don’t know. Please guys. My whole family, all our friends… We have to do something.” The park wasn’t far. Avery and Mila had already started running.

According to law enforcement and the local newspaper they were last seen together leaving Madison’s funeral. It was 33 days later when their bodies appeared in the park.