Social Proof

Ethan reoriented his phone and pushed his stocking cap back to reveal more of his hair before offering his audience a two-fingered peace sign. "Hey-hey, guys! Wazzup?"

Aiden raked Ethan’s hand. “Dude, what the Hell?”

“What’s gotten into you?” Sam chortled, recording both of them on his phone through a cloud of steamy breath. “Scared?”

“No,” Aiden barked, glaring apprehensively into Sam’s camera. “I’m black, moron. Shit like this gets a brother killed.”

In response to Aiden’s misgivings, heart, laughing, and smiling emojis floated up Aiden’s image on Sam’s screen. Feeling smug, Sam showed Aiden the immediate, real-time results.

Aiden rolled his eyes. “Whatever, fool. They ain’t black.” 

Ethan resumed a filming position with a sarcastic smile, framing the tall fence behind him in the background. “Don’t worry, Aiden-buddy, we’ll be good’n’gone before anybody notices.”

“C’mon, guys! Let’s go, let’s go!” Sam impatiently gestured to the shadowy mansion. Pressing on, Sam directed his mobile to the naked, claw-like limbs of bare trees that lined the drive, reaching over their heads. “It don’t look like anybody’s been here lately.”

“Since the sixties,” Aiden said, jutting his hands into his pockets and hunching his shoulders. Trespassing aside, something felt eerie about the property. He felt eyes crawling all over him. “Been shuttered ever since. It was foreclosed on by the bank after Thadeus’ grandson died. The house is old, protected by some kind’a historical preservation law. They wanted to put a Walmart here but couldn’t. It can’t be knocked down.”

“Our resident bookworm and brown-noser, ladies and gentlemen,” Ethan said, capturing him and Aiden in the shot and bowing to his camera.

“Yeah, I read, okay?” Aiden said, shoving Ethan away.

“This is it, peeps!” Sam said, angling his phone to take a wide shot of the property. “Thornbrook Manor-”

Ethan interrupted Sam to draw a dramatic, wide-eyed slash across his throat with his finger. “The third sorcerer!”

Annoyed, Aiden glanced side-eyed at Sam’s phone and shrugged, speaking directly to Sam’s followers. “It’s where the geocache told us to go next.”

“Abhorrent ground,” Sam whispered ominously, reciting a phrase they found written in the cache. Flipping the phone’s camera to face him, his face was uplit in the darkness. “W-T-F! What’s that even mean?”

Built in the 1860’s outside of Seattle, the Thornbook property was considered an architectural gem of Victorian elegance and grandeur. Dilapidated, weathered, and crumbled, its glamorous splendor, however, was lost to the past.

Situated on a lush estate, the mansion boasted a commanding presence with a towering three-story roofline with four chimneys and two pointed spires. Its exterior façade was crafted with intricate details replete with ornate carvings of strange and fanciful beasts, sturdy stone pillars, and delicate trimmings that lent the structure an artistic flair; its architect was both an engineer and an artist. Its front doors were made of rich mahogany and intricately carved yet spraypainted with urban gang tags.

“What is that?” Sam said. He focused his camera on a carving along the structure’s foundation. It had a rounded body with taloned hands, a sloping ape-like brow, and an angry expression baring menacing, jagged teeth, yet had stone wings like a bird. It looked tethered to the building by a black iron chain.

“Er, that’s a water drain,” Aiden replied. “Water comes down the chain into the monkey’s skull, spillin’ out the mouth.”

“Ugh!” Sam groaned, zooming in on it. “That’s crazy. What kind of acid were these guys on?”

“Opium,” Aiden clarified with a nod, thinking, then added, leaning into Sam’s camera, “that or absinthe - herbs, sugar, ice, wood alcohol - big-ass psychedelic effects brought on from consumin’ thujone, a compound-”

“Look, look!” Ethan interrupted, cutting Aiden off, holding his own phone over his head as they approached a ruined reflecting pool in an overgrown garden sanctuary. Surrounded by a wrought iron fence, the pool’s still black surface reflected the sky’s cold starry void. “There’s the statue!”

Aiden grumbled into Sam’s camera. Friendly heart emoji’s raced up the side of his face. “Yeah, well, if you’re curious an’ wanna know more, DM me.”

“C’mon, brainiac,” Sam scolded, slapping Aiden on his shoulder. Sam turned his camera’s flash away from the monkey creature to send it receding into the darkness. 

Cautiously entering the gate, they circled the pool to step through an overgrowth of thorny black bushes with serrated, tar-colored leaves.

A marble statue of a Victorian gentleman leaning heavily on a cane loomed over the pool’s edge. Soiled by centuries of grime and vigorous splotches of mold, thorny brambles climbed its legs and torso.

“Dr. Thadeus Parlow,” Aiden whispered, scanning through Wikipedia articles on his device. He passed the links on to the audience through social media.

Sam zoomed in on Parlow’s vandalized head. Chiseled away, it looked as if it were mauled; chunks of marble were gouged from Parlow’s face. Hundreds of shocked and gasping emojis went scrolling by.

Sam zoomed back, panned, and held his phone horizontally to keep Ethan and the statue in the frame. “We’ve got more than sixteen-hundred viewers, man!”

Play it! chided Ethan’s followers. Little blue bubbles of text went floating by.

“Okay, okay, I’m going to play it! Just hang on!” Ethan promised his followers before turning his phone around to navigate its settings.

“Nah, uh, Ethan, I don’t think-” Aiden’s eyes trailed from his phone to the water.

Sam could barely contain himself and removed his cap. He fixed his phone on Ethan. “Man, this is going to be so great!”

Reflected upon the smooth black surface of the pool, Aiden saw a sharp, vivid reflection of the Milky Way. However, looking up, ambient light from the city obscured the night sky, and it was cloudy, overcast - a typical Seattle night.

Puzzled, Aiden absently asked, “Er, Ethan?”

Closing on Sam, Ethan held up his phone up to Sam’s and pressed play to stream the video.

A cheesy, AI-generated black-and-white image of a man with the head of an octopus appeared, followed by a grainy, scratchy recording, as if sampled from a wax cylinder.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,” recited the octopus man in a low, spectral voice.

Thousands of emoji’s raced up Sam’s display and his follower count skyrocketed. Elated, Sam pumped the air, shouting, “Yeah, yeah! Wgah’nagl fhtagn, fuckers!”

“Bring it on,” Ethan mocked with a sarcastic sneer and a crude, offensive gesture into Sam’s camera.

“Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! T'dril ng'kth'k'krii Dagon!" the recording concluded, leaving only a still, uncomfortable silence.

Seeing the statue’s mutilated head reflected in the pool of dreamy starlight, Aiden backed away to glance at Thadeus and then back at the water.

The statue’s angle against the surface was all wrong.

“How’s that possible?” he breathed.

Replaying the video on his phone, Ethan shook his mobile at Sam and shouted, “That’s it! The Third Sorcerer’s Challenge! Woo!”

“Look!” Sam exclaimed, holding out his phone. A bitcoin balance was leaping ahead in hundreds of increments. “We won, man!”

“Where’s all of that shit comin’ from?” Ethan said, peering at Sam’s phone.

Sam turned the phone toward him and manipulated its settings. “Dunno! Some guy in Amsterdam.”

Ethan squinted. “Amsterdam? Where’s that?”

“Who cares?” Sam exclaimed. “We’re gonna be rich!”

“Sam!” Aiden pleaded, pointing to the pool and gripping Sam’s jacket by the sleeve. “Something’s wrong!”

Sam jerked his arm back. “Bro, what the-”

Following Aiden’s hand, Sam saw the impossibly bright, brilliant universe, and the crisp reflection of Thadeus Parlow’s statue, except it wore a ghostly bearded face.

Before Sam could react, Ethan, his back to the pool, held his phone contemptuously under the statue’s chin to replay the video. Sam returned his phone to a recording position.

“Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! T'dril ng'kth'k'krii Dagon!" repeated the grainy octopus man.

Sam and Aiden cried out just as a massive blue and green scaled tentacle burst from the reflecting pool, gripped Ethan’s leg, then dragged him screaming into the water. The light from Ethan’s submerged phone sank into the pool’s depths and disappeared.

“Jesus fuck!” Aiden shouted, throwing himself from the side of the pool against the iron fence.

Sam’s phone - his thousands of followers witnessing the entire event - burst into a flurry of shocked, worried, and sad emojis.

From the shadows, the chained monkeys squatting along the manor’s cornerstones grinned.

Howling in terror, Aiden grabbed Sam to bolt for the iron gate, but as they ran, the thick, thorny, weedy brambles snagged their jeans and shot out to wrap around their legs. Tripped, Sam fell, sending his phone skittering across the cobblestone surrounding the pool.

“Sam!” Aiden cried, reaching back for him, only to find Sam’s body ensnared in the grips of the wicked flora, pinned against the fence’s bars.

Sam pleaded, extending his arm to Aiden. “Help! Help!”

Tugging, the thorns ripped into Aiden’s skin and tore at his legs and ankles. He could feel the lacerations, the blood saturating his jeans.

Aiden struggled and tried to get closer to Sam only to find tendrils of strangling, grinding vines cutting into Sam’s throat; his eyes bulged and bled, and he choked on a protruding mouthful of black leaves.

It began to rain.

Scared senseless, Aiden scrambled backward to lunge for the iron gate. Shut tight by the snaking weeds, it barely budged. Aiden glanced behind him in horror.

The statue of Dr. Thadeus Parlow remained as it was and always had been, except its vivid, colorful reflection was a ghastly monster with a translucent nest of writhing tentacles waving from its jaw. The pool was still, unmoving as if coated in a layer of sheer, translucent ice. The raindrops did not affect its surface. The pool was disorienting, mesmerizing, spinning; it was as if the whole of the universe lay open at Dr. Parlow’s feet.

“Absinthe my ass!” Aiden shouted, bracing his foot against an iron post to pull at the gate with all of his weight to rip it free of the twisting vines. Fleeing from the sanctuary, a wind bellowed from the chimneys, blowing from inside the mansion with a terrifying roar. Slipping on the mud, his heart pounding, lungs burning, Aiden ran with everything he had down the drive and scaled the fence. And without even a second glance, he sprinted away, leaving his friends forever at Thornbrook Manor.

Glowing in the darkness, the video of the octopus man replayed on a loop while a mass of emojis, check-in waves, bitcoin balances, and DM requests flooded Sam’s phone, before a green tentacle reached out from the water, cupped it, and slowly slid it into the pool.