Have you ever gotten that feeling that everyone around you is in on something that you aren’t? Or that all of your friends are just paid actors? The Truman Show mentality you could call it. Well, when I tell you it’s about to get so much worse, you’d better believe me.
About one year ago I had to put my grandmother in a nursing home. I couldn’t take care of her anymore, so it was really the only option, despite my deep distrust of nursing homes. She’d gotten Alzheimer’s and it was just too much to handle anymore – I couldn’t give the care that she needed.
Anyways, that’s despite the point. Shit really started to hit the fan when I began visiting her every Saturday.
The first time was, oh, I don’t know, maybe a month after she was in the place.
I walked up to the building’s big fancy doors and rang the buzzer.
“Name?” A female voice asked, irritated.
“Here for Susan Bartley,” I said into the speaker.
“Come on in,” the woman said, and the door clicked.
I swung the thing open and walked into an open room. There were old people playing games at card tables in a large room right behind the reception desk, and a few other adults my age sitting at small couches, waiting for their loved ones.
“Over here,” the woman at the desk waved. I smiled apologetically.
“Sorry about that, I’ve never been in here,” I justified to the woman as I approached the desk.
“I’m here to see my grandmother,”
“Yes,” the woman responded, scrolling down a computer screen. I looked past her in the game room and noticed two elderly people fighting with each other. I cracked a smile. “She’s in room 204. The elevator is right down that hall,” she pointed left.
“Okay, thanks,” I said, then walked off. But I couldn’t help but notice something about the woman behind the desk: she was dark-skinned but had bright gray eyes. They were beautiful. But strange.
I took the elevator up – which smelled very strongly of old people – and then approached my grandmother’s room. I knocked quietly on the door.
“Come in!” she yelled. I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Her hearing was fine, but she screamed at everything anyways.
“Hey, grandma!” I said with a wave. She grinned.
“Ah, my favorite grandson! Hug,” she demanded, and so I gave her one. “What brings you to this miserable place?” she asked as I sat down on a recliner. She was watching a cooking show on the television set, and she was sitting on a chair with her arms crossed. The walls here were tan and white, and there was a window behind me. We both sat in recliners that were way too close to the television, and I found them to be unexpectedly comfortable.
“I wanted to see you, duh,” I remarked.
“Stop being a smart-alec,” she waved with a smile.
We talked for about an hour, right up until the sun had completely set behind the horizon and the glow coming through the shades had ceased.
“Visiting hours are over,” a man said, peeking in the room. He, too, had gray eyes, but I didn’t notice it at the time. His skin was white, so it wasn’t unusual.
I said goodbye to my grandma and then left.
On the way back to my house, I noticed that there was something off about the place. I couldn’t quite place it, but it felt weird, and it smelled weird. And the people were all kind of mean and just… not right. It was unsettling, but I tried not to think about it too much.
I went back the next Saturday, buzzed in, spoke with the same woman at the reception counter, and met her steely-eyed gaze. Only for a moment, but long enough to send static up my spine. It was a sensation that I’d never quite experienced before. One of both fear and defense. Something primal. I tried to shake it off and took the elevator up.
My grandma and I talked for about an hour before I finally got the courage to ask her the question that had been on my mind all week long.
“Hey, I have a question,” I said.
“Shoot,”
“Does this place seem a little weird to you?” I quietly asked. She furrowed her brow.
“Are you high?”
“No!” I laughed. “It’s just that these people here seem so… strange. The workers I mean,”
“They’re just upset that they have to work,” she explained. “Like all young people!”
“Yeah, probably,” I nodded, but I didn’t believe it.
“It’s eight, you should probably go before they kick you out,” she pointed at the clock.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I laughed, then said my goodbyes.
On the walk to the elevator, I saw a worker come by with a cart that contained medications for all the residents. I gave him a friendly wave, to which I was ignored, but I looked at the cart as he walked past. There were jars of cloudy water on the bottom shelf. A few were empty, but most were full. I’d never seen anything like it. It certainly didn’t look like any sort of medication.
When I saw the man walk into another room, I decided to wait. I had to see if they were giving that shit to my grandma.
After about two minutes, the man came back out, and sure enough, I could see that one of the jars had been drained. It meant that they were giving this mysterious solution to the patients. I almost spoke up about it, but the man skipped my grandmother’s room altogether and went to the room next to it.
Is this some extra treatment that I have to sign up for? I wondered to myself. The elevator finally dinged, and I stepped inside. My thumb went to the ground floor button, but I hovered. I shouldn’t have cared; I should’ve just left it alone because they weren’t giving my grandma anything bad. But that stuff in the jars… I was experienced with medications, and nothing looked like that. Ever.
So, I hit the basement button instead –where they were bound to keep all their medications– and down I went.
One ding. Two dings. Basement.
My gut was pulling me forward at this point, directing me to the source of all my suspicions. It was a feeling I still can’t explain. I think some part of me just knew that something was wrong.
The elevator door pulled itself open, and the elevator flooded with air so humid it might as well have been rain. I began to cough into my arm, attempting to be as quiet as possible, until my lungs could get used to it.
Surely this place has to be a health risk! The amount of mold down here must be astronomical in this environment, I thought to myself. And the air was really salty.
I stuck my head out of the doors and blinked the tears out of my stinging eyes. To the left of the elevator was an endless hallway, and to the right was another long hallway with a door at the end of it. A very suspicious-looking door.
I looked left, looked right, then left. Empty. Nobody. So, I sprinted out of the elevator like any inconspicuous person would and aimed myself at the door at the end of the hall.
About ten feet away, I could tell there was a sound emanating from the other side of it. II slowed down and tried to stop my heavy breathing to listen. It was almost like the sound of dominoes lightly tapping each other. I pressed my ear against the wet oak and listened further. The sound was noticeably different. Like two rocks being firmly ground together.
Then, suddenly, I began to hear footsteps far behind me. I reared my head around. I couldn’t see anyone there yet, but I ducked through the door right next to the weird one and closed it behind me.
My heart was pounding in my chest. It felt like there were eyes on my back, and the feeling of suspense sat firmly on my chest. I could still faintly hear the dominoes in the other room. The footsteps grew louder, then louder, and they stopped right outside the door. I heard a door handle twist, then a creak. He was opening the weird door. I could tell because that horrible sound began again.
It made me want to puke. I don’t even know why. It was like nails on a chalkboard. Or a knife on a plate. Either way, the sound of dominoes, rubbing skin, and grinding rocks almost sent my dinner all over the floor.
All I could take deep breaths to overcome the nausea and hope that whoever was out there wouldn’t open this door.
A moment passed, and I heard a thud in the other room. Like something hit the floor. Something wet. The clattering, grinding sound became louder and faster instantly, then the door closed. The worker walked away.
When the footsteps faded off into nothingness, I wasted no time throwing open the door, running back to the elevator, hitting the button, and getting the hell out of there as soon as possible.
I tried as hard as I could to look cool and collected while walking through the waiting room and out the door, but I know I failed miserably.
That night, all I could think about was that sound. That horrible, horrible sound. I felt like I should know what it was, but I just couldn’t place it.
I knew that my grandma was alright, though, because she wasn’t getting any of the cloudy liquid. Another weekend visit passed, then another. Each time, they skipped my grandmother’s room, and she was not given the water. In fact, my grandma seemed to be doing better. Her memory was slowly becoming sharper. Like the Alzheimers was just fading away. I’d secretly hoped that she’d be able to come out of the home eventually, but
On the sixth week of my visits, I did my usual routine. Walk in, attempt a conversation with the robot lady at the counter, then walk up to my grandmother’s room.
We watched a show, relaxed, the usual. I must’ve been extremely tired that day, because the next thing I knew, I woke up and the room was dark; only lit by the television. My sunglasses were over my eyes, they’d slipped from my head while I slept.
I looked over to my grandmother and nearly shit my pants.
On the ground, at her feet, there was the most disgusting-looking creature I’d ever seen. Not even a nightmare could create such a horror.
It looked like a big crab, but it had a thin layer of skin stretched over it. The long legs were bony, and the shell protruded from the skin at the joints. And the torso–head–whatever the fuck you want to call it was much bigger than a normal crab’s. It looked like someone stuck a tire pump in it and then just kept blowing it up.
And by far, the most horrifying thing about it was the eyes.
Human. Fucking. Eyes.
Gray eyes that stared blankly at my grandma’s foot.
I tried to move. Tried to bolt up to save her and get that creature away because those eyes looked so fucking familiar and I just couldn’t place it but my legs wouldn’t move. My arms wouldn’t move. I was completely paralyzed.
The crab then began to slowly climb up her leg, leaving bloody scratches in its wake. It stared at her face with wonder and approached it. It climbed up the side of her spindly arm, on her shoulder, then onto her head, wrapping its legs around it in a vice grip.
The bottom of the thing’s torso was positioned right over her face, and to my horror, I saw two spindly columns of moving flesh descend from it. They looked like nerve endings, searching around for who knows what.
But then they found the eyes. They pried open the lids, slipped up and behind her eyes, and two seconds later dragged my grandmother’s eyes right out of the sockets, stem and everything. The creature climbed to the top of her head and began to… pull.
The sound of a breaking boulder and a falling tree; snapping, twisting, creaking, filled my ears, and the top of her head came right off. Like a lid. Like the hood of a car.
The bulbous torso of the crab then opened and enveloped her brain completely. I don’t know how, but it fit all of its legs in there with it and set the skull back where it was initially. There was no mark. No blood. No scar. Nothing.
And then, the empty sockets in her head filled up with gray, confused eyes.
I felt something crawling up my leg, then. I looked down and saw one there, looking at me with those horrible eyes. This one was faster. It was over my face in an instant. I couldn’t move, no matter how hard I tried.
Was she conscious then, too? No, her eyes weren’t open. She didn’t know. She couldn’t have. Nobody should see this. Nobody should have to feel those spindly legs grinding up against your scalp and vice-gripping your head, seeing pink tendrils of flesh coming to take your eyes away from you like I was. Nobody should smell that smell. The smell that I recognized because the entire place smelled like those fucking things!
But by dumb luck, I was saved. The tendrils hit the sunglasses over my eyes, searched around a little bit, and found nothing. The tendrils sucked back in, and the crab did nothing for a second. Two seconds. Three.
The creature turned itself around on my face, then skittered down my arm and legs to the floor and out the door, lit only by the blue television light.
The next thing I remember is waking up in the room, sunlight pouring in, my grandmother gone. I shot up like a gun. Knocked on the bathroom door. No response. I ran out of the room, down the hall, then took the stairs to the first floor and approached the reception.
“My grandmother, she’s gone!” I frantically stated. The woman showed no expression.
“Susan, correct? She threw a fit during games this morning, so we had to take her to the infirmary to check her out. The doctors think it’s the Alzheimer’s,” the woman explained. I almost told her that I knew she was lying because I would know if my grandma got up for games that morning; I was there in her room! But she didn’t know that.
And she had gray eyes.
She was one of them.
So, I bit my tongue. Faked a sigh of relief.
“Thank God,” I sighed. “I could’ve sworn it was getting better!” I exclaimed.
“That happens often. It seems as if they improve, but then it gets worse. We’ll contact you when you can see her again, okay?” the woman reassured. But her voice was flat. Eyes empty.
“Okay,” I nodded, then walked out of the building.
I probably should’ve felt fear then. The things I’d seen, they should’ve sent me into a form of shock that would’ve made me catatonic. The sight of that thing on my grandma was burned into the back of my eyelids. But all I wanted to do was send the place into flames. All I wanted to do was kill all of those creatures. They took my grandma from me. Stole her away. And they’d done it to plenty of others.
Which meant I had to find out what the hell was going on. I had to find out what that noise in the basement was, what the water is for, everything.
I knew that most of the patients there had dementia or Alzheimer’s, and I’d seen many of them around. They always looked lost and confused.
And they all had gray eyes.
Most likely these creatures would take a brain, but they’d have to get used to it. They’d be stupid at first, which would let them blend into the population easily because looking confused and lost was standard.
And the workers are trained. They’re the oldest and smartest ones, but still not all that smart. I guessed that the receptionist was the smartest of them all because she was seen by normal people the most often. But she obviously wasn’t all that smart either, otherwise, she would’ve noticed that I didn’t leave last night like I was supposed to.
Poor memory. Poor at reading emotions. Just creatures without hearts and one primary goal: to replicate. Spread. Like a fucking disease.
I had to stop them. I had to kill them. And that room in the basement, the one that stranger had opened, there had to be more of those things in there. The sound would match perfectly. The skin rubbing, the clanking of exposed bone. It all made sense.
So, I laid out the facts. The basement was humid, and the air was salty. They were parasites, using their host for nutrients, so they could eat human food. And that water in the jars? It was most likely saturated saltwater. That’s what it looked like at least, and it would make sense because the basement was also salty.
The things love salt and water. They have to. Without it, they die.
There was only one path forward. I couldn’t burn the place down, that was for sure, otherwise, the people who hadn’t been taken over by the crabs would die, and there would be no reason for that. And the cops wouldn’t listen, no way. They’d call me crazy.
I would have to kill them with the one thing that kept them alive: the saltwater. I could poison it. I’d just need a nurse’s outfit. Their memory was shit, so I was confident that they wouldn’t recognize me.
As for the poison, there was one thing I could think of that would do the job without being suspicious.
Nitrates. Simple as that. Aquatic animals go into nitrate shock and die when they get too much of it. And, as a bonus, it couldn’t be traced back to me. There was a high probability that the host would also die during the process, which was technically murder. But that didn’t stop me. I wouldn’t wish the curse of living on anyone who’d had to experience such horror as what those creatures produce.
Obtaining the outfit was child’s play. All I had to do was lie to the receptionist and tell her I forgot my wallet in the room, and I was in the building. A short trip to the laundry room later, and I had clothes that were just my size.
I slipped the scrubs over my body, then picked up the purse I always walked with. Inside of it was fertilizer and a pair of sunglasses. I was ready.
Slowly, I progressed down the hallway with my sunglasses on. The receptionist looked at me, and I held my breath, hoping she wouldn’t realize.
And she didn’t. I was right! They can’t recognize faces!
I resisted the urge to smile like a maniac, then stepped into the elevator and pressed the basement button.
I descended one level, and once again the humid air rushed in. I rubbed my eyes for a moment again, trying to blink the tears out of my eyes, then took a left out of the elevator.
The footsteps from the other week came from the direction I was now going, and so I watched the labels on the doors for anything having to do with medications. Unluckily for me, however, the rooms were not labeled correctly. One just had a bunch of glass containers in it, another had piles of clothes.
And then I came upon one room that spiked my interest. There was someone inside of it, shuffling around. I pressed my ear to the door and was able to hear the sound of jar lids being screwed on glass.
I took a deep breath, thinking about what I was going to do. Confidence! I told myself. And then I knocked on the door. Sounds stopped behind the door, and then it swung open. There was a blonde man there with silver eyes looking at me blankly. I quickly looked behind him and saw the jars full of liquid.
I was prepared to bullshit my way through it, but I also had no idea how to do that. Did these things even use words to communicate? Can they detect lies? Will it recognize me?
“What want?” the man asked, speech slurred like a drunk. I pointed up.
“She told me do this,” I pointed, copying his speech. He gave a slight nod, then walked out of the room and further down the hall into another room. His gate was asymmetric and strange.
I closed the door and got to work immediately. I put as many beads of fertilizer as I could in each jar, then loaded them onto the cart. The only issue with the plan was the fact that the non-residents wouldn’t get this water.
But no, the real plan wasn’t even for the residents.
The real plan was to get the ones that were alone. The ones in that room. To kill them was the real plan.
I filled the last jar, stashed it on the rack, and turned around.
Gray eyes met me. It was the receptionist. A bolt of electricity ran down my spine, the hairs on my arm stuck straight up.
“What are you doing?” she asked me.
“Fill jar,” I pointed. The woman stared at me for several seconds.
“What are those on your face?” her voice was as monotone as ever. “I don’t… remember you,”
“Body new,” I responded, hoping she wouldn’t notice the beads of sweat on my face. The woman suddenly inhaled forcefully.
“You… don’t smell,” she speculated. “Take those off,” she pointed. SHIT!
“Yes,” I responded, voice shaky. I knew she could kill me. But I took those glasses off anyway. I couldn’t think of another option. And when she saw that my eyes were blue, and not gray, her face showed genuine anger. The only emotion she’d ever shown.
“Liar!” she screamed. Her hand was around my throat in an instant. She pushed me up against the table, by back bending over the edge of it at an excruciating angle. I clawed and punched and pulled and nothing was working! Her grip was strong. Her eyes flared. Her forearm rippled with muscle.
My hand found my bag, gripped the roach killer spray I’d brought. I slammed the cap on the table, laid my finger over the nozzle. Aimed at her face. I almost couldn’t push the button down. My vision was almost completely black.
But the woman’s grip loosened, and after a few seconds when my hearing returned, I saw her squirming and clawing on the ground.
“No!” she screamed, covering her face.
And then, with the sound of a breaking boulder, the top of her skull came clean off, rolling along the floor. The crab which resided in her head frantically squirmed out. It tried to run away, but instead just ran into walls until it eventually collapsed and squirmed there. It was quiet. It made no sound but that of rubbing your arms together. Then… silence.
It was quiet for a moment then, while I coughed so hard that I felt as if my eyes were going to pop out of my skull. I could hardly breathe.
I dragged myself off my knees with the help of the table. Every limb felt tingly and weak, but I didn’t give up. I couldn’t give up.
I wandered out of the room, using one hand to support myself against the wall, and the other to carry the two bottles of roach spray I’d brought along.
Slowly, the door at the end of the hallway approached. The fresh can of spray was ready, so as I came upon the oak door and the horrible sound of clinking bone and rubbing skin on the other side, I threw some duct tape over the nozzle button, opened the door, and threw it in like a grenade.
There were hundreds in that room. Hundreds. I’d only gotten a glimpse, but it was more than I wish I would’ve gotten. A sea of eyes and skin-wrapped crabs.
The door slammed shut, and I could hear them all squirming around each other. I could hear them scratching at the door desperately. But a minute later they were all dead. They were all dead, and it was time for the rest of the show to commence.
After walking back to the medications room, I grabbed my purse and wheeled the squeaky cart down the corridor. It was so quiet I remember. So peaceful.
And thankfully one near-death experience was all I had to experience that night.
Once I got to the main floor it was a piece of cake. I just handed the cart over to another “employee” and the creatures began to die. I myself patrolled the complex, peeking into rooms and often finding a crab dead on the floor.
Every once and a while there’d be one that was normal. A human that was still – well – human. It made me glad that I didn’t just burn the whole place.
As for the other employees? Well, I just sprayed them as I found them.
By 10:30 at night they were all dead. Well, maybe the basement was an exception, but I wasn’t going down there again.
I picked up the phone at the reception desk and dialed the police.
“9-1-1 what’s your emergency?” the operator asked.
“We need assistance at the nursing home off 5th. There were infectious crabs that took over everyone’s brain and now they’re all dead,” I explained.
“You know prank calling is a crime, right?” the operator scolded.
“I’m not joking. They’re all dead and the ones that are still human have nobody to take care of them. Come if you want. Or don’t,” I said, then set down the phone on the desk.
And then I went home, and I slept better than I have in my entire life.
My grandma may be dead now. I may have killed her. Or maybe I saved her. Maybe I saved yours.
Now, I wasn’t going to say anything about any of this. I killed them all and that was it. Nothing else to say, no reason to spook anyone or start a conspiracy.
But the other day I was at a grocery store, walking around and looking for the cheap freezer pizzas when I saw a small food sampling station. I looked down at the sample as I walked by with my cart and then heard a voice.
“Hello,” she said, bright and cheery. I looked up to see a dark-skinned young woman staring at me.
With gray eyes.
“Would you like to try a crab cake?”