“I just don’t think there’s any way in James. We’ve tried a thousand times. Every time you try to enter the field, you’re rubber banded out. Whole fuckin thing throws the laws of physics out the damn window. God only knows what’s in there.”
Kaley always was the most eloquent member of the team. She put a fresh piece of gum in her mouth and continued chewing thoughtfully, the frustration etching lines on her otherwise pretty face.
“I just think, I dunno. Maybe it’s time we chalk this one up as unsolvable and walk away mate.”
With that, she slumped into the folding chair, pushing into the side of the makeshift tent we had set up as ‘headquarters.’ Kaley, Tannen, Cris and I made up a team of people assigned to solve ‘puzzles’ like this. Things that didn’t make sense, places that shouldn’t exist. We don’t know who pays our cheques but they’re paid well. We just get the email with the next location, within a few hours everything we’ll need is delivered to base, and off we go. Cool job, I’ve seen some crazy stuff. We’ve had cases all over the world. I’ve seen upside down houses in Italy, churches with a thousand entrances but only one that worked in Spain. The hardest job we ever had would have to of been the rock that was teleporting people from a tiny coastal town in Scotland to the mouth of an active volcano in Iceland. That was a huge clean up job and fuck if I ever managed to actually learn to say the name of that volcano.
Of course this line of work doesn’t lend to having a family, kids, all of that but honestly.. I’m not really the relationship type. So, I can fully focus on the work and sometimes it really does need all of our focus. Especially this case. This case is all kinda fucked.
Our email came with an attached file on it. No real identifier other than “Knockturn”. Weird ass name. Kinda wondered if it was a jumbled up spelling of Nocturne. Turns out this one random field in Texas seems to just… Not let you in. Looks like an empty field, dead grass and a few miserable looking trees, but not much else to it. You can climb the decrepit fence, take one or two steps in, then suddenly you’re back over the fence staring at the field. We’ve tried sending drones in, they drop out of the sky and won’t turn back on. Leaves you with a bit of a headache and confusion after each attempt. Cris slept for 3 days after his dumb ass decided to full pelt try to run into it and he was subsequently thrown a few hundred yards. No matter how much I tell him brute force isn’t the way, the meathead never listens.
Back in the ‘30s and ‘40s several kids went missing in the area. People were wickedly superstitious back in those days so the local town cleared out to get as far away from it as possible, leaving the handful of houses, a church and a corner store to fall into ruin. We’ve already searched the whole thing, couldn’t find anything referencing this field. People just packed up and ran overnight. The records are spotty but that’s nothing new in this work. We spend a lot of time filling a lot of gaps.
Every device we ran near the field either came up with nothing or went nuts with absolutely no in between. IR cameras showed the entire thing as a pure red heat signature. Made no sense. Even tried a spiritbox for the Fuck of it (mainly because Cris will never let us live down the one time that solved a case), but that played nothing but static.
Maybe, just maybe, Kaley is right. Maybe this one is bust. Every internet search turns up nothing, no precedent, no similar places, no hits for “knockturn”. Every experiment turns up nothing. I ran out of ideas a week ago. Tannen is the most determined of us all. While we’ve been trying to solve it at the source, Tannen has been travelling in bigger and bigger circles, hitting all the tiny town libraries and chatting with old folks in run down forgotten bars. Hoping to glean even the slightest bit of information. The biggest response he’s ever gotten was “It knocks back. Stay away.” So, we tried googling that phrase too. Nothing as yet.
Just as I’m about to grab the laptop and send the boss an email that we’re at a bust, Cris walks into the tent, looking slightly lit up as though he might have an idea.
“Folks, have we tried going into it at night yet?”
Shit, he’s not wrong. I’m pretty sure we haven’t. We’ve ran watches on it at night and cameras record it 24/7, but I don’t think anyone has tried to go in. Knowing no one was going to volunteer I just jumped ahead and said I would do it. I packed my rucksack with some snacks, flashlight and extra batteries, my phone and headphones. We all mapped out a plan including the usual evacuation and extraction protocols in case of emergency. Then we waited, for the sun to go down.
At 20:00, we made our way to the field. As we stood shining our flashlights across it, I noticed the light didn’t seem to shine as far in as it should, almost as if it was being filtered through something. This only increased a sudden sense of impending doom that had been creeping up my spine. I have never, never been scared on a job. But this fear, it was intense, but didn’t feel like it was mine. As if someone else’s fear was being iv drained into my veins. I made the camera aware of that for documentation sake, then climbed over the rickety fence.
One step.
Two step.
Three steps.
This was the furthest any of us has been yet. Progress!
Just as I turned to look at the others, I heard a noise. Almost like… a distorted shout, directly ahead of me. I readjusted my chest GoPro and went to walk another step when I heard it again, louder and clearer. And then, like an almighty roar that nearly shattered my ear drums I heard a word screamed. Not a word. A name.
“Caitor”
And then, out of nowhere, a hand shot out of nothing and grabbed me.