The Unknown

Olivia’s master’s thesis was on urban legends and their origins. She believed they shared similarities with traditional folklore and picked one to illustrate her point. The Unknown was believed to be a mysterious evil so heinous that investigating it almost immediately invited death. At least that was how the story went. And there were many stories. One story was of a woman in Greenville who disappeared without a trace on stage in front of a room full of witnesses. Her friend disappeared weeks later while trying to investigate what happened. The police were stumped. They had no clues or leads, and that mystery created the perfect storm for amplifying and spreading an urban legend.

Instead of going back home for spring break, Olivia headed to Greenville to investigate. She drove to the second-cheapest motel in town and began to set up in a small room that smelled of cigarette smoke, mold, and booze. She turned one wall into a kind of evidence board. She taped up articles and various theories on similar disappearances attributed to The Unknown throughout the country. She made connections with red string and yellow thumbtacks. Anyone walking into the motel room would think she had lost her mind.

There were many theories as to The Unknown’s origin. Some said it was a malevolent entity conjured long ago by an ancient cult. Others believed it to be an alien that escaped from Area 51. Legend was it thrived in darkness and stole the voices of those it consumed so as to lure others to their doom.

The first newspaper articles Olivia found referenced a disappearance at a séance held in the 1800s. In the late 1950s, several college students mysteriously disappeared from a movie theater. Witnesses saw them go inside. Some remembered seeing them in their seats. But when the lights came up, they were gone. No one saw them leave. No trace of them was ever found. A projectionist claimed to have heard voices in the empty darkness of the theater later that night. But when he turned on the lights, no one was there. Then in the 1960s a group of teens disappeared while exploring an abandoned hospital believed to be haunted.

Stories and speculation arose to explain these mystifying disappearances. Some talked about a top-secret government research program run by the Office of Strategic Services in the 1950s. Project Apple-Pie. Mind control experiments using hallucinogenic drugs. Most of the records were destroyed in the '70s, but witnesses claim that experiments were performed on unsuspecting civilians in various settings and locations throughout the country, including movie theaters, hospitals and universities. Many believed these unethical experiments opened doorways to other dimensions which allowed evil things to enter the world.

Olivia wrote observations to pin to her evidence board. The Unknown dwells in darkness and can mimic its victims. Was it an evil entity? An extraterrestrial? A failed government experiment? Or just a garden variety serial killer allergic to publicity? She wanted to prove The Unknown was nothing more than modern-day folklore. And that investigation led here to this night, to this place, to this shabby motel room.

Yet she couldn’t help but notice that the disappearances in Greenville included one detail the other stories didn’t. The fog. And she half-remembered another urban legend with a thick, unnatural fog that somehow made people disappear. Maybe, she mused, the Greenville disappearances didn’t relate to The Unknown but some other darkness.

For a moment Olivia wondered what would happen if one urban legend encountered another. She laughed at the idea and tempted fate by sketching a picture of what she thought The Unknown might look like. Then she pinned the sketch right in the middle of her evidence board, laughed nervously and waited to be consumed by The Unknown for having tried to define it. Anxiously, she stared at the windows and front door for seconds that turned to minutes and minutes that turned to hours.

But nothing happened.

Now it was after 2AM and Olivia was exhausted as she examined the articles and sipped cold coffee. So, when she first heard the whisper, she wondered if she imagined it.

“Olivia…”

It seemed to come from the bathroom.

“Help…”

The lights in the room flickered.

“Who’s there?”

Olivia stared with wide eyes at the closed door of the bathroom. Her mind was playing tricks on her. Or—

Her friends had shown up to prank her.

“Ariella? Sean? Stop messing around…”

The lights continued to flicker as she edged closer to the bathroom. Fear spread in long waves through her, and a terrible realization bloomed within her that The Unknown was behind the bathroom door, was preparing to make her pay for her hubris. Something began to whisper her name again. But then the voice rose, cracked, and distorted in sudden panic as if the brooding creature behind the door were under attack.

An unknown horror filled Olivia’s heart and left room for nothing else. She breathed deeply as cold sweat beaded on her forehead. She placed her hand on the doorknob. The lights turned off, but she could still hear the strangely inhuman cries. Then the lights turned back on, and she could see a strange black fog seeping through the bottom of the door.

Hesitantly, Olivia creaked the door open to see a bulky shape with frenzied tentacles being pulled into a thick mass of fog, vanishing slowly into the darkness like a dying shadow. The shrieking stopped suddenly, neighbors banged on the wall to turn down the TV, and Olivia stared intently at the black abyss that yawned before her. She wasn’t sure what to do. Part of her wanted to run. But the other part wanted to know more. And as she considered what to do next, dozens of voices began to call out to her with promises of the unknown and the impossible and of unearthly things beyond human experience.