Good evening, it’s Spooky Boo Rhodes from Sandcastle, California. Tonight I have for you a rather Lovecraftian type story about beings and disappearances. You know, the kind with dark forests and the realization that you probably never want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere again? That’s common here in Sandcastle. Even with the strange sirens and mermaids of the ocean and the vampires and zombies in town, it’s the forests are where the most sinister and creepiest beings live. And that is true of this story. For no story in Purgatory would be complete without the horror of a monster not of this world.
If you love monster stories, be sure to pick up a copy of my latest book Sandcastle Horror, Volume I on Amazon in paperback or Kindle. You can also grab a copy at your many local bookstores. A signed copy is available online through my Etsy store. For more information, visit www.scarystorytime.com/sandcastlehorror.
On Saturday nights at 6:00 PM Pacific, you’ll find me playing the weekly stories on YouTube and chatting with friends. Sometimes we watch movies and other times there are phonecalls, live unboxings, and guests. It’s simply a lot of fun and you can look for it or the highlights of the streams on the channel as well. Be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel by visiting www.scarystorytime.com/youtube.
Now let’s begin…
Behold the Pale Sun
by Rephlexi0n
When I was younger, I was one who indulged in music, parties, and various intoxicating substances that would enhance those experiences. I count myself among the many who allowed their hedonism to run wild with enthusiasm. It came then as no surprise that I found myself attending festivals with groups of friends who, at the time, shared the same reckless mindset as me.
For the record – and I say this without pride – I am experienced in drug-taking. While I don’t particularly regret it, there was one experience that halted my drug use altogether. At the time, my fellow partygoers scoffed at this decision, since I didn’t see any worth trying to explain to them what had happened. They would most likely have chalked it all up to a substance-induced hallucination. I’ve had such hallucinations in the past, which tend to be a result of sleep deprivation and frequent redosing. I can safely say none of them compared to the raw reality of this experience.
It was the start of summer, and my friend Rachel had informed me that a group of them were heading to an EDM festival a couple states over. I’ll refrain from divulging the location, as I feel I have already revealed too much by specifying my home country, but I was quick to take up the invitation. Hastily, I booked a ticket from the third batch release and began making preparations for the trip. It was a three-day-weekend festival, so tents and other supplies were required. Of course, I was readily prepared with all the required equipment, the festival most certainly not being my first.
I’ll spare you the long car journey to the location, but we could barely contain ourselves. With me were my buddies Chris, Robbie and, of course, Rachel. We hadn’t been to this one before and we vigorously discussed many topics, including how we were going to smuggle in our pills and powders. I, myself, opted to bring MDMA powder (often coined “ecstasy”, when in pill form), and a few LSD blotters, planning to candy-flip for the duration. I stuck to the ever-true “ballsing” method, which is exactly as it sounds – stuffing your baggies into your boxers before going through security.
For people like us, the place was pretty much Nirvana. It was set up in a rural area, bordering hilly woodland on one side. At least a dozen enormous festival tents were set up in a semi-circular fashion, all playing EDM, but with different artists in the line-up. Paradise, at the time.
The first day went by in a blur. I was quick to dose up on MDMA, which kept me dancing through 8 hours of bliss. I don’t recommend redosing, but damn if it isn’t hard to avoid when everyone around you is doing just that. Peer pressure at its finest. We’d joined with another group of like-minded individuals by the end of the day, and we decided we’d camp together. Robbie had the wonderful idea to have a campfire, but with the rules and regulations we’d have to go somewhere a little more removed.
We decided to pack up our tents and move over into the woods that bordered the property. I was sceptical at first but we came across a really nice spot at the top of a hill, from which the terrain descended and gave us a clear view of the treetops across the forest. Pretty much the perfect spot to watch the fiery sunset commonly associated with summer evenings, whilst also being out of eye and earshot from any uptight security personnel.
After setting our tents up, drinking began without hesitation. The sun was getting low, and all in all I felt great, despite the onset of a comedown headed my way. We were able to gather up twigs and sticks fairly quickly, being in a forest, and used spent beer packaging to get the fire going.
“Hey, want a bump?” Chris said, who I was sat next to on a fallen log near the campfire. He offered a bag of shardy powder which I immediately recognised as ketamine… how could I have refused? It was such a perfect moment I couldn’t put down a little dissociation.
“You even have to ask?”
A wide grin grew on his face and he pulled out his car keys to scoop the powder. He sniffed a generous heap of the stuff before handing it to me. I crushed the bag a little, something Chris had forgotten to do beforehand, then took out a miniature, snow-covered mountain and practically inhaled it. I tasted the drip a little, but it wasn’t so bad in comparison to what I’d been consuming earlier in the day. I felt it immediately.
“Woah, holy shit dude. Feels like something they’d tranquilise a fuckin’ rhino with,” I said, words already becoming jumbled and merged together.
“I know, right? Didn’t even open it earlier, been saving it for now.”
Robbie, eagle-eyed for intoxicants, practically teleported onto the log next to Chris. Probably just a side-effect of the drug, but his sudden manifestation caused me and Chris to erupt in laughter. Robbie acted jokingly offended at this,
“Didn’t know there was an isomer that made you turn into an asshole!” he chuckled.
“Yeah, it’s called dickhead-amine,” Chris said, barely containing his giggles.
“Well, I’m feeling a little too respectful right now, mind sharing?”
“Of course,” replied Chris, passing the paraphernalia to Robbie.
Just then, a different feeling swept over me. It wasn’t a feeling of nausea, or anxiety, but it was like the late-day sunlight was coming in pulses. Like, I could feel the rays, as if they had weight and substance to them, increasing and decreasing in intensity as they swept across my face. I’d never felt anything like it from this type of drug before, so at the time I thought it was just the combination of whatever other chemicals were coursing through my veins in that moment. “Tripping out”, as one might call it.
I chose to dismiss it and continue partying. Someone from the other group had brought out their speaker, a heavy and chunky thing that blasted bass into our bones. With the others dancing about the camp, I opted that one final re-dose of MDMA couldn’t hurt.
I’m not sure how long I flailed about in joy for, but when I went to sit down on the log for a breather the horizon was already burning with a deep orange.
“Need a cold one?” asked Robbie, who’d somehow pulled off the same teleportation trick from earlier.
“Wha- shit dude, you got me again!”
“Heh, just one of my natural skills. You want one or not?”
“Yeah, yeah, crack me one,” I gasped, the exhaustion from the day finally catching up to me. Robbie opened a can and handed it to me, though it wasn’t as cold as he’d promised.
We sat there chatting for a while, gazing over the flittering leaves below which reflected the dusk light. It felt serene, and I knew the money spent was not wasted.
I became distracted at some point by a barely audible sound, somewhere off in the distance. Again, I thought nothing of it – I wasn’t a stranger to the hallucinations brought on after heavy drug use, and I’d seen much worse. But the sound wasn’t diminishing after some time, so I strained my ears to see if I could make out anything in particular. A light breeze had picked up which made it more difficult, but after a short while I could definitely make something out.
Machinery. That was the first word that came to my mind in an attempt to describe what I was hearing. The heavy clanking and whirring of fuel-powered mechanisms operating on a building site. I didn’t even notice Robbie’s absence at this point until I looked over, and saw there were only a few of us outside now, two making out messily, and Chris and Robbie still dancing.
I sat and listened for a few minutes. I could swear that the sounds were getting closer, but they were still too distant to be certain. I checked the time, then became a little confused – 10PM. I glanced back up to the sky; the sun hadn’t even touched the horizon yet, but the sky around had definitely grown darker, with stars becoming apparent. A thought rose in my mind, this shit has me TRIPPING. This was absolutely true, but the whole situation just seemed wrong in some way.
At that moment, I shifted my gaze downwards to see Rachel standing below on the slope of the hill, facing away from the camp. Squinting in confusion, I called out,
“Hey Rache, that you? What are you doing down there?”
There was no response, not even a flicker of movement to suggest she’d registered my call. I grew concerned, thinking she’d taken too much, and I heaved myself up off the log to go and help her back up the hill.
Rachel was standing with the strangest posture. Her shoulders were slumped so low it was like they had been dislocated, and her head lulled backwards. I picked up the pace a bit, growing more worried at her condition, when in all my carelessness I caught my foot on a root protruding from the dirt.
I tripped head-over-heels, almost comically, and rolled down to the bottom of the hill in a tumble of dust and twigs. Luckily, it wasn’t too high or steep, but it was far enough that upon looking back up, the firelight was but a faint orange haze which leaked over the brim of the hill.
I was too shaken to realise at first, but after observing my surroundings I could see that Rachel was nowhere to be found. Surely she wasn’t so fucked up as to not notice the mess that I was rolling right past her. But then, where was she? No one stood above me on the slope, and I couldn’t see anyone else around me.
I realised then that this was one of those stupid comedown hallucinations. I was pissed, seeing my white trainers now coated in a fine layer of brown dust, along with the rest of my clothing. Still, even with the realisation, I found little comfort sitting on my ass, alone, in a quickly darkening forest.
I picked myself up off the ground and dusted my body down, but before turning to make my way back to camp, something caught my eye. The trees now blocked much of the sky, but the sun was still there, seemingly in the exact same place as earlier.
From somewhere beyond the treeline above, there were these… lines, reaching upward toward the sun. Very thin and barely visible, but they became more apparent the longer I stared. They moved in the most peculiar way, like hanging cables or tubes under the influence of gravity, swaying in curved arcs and terminating at the sun’s edge. I wasn’t so quick to credit this to some crazy visuals, however. I looked on in curiosity as more and more of these tubes began attaching themselves to the sun.
The sun, which was… brighter, now? It was a dim orange previously, as sunsets tend to be, but now it looked more like it would during dawn. Almost dazzlingly bright. I thought it had taken on a faint bluish hue, but with the drugs messing with my visual processing I didn’t dwell on that idea long.
I willed myself to turn away and head back up the hill. My friends were probably worried with me gone, though they could equally have been completely unaware of my disappearance. I crawled back over the top to see only Chris and Robbie sitting near the dimming campfire.
My knee fell on and snapped a twig, leading Chris to look over to the noise. He visibly jumped when he saw me, then fell back into confusion as he glanced between me and Robbie, waiting for someone to speak.
“What?” I shouted over, unsure of what had them in such bewilderment.
“Tel? Man, stop fucking around, I thought you were some homeless dude or something,” said Chris, letting out a sigh of relief after understanding the situation.
“What are you talking about? I went down there to get Rachel, she was- wait, where is Rachel?”
“She went to bed, like, 20 minutes ago. And you turned in, like, an hour ago!” said Robbie.
“Wh- Robbie, I’ve been down in the forest for, uh,” I checked my watch. 12AM, “two… hours?”
Chris and Robbie didn’t reply, instead looking between each other with a tinge of fear. Without a word, Chris stood and walked over to my tent, which upon opening he found to be empty.
“What the fuck? We both saw you go into your tent and zip it up,” Chris exclaimed, worry evident in his tone.
“Man, I think we’re all just real fucked up,” I laughed, dry of humour. They grunted in agreement, but I couldn’t help but think of what Chris just said. Had they both hallucinated my likeness at the same time?
“Hey, Tel, you alright? You’re sweating buckets,” asked Robbie, and he hurled a bottle of water in my direction, “you haven’t forgotten about hydration, have ya?”
Now that he said it, I did feel strangely hot. I grabbed the bottle and downed it in a few seconds, before I stood back up and walked over to the communal log-bench. We didn’t talk much after that, but instead hit Robbie’s bong a few times to calm the nerves. Stupidly, it hadn’t occurred to me at the time to ask if they also saw what I saw – I was simply too enamoured by the situation. Both of them went to bed after, but I told them I wanted to sit outside a bit longer to relax.
The relaxation didn’t come, though. To my dismay, the sun still hadn’t set, refusing to budge from its perch above the horizon, and I could again hear those mechanical sounds from earlier, echoing across the valley. There was no doubt this time – they were louder, clearer. Which, logically, meant that whatever was producing the sounds had moved closer.
I was still under the impression of some grand hallucination, when I heard a voice. No, that doesn’t do it justice. I couldn’t make out any words, but I somehow knew inherently that I had heard a voice amongst the distant clanging, not as a separate entity, but as if the industrial soundscape was synchronising itself in such a way that the combined din formed a low, metallic voice. Again, no words were apparent, instead a disordered mumbling that rang in between my ears.
I noticed then, the most bizarre sight yet. Despite the obvious abnormality of the pale sun hanging in the dead of night, I looked closer to see these faint lines drifting on its surface, forming an array of patterns which were slightly dimmer than the rest of the sun.
Focusing more intensely now, it was… how do I even describe it? I’d tripped countless times before, but it looked nothing like the colourful swirling visuals I was used to. It was like I was looking at an enormous, infinitely complex fractal, unfolding in writhing patterns of brighter and dimmer light.
The longer I stared, the further the noises synchronised themselves, building until I undoubtedly heard the words:
“This one.”
It sounded so articulated, there was no way my mind had just conjured it up from the random combination of sounds. It came in waves, like an underlying tinnitus wavering in intensity in such a way as to form those exact words. The sky was now a black ocean dotted with its stars, heavily contrasting the intense, cold ball of light I saw before me. The heat was clearly noticeable now as I found myself wiping sweat out of my eyes to continue looking.
I made the decision to smoke some more weed and drink some more beer, in hopes I could knock myself out and go to sleep. This was all getting too weird, even for a partying vet like myself. I packed a bowl and took a long, slow draw. As much as I didn’t want to look, my eyes were magnetised to the concerning sight before me.
The squirming lines were wider now, and much, much dimmer, more of a dark grey than anything. I rushed to down a few beers, and halfway through my third a loud “clank” made me jump and drop the can to the ground.
Furrowing my brow as if to ask the world around me to just stop whatever it was doing, I looked up one last time to see the patterns had ceased all movement, and were now almost black. Gaping. To my horror, they began to move again. No, the lines remained motionless, but the darkness within was writhing and… started to fall.
Swathes of tiny black shapes were pouring out of the sun right before my eyes, down into the trees below. At this point in my drug-induced delusion, my faith in the fact that this was a hallucination was dwindling. They kept pouring out, until I could see trees in the distance starting to shudder, leaves dancing about like a great stampede of something were shaking them.
I didn’t have the conviction to control myself anymore, and I started hyperventilating. The swaying treetops were getting closer, and a faint, horrible chittering noise became apparent, like how I imagined insects would sound if they were capable of laughter. The trees’ movement must have been less than half a mile away now.
I was paralysed. Whether I was now in full-fledged delirium or not wasn’t my concern at the time – my eyes did not seem to betray me otherwise. Whatever were moving through the trees below were moving fast, and within 20 seconds they were within full earshot. The sounds coming from the darkness became unbearable, like nails scraping my eardrums, and then… nothing. Movement ceased and silence fell.
The fire still flickered dimly, preventing my eyes from adjusting to the swirling darkness weaving throughout the tree trunks downhill, and the crackling of the embers disturbed the thick, heavy silence permeating the camp. Suddenly, the sound of a twig snapping somewhere to my left broke my petrified state and my head snapped to the direction it had come from.
Rachel stood at the edge of the fire’s illumination. No, calling that thing Rachel would be an insult to her very existence. It looked like something with no knowledge of human physiology had attempted to rebuild her using individual body parts, its limbs constantly shifting and readjusting themselves in a fluid manner like it was trying to correct itself.
It took a step forwards, jolting me off of the log and onto my back. Rolling backwards, I pushed myself back off the ground, but it had not moved further. Instead, it opened its mouth, or, mouths – I couldn’t tell how many it had at one time, constantly splitting and merging, combining and creating new holes. I couldn’t see anything inside, just darkness. It began emitting these… vile, clicking and ringing noises which rose and fell, never finding a tone to settle on.
And, just like the sounds before, they started to synchronise into something semi-coherent. Whatever this was didn’t seem to be able to copy Rachel’s voice. Still, I could not make out any clear words. Imagine someone who doesn’t understand English hearing the language spoken. That is how I felt listening to this abomination, like an auditory stroke.
It appeared to give up after another moment and went quiet. Its “mouths” instead began multiplying, growing and expanding over its skin like Swiss cheese, until nothing that resembled a human remained. My eyes grew painful trying to focus on whatever stood in my presence. It… nothing in my vocabulary can accurately describe the being. I can’t really even remember how it looked; as hard as I try, the form was just mentally incompatible. I can recall dark lines and shapes, both sharp and organic, shifting in certainly more than three dimensions. There looked to be something peering out from the spasmatic blackness, something like monochrome faces all overlapping, separate but at the same time as one. They gazed out at me with an expression of intense sorrow, lips parting as if to talk, yet any words were snuffed out by that incomprehensible void.
After what felt like hours, but was probably seconds, it started to move again. And, as it moved, it began to take on a new form. Skin, hair, nails, fabric, all slipping and sliding, until… the logo on my polo shirt became visible, emerging from underneath a dark fold. While this happened, movement stirred from the darkness below, countless shifting footsteps disturbing the forest floor.
I wish I could describe further, and in more detail, but that was the breaking point for me. I dropped the still-smoking pipe, spun around and ran in the opposite direction. I ran and ran onto the festival grounds, past a colourful sea of tents and drunk onlookers, before slipping on a cold puddle of someone’s vomit, and falling face-first into the trash-littered ground.
I awoke in a medical support tent at 11.30AM. Looking down at my arms, they appeared terribly sunburnt, and the sight caused the accompanying pain to flare up over my skin. I winced and looked around to absorb my surroundings. A staff member came over to me then, a kind-looking middle-aged man, with a bottle of some sort of lotion and another of water.
“Hey, kid. How you feeling? You got some terrible burns there, forget your sunscreen?” he asked.
“I- uh- y-yeah, lost it somewhere yesterday,” I lied.
“You gotta be more careful with that, kid. You can get skin cancer from it, y’know.”
“Yeah, thank you. Um, what’s that bottle you have there?”
“Oh, this? Just something to ease the skin. Trust me, you won’t wanna leave here without it.”
The burning that arose as I reached out for the bottle confirmed his statement. My skin was the colour of a sunset, and felt as hot as the sun itself. The thing is, I did put on sunscreen, multiple times throughout the day, and I don’t burn easily anyway. When we were at the camp I felt absolutely fine. Well, before whatever happened that made me flee in terror.
Chris and Robbie were waiting for me outside, faces carved with sombre looks. They had with them all our things packed up, tents, leftover drinks, all of it. My heart dropped when they told me that they’d found Rachel’s tent empty in the morning along with mine. A search team was called onto the site to scour the woods for any evidence of where she could have gone, but their efforts had thus far been fruitless. Though, I had a feeling they would not find even the slightest indication that she had ever been there, bar her tent and belongings.
Robbie insisted on staying behind to help with the search while Chris and I made the journey home. The leather seats in Chris’ car were a painful nuisance, sticking to my clammy, sunburnt skin at the slightest touch. I didn’t have the energy to complain, though. We arrived back at my house and called Robbie with a dwindling hope which, for me, had already dried up completely, but of course, no news had surfaced.
Rachel was never found. Even after the case was extended into multiple jurisdictions, any trail the police may have had soon ran cold. I haven’t told my friends, but I know now that Rachel is undoubtedly lost forever to something beyond our comprehension. After all, how could they believe me, given our drug use that night? Grieving is one thing, but grieving knowing you can’t tell the truth about what happened is a different beast altogether.
While I was changing my clothes that day, I noticed something peculiar. My blue polo no longer held the embroidered brand logo on its left breast as it once had. I still shudder at the implications of what may have happened if I’d stuck around any longer to find out.
I don’t participate in that life anymore, really. I still see those friends, but on the craziest of nights I never go further than drinking or smoking, usually not in combination. Probably for the best, anyway.
Those words linger in my head, still. “This one.” Were they referring to me? I really don’t have any rational explanation for what happened that night, what those beings were, their motives… needless to say, the image of that pale sun unfolding is forever etched into my memory.
All I can say now is that if the sun stops setting, and hangs there like a glazed-over eye, don’t stay to see it open up. Don’t be brave, or curious. Just get as far as you can from wherever you find yourself – or be taken somewhere our minds were never intended to witness.
