Season 2 is on the horizon, so to warm up I'd like to take a crack at explaining one of the few solvable mysteries from Season 1: The plane explosion from Episode 8. Plus, Laura Lee ended up being my favorite for Season 1, so I wanted to do my due diligence to put her and Leonard the Bear to rest.
From a mystery angle, it's understood that the explosion was because of a fire that broke out from flying a long-neglected plane, but the exact cause of the fire and the explosion hasn't been specified. So, this post centers on what could have happened from a mechanical perspective. I'll first bring up evidence presented in the show, then go through the events of the crash, and finally the theory on where the fire started, how it spread, and what caused the explosion.
Evidence: The Plane Model
Before we get to the main event, it would be best to identify the plane model, so that we can identify possible areas where the fire and explosion can occur. Given evidence from the show, it is very likely a Cessna 185 Skywagon.

• In episode 5, Laura Lee starts reading a plane manual, likely for the plane they found in the woods. The cover of the manual wasn't entirely visible, but a search using the visible keywords brought up the Cessna 185 Skywagon, which looks very similar to the plane.
• A quick check on the plane's production years (1961 - 1985) confirms it fits into the timeline. Cabin guy could have bought it during that time frame, used it for a few years until he died, with enough time for it to degrade until the team finds it in 1996.
• Searching for Skywagon manuals brings up this 1975 flight manual, which has a strong resemblance to the manual Laura Lee was reading. I also managed to find a lower quality 1974 manual that's a better match, but for the sake of readability I'll only link the 1975 manual. I also found the service manual, which goes into great detail about the different systems inside the plane.

Timeline: The Explosion
Now to lay down the exact sequence of events, to make sure that any source of the fire complies with what was shown. As much as possible, I will be going step by step:

• Laura Lee boards the plane, resisting Coach Ben's attempt at stopping her. She places Leonard the Bear in the co-pilot's seat after shutting the door.
• She starts the plane. Black smoke comes out of the front vent, but the engine manages to start.
• The plane takes off seemingly without incident, and manages to reach the lake. The rest of the team starts chasing after it.
• The plane is over the lake, when there is a sudden burst of flame beside Laura Lee.
• The co-pilot seat and Leonard the bear are on fire. The flames (bright orange) are strong enough to have burnt a hole through bottom and lower back of the co-pilot's seat. Only the top of Leonard's head is still not burnt up.
• Smoke begins to fill the cabin. From outside, Jackie sees the plane vent black smoke from its tail. Laura Lee holds onto her cross and waits for the end.
• The plane explodes. A video of the explosion can be found in this link. If played slowly at (~0.25x), the origin of the blast appears to be from the plane's right wing.

The Theory: In-Flight Engine Fire
Given the Skywagon's manuals and the sequence of events, it is highly likely that the fire started from the plane engine, traveled along the fuel line under Leonard's chair, and caused an explosion when it reached the plane's right fuel tank.

• The Skywagon was severely neglected and had not undergone maintenance for several years. The flight manual recommends an annual inspection (p. 37), which makes the plane a clear hazard by this point. The question of an accident happening wouldn't be an "if" but a "when". To quote the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association: "A fire is more likely to occur under the cowl when a component fails because of age, fatigue, or improper maintenance."
• First, identify the ignition source: the piston engine in the cowling. The engine converts fuel into power via combustion within its cylinders. Normally that would be no issue, but given that the Skywagon has many old and potentially faulty parts, it's likely that at least one cylinder was unable to contain the spark, and the fire spreads to the connected fuel line.
• The fire spreads to the rest of the plane via the fuel lines. Given the time between the start of the fire and the explosion, the fuel lines were likely only leaking fuel, enough for the fire to steadily make its way to the plane's fuel tanks. According to the plane's servicing manual (p. 188), the plane has fuel tanks on each of its wings, and the fuel system goes from the engine, under the pilot and co-pilot chairs, around the doors and to the wings (p. 58). When the two diagrams are put together, you can see the right fuel line running under Leonard's chair.
• This explains why Leonard only catches fire over the lake, and not at takeoff: As the fire spreads from the engine, it travels through the right fuel line until it's below his chair. the fire takes time to chew through the flame-resistant chair, until it gets through and starts very easily burning Leonard. The sudden blaze beside Laura Lee can be explained by the fire reacting to the oxygen in the pressurized cabin.
• Meanwhile, the fire continues to spread. On the ground, Jackie sees black smoke from the plane's tail, a sign that fuel is burning and that the fire has spread throughout the plane.
• Not too long after that, the fire reaches the fuel tank on the right (Leonard's side) of the plane and the plane explodes. For reference, here is a video of a fuel tank explosion test, which the plane explosion resembles - a sudden burst of flame and lots of black smoke.

Extra: In Defense of Leonard the Bear
Other theories have pointed to poor Leonard the Bear as the source of the fire, either via supernatural means or sabotage. I had also considered this at first, but given the timeline of events, this has a few contradictions:

• There is no fire source that is both strong enough to burn through the fire resistant chair and small enough to fit into Leonard.
• Even if there was an available source, the degree of damage done to both objects would not match the timeline. If Leonard was the source, he would burn up entirely before the fire could fully chew through the pilot's chair, since it was designed to be more flame resistant. Laura Lee would have faced a different problem with the small cabin fire and smoke, but the fire would be unable to reach the fuel line and won't cause the plane to explode. Instead, the bottom of the chair has been burnt through while Leonard's head is still burning, indicating that the chair was chewed through first.

And there we have it. The engine fire hopefully addresses most of the puzzle pieces for this mystery, but if anyone else has any evidence (in support or contradictory), I'd be happy to look at it. In the meantime, I probably need to hide because the searches on plane fires and engines have likely put me on a list somewhere.

I have a Samsung WF218ANW/XAA Washer. It gave a nd error message and wouldn't drain. The issues has persisted throut these steps. - Cleaned some gravel out of the pump. - Replaced the pump. - Replaced the pressure sensor.
I can blow air through the pressure sensor line. I have been vacuuming water out of it through the drain line during my trouble shooting so that isn't clogged. I did not throughly inspect the other lines when I was in there because I figured it was the pump. Any suggestions for the next step? Or any trouble shooting steps? Maybe one of the new parts is also bad?
Thanks

Id appreciate some feedback as I plan to self publish this at some point in a larger book.
Epsilon’s Trial
With heavy shoulders slumped, Sebastian Pasquet walked through the door of his house and kicked off his shoes, dropping the suitcase and hanging up his jacket. The turtleneck shirt he wore was covered in specs of dust and dirt, all of which emerged from today's earlier events.
“Ugh. I swear this position is gonna drive me into the bloody ground.” he grunted in a thick English accent. “I’m home.”

His voice caught the attention of a woman dressed in a blue shirt and apron, her hair was a dark silver and her eyes were violet, but her most defining features were a pair of cat-like ears protruding from her head, as well as a tail that stretched down to her feet. 

She walked towards him and instantly embraced him in a hug, causing him to drop the suitcase. He didn’t care and simply returned the love, pushing his lips against hers as he smirked. Greeting him was his wife, Alvia. A Felis from the planet Eria some 230,000,000 kilometers from Fiore.
A world with the lowest population in Eridani at 2.5 billion inhabited by a shy, peaceful race that, while possessing spaceflight and the ability to travel through jump space, had no off world settlements apart from their moon.
“Welcome back.” she said as her tail curved around his leg. “I missed you so much. It’s five thirty by the way, don’t you usually get out by four?”
“There was an accident on one of the launch pads that needed attention.”
“Oh my, I hope no one was hurt.”
“Don’t worry, it was an unmanned test. No crew on board.”
“Ah, great. Well my love, your hard day's work is over for the time being.” She pecked his cheek once more. “Come on, dinner’s almost finished.”

He stepped into the living room where a young boy was sitting on the floor reading a children's book. The area was designed with a modern and cozy aesthetic with the TV embedded in the wall, an L-shaped couch at the center, and family portraits stacked across a nearby table. One of them depicted Sebastian five years ago in his EVA suit, taken just before launch. 

His seven year old son, Jeremy, greeted him with a hug. While he resembled a younger version of himself, he’d been born a Felis just like Alvia, inheriting his mothers ears and tail.
“Hey kiddo.” Sebastian said, picking him up and scratching behind his ears. “What’d you do all day?”
“I got to help mom with dinner.” he replied, in a cheery voice. “Oh, Dad, are we still gonna go to the expo? Mari said she’s going with her parents.”
Jeremy had been referring to the Interstellar Aerospace Expo of 2273, which was to be held on the planet Vandam in two months. The annual thirteen day long convention where space companies, private initiatives, and anti-gravity racers from all across Eridani gathered to celebrate the one thing they all shared in common; flying.
“Of course we are.” Sebastian replied. “But were you good in school today?”
His son nodded.
“Then, I’ll be sure to take you to the anti-gravity race when we go.”

Jeremy cheered at his reply. Upon putting him down, Alvia directed him to wash his hands before dinner. He watched Jeremy head up the stairs towards the bathroom as his wife placed her head against his shoulder. 

“I swear, he can’t stop talking about that event.” she said.

Changing into a t-shirt he plopped onto the couch and turned the TV on just in time to witness a news report taking place. A story discussing a recent development regarding an unknown object floating within space, specifically the Strain Belt, the massive asteroid belt that separated Fiore from Eris. The screen then switched to a photograph taken within the belt via a satellite, depicting a violet light within a field of asteroids. As his wife sat beside him Sebastian became puzzled at the story, his mind curious as to what the supposed entity could be. 

“I read this somewhere earlier. Some are just saying it could be a comet.” Alvia said.
“But what kind of comet stays in the exact same place?” he replied. “It’s probably a defunct probe that’s reached its end.”
Alvia shrugged her shoulders as Sebastian began to massage her ears, which she loved a lot. “Maybe. So, how was today apart from the accident you mentioned?”
“Sorting through paperwork. Supersiving vehicle operation. In short, horrifying.”
“Aw, my peach sounds like he’s been through too much. It’s been two years now since you’ve had this position, director of the astronaut corps.”
“It has its perks. I get to fly in those fancy spaceliners for business trips across the planet or to the moon.”
“Oh? Then maybe you can book us a nice getaway towards those fancy beach hotels.” Sebastian rolled his eyes and smiled at her answer. Alvia slowly raised her head and pressed her lips against his once more, giving Sebastian the go ahead to massage her tail.
“Ew, yuck!”

The two ceased their advances immediately upon hearing the voice of their son in front of them. There, Jeremy stood, mocking his parents' act of love causing the two of them to laugh. When all was said and done they walked towards the kitchen where dinner was served, the entire time Sebastian was subjected to Jeremy’s rambling about the exposition. 

The next day Sebastian found himself quickly jogging through the halls of Ophir Space Complex, the campus-sized facility that managed all launches and missions of the company. He arrived at the designated meeting room and was greeted by the sight of James sitting at the head of an oval-shaped mahogany table. Beside him were Romero and Alex as well, all dressed in matching suit attire. 

Sebastian noticed at the table center a hologram of the planet Fiore, which was odd because this room didn’t have that feature the previous day.
“Sorry if I’m late. Had to drop my son off at school and traffic was impatient on the way back.” Sebastian said, taking his seat.
“Not at all mate. We’re waiting on a few more actually.” Romero replied, shaking Sebastian's hand. “How is your boy anyway?”
“Excited for the expo, that’s for sure. Says some of his friends are going too.”
“Same for me and my little girl.” Alex added. “I hear that there’s going to be a Human vs. Astrean anti-gravity prix.”
“How much do you want to bet they’ll kick our arses?”

Eventually several other suited men stepped into the room and upon closing the door, took their seats and greeted Sebastian and his colleagues. 

“Good. Now that everyone’s here, let's get this meeting started.” Romero proclaimed. “To begin, what is on the schedule for this month in terms of the new models?”
“Fortunately the accident yesterday was only minor and the damage was menial, the engineers over at our plant in Harriet are repairing it as we speak.” Alex replied. “Construction on two other prototypes are underway as we speak.”
“Will it be ready in time for the exposition?” another man asked.
“We believe so. With a little more time.”
“More time? The event is in two months and we have yet to present anything to the board and CEO. If we don’t procure results fast we’ll be coming in fifth place for the fourth year in a row.”
“Easy now, I’m sure our engineers here are on the case. Yesterday’s mishap has not slowed us down before, and it will not slow us down again.”

The hologram at the center suddenly switched to a star map of Eridani, displaying all barren and inhabited worlds within the star system, including the eight planets humanity resided on. Their names were shown just below the tiny sphere they represented. 

Daphne. Rhea. Nova. Antari. Freya. Cascade. . And his own planet, Fiore.

Soon after, a hologram of the spacecraft in question appeared at the center of the map as well. Sebastian was silent for the most part, somewhat annoyed at the constant bickering between the old men. 

“The model comes in one and two seater variants we’ve labeled as the Ichinose-class. Its nickname is Epsilon.” Alex spoke. “We were implementing a two engine propulsion system that not only propels the ship forward, but provides power for the rest of the ship. Sebastian, wanna give the rundown?”
He nodded, shifting everyone's attention to the TV display on the wall which now showed a diagram of the ship.
“Our spacecraft compared to Astreans, while advanced, are relatively primitive in their eyes. Well at least in terms of design and architecture. Astreans ships use deuterium and tritium to power their reactors while we use deuterium and helium-3, with liquid hydrogen remaining as the primary fuel source. But what makes Epsilon different is its engines.”
“Oh?” another man said.
“Typically, our vehicles employ chemically fueled aerospike plasma engines, the newer engines you’re seeing here are fusion powered and designed to not only provide direct thrust, but power to the spacecraft altogether.”

Each of the men’s eyes widened at Sebastians response. Such a design for a spacecraft was unproven on Fiore, but the concept and practicality was very much real. In fact most companies and organizations on other human worlds had recently fielded such designs. Sebastian continued. 

“Speed is also another factor we’ve looked over. A typical trip from Fiore to Eris in this planetary system will take around 7 hours. These engines can cut that flight down to just 2.5 hours of non-stop travel. Especially when you consider that it takes 5 hours to get to the Strain Belt.”

The men then began conversing amongst themselves at Sebastians statement. While some of them were supportive of the concept of lower trips across the interplanetary medium, others were skeptical. When asked if the engines were tested with astronauts Sebastian shook his head. 

“I haven’t assigned anyone to fly it as of yet, but rest assured the tests are coming back with many positive results.”
“Positive, but unmanned,” he replied. “If this were to fail, the amount of bad publicity would damage our reputation for years to come. We cannot proceed further without human ratings.”

Sebastian sighed to himself as he grunted, the men of the table chatting back and forth about the safety and possible outcomes the fusion engines would provide. He tried to find the words to say to appease the table but their corporate tone, mildly annoying political voices hindered that effort. For the past several minutes the meeting continued, with two sides discussing both the pros and cons of having such a design. Finally, after seemingly an eternity of old men debating over coffee as his wife put it, he slammed a hand on the table causing Alex to flinch. Standing from his seat, all eyes were now trained on him. 

“Enough. All this bickering is not getting us anywhere. If you want results, I’ll fly the damn ship myself.”

As if coming to some horrendous realization the table's members simply stared at Sebastian upon his closing statement. For his part, Sebastian was set on fulfilling the test operation. Further explaining that he would assign himself to a manned test of the vehicle as soon as possible. 

“I’m not so sure that would be an appropriate move, as the astronaut office head you’re responsible for ensuring launch vehicles are up to company standards.”
“And what better way to do that than from inside the said vehicle?” Sebastian replied. “Look, everyone in both corporate and engineering is under a lot of stress and worrying about our place at the exposition. I can put all those to rest with a simple interplanetary flight to Eria.”
“I agree.” Alex added. “Sebastian is one of the more experienced pilots in the program as well, especially when you look at his resume.”

Silence filled the room. The diagram of the engine disappeared from the screen as Sebastian took his seat once more, their eyes wandering back and forth as if lost in thought and trying to find counter arguments. As it became evident that there were no further words to say, one of the men had taken a piece of paper and began writing. 

“I will take it to the board then,” he said. “If we’re talking about a spaceflight, then might we add an extra task?”

When Sebastian arrived at the Strain Belt he was fast at work, enjoying the wilderness of space that he’d spent so long away from. A week had passed and he was installing one of many beacons along a column of asteroids, his EVA circulating oxygen and maintaining a stable body temperature. He had departed Fiore a few hours earlier after taking Jeremy to school and kissing his wife goodbye, now conducting a mission which included not only working out any of Epsilon’s bugs, but locating an interstellar object which had been spotted by a company space probe. 

Sebastian jumped from the asteroid and floated back towards Epsilon where the airlock was still open. Pressurizing the interior he assumed control of the vehicle and used the thrusters to gently move into more open space. The thick concentration of asteroids surrounding him resembled a field of death, something no human without the proper experience should be able to survive.

While the ship's hull was sturdy, Sebastian had to maintain constant caution. His senses were on full alert even from inside the safety of the ship. The occasional bumps along the exterior would cause any inexperienced pilot to flinch, but Epsilon was made of some of the best titanium Fiore had. As he arrived at the signal's location Sebastian found himself cast into a sea of dark, the sun barely shining through the asteroids that circled him. 

“I can’t see it yet.” he said to himself. “The news showed that thing to be a bright violet light, but where would it be?”

After floating through the belt for several minutes he was caught by the flash of a bright light, the familiar violet color from the news made its appearance known again. Activating Epsilon’s fusion engines Sebastian sped towards the light as it began to vanish as quickly as it came. He turned on the spacecraft's exterior lights to get a full view of what was before him. 

“Holy crap…”

His eyes took a moment to register what everyone at the space center assumed it to be. A large horizontal object with a shape almost like an oversized satellite with a rod attached to the end, two flat extensions resembling solar panels, and a round dome that covered its opposite end. In fact its shape and various extensions gave it the appearance of a small space station. 

“Control, I think I’ve found it.” Sebastian said through comms. “These markings along the side, those definitely aren’t human made.”
“We read you Epsilon. Are you saying what we’re all thinking?”
“Yeah. This thing is definitely of Xanadu origin.”

The sound of applause could be heard at the end of the radio. Sebastian smirked as he leaned back in his seat upon discovering one of thousands, if not millions of different advanced ancient technologies spread throughout the Milky Way. After relaying the artifact’s location and back to Fiore, his celebration abruptly ended when an alarm began to sound. Glancing at the radar beneath him he spotted two red dots, each representing ships, heading for his position. Sensing something was wrong Sebastian quickly displayed an enhanced frame of the space before him, what he could see were two low grade spacecraft flying towards his position. 

“Aw crap.” Sebastian said, activating the engines. “Control, we’ve got a problem. I’ve got a band of Outcast pirates on my plate now.”
“Well would you look at that.” one of them spoke through comms. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a butterfly trapped in a thorn bush. No biggie, you hand over that structure there and things don’t have to go south.”
Sebastian sighed. “It was hard enough having to navigate through this freaking death field. Now I have scumbags like you in my schedule? Geeze it just ain’t my day.”
“What was that?!” One of the ships activated their weapons systems.
“Did I stutter? I called you a bunch of low life trash bags who’re probably too stupid to know how a coffee maker works.”

Before he knew it, a concentrated beam of energy came flying through the asteroid field. Using Epsilon’s powerful thrusters Sebastian was only barely able to dodge it. He gripped the stick and began to fly forwards into the fray. To maintain his stability Sebastian had to keep the fusion engine's velocity at a minimum so as to not crash into any asteroids, or worse, the pirates spacecraft. 

“Looks like this butterfly’s been reading too many fantasies. Let’s show em who’s in charge around here!”

He soon found one of the ships now tailing him. Another stream of energy zipped past his ship and grazed the side of the hull plating, setting off another alarm Sebastian quickly silenced. Activating Epsilon's energy shields he quickly formulated a plan in order to gain the upper hand. Despite being a prototype, Epsilon was equipped with defenses including a directed energy weapon and four missiles stored in a lower chamber. 

“Damn. If this keeps up I’ll run out of fuel before I can even plan for the expo’s entrance.” he said to himself, scoffing. “No matter, I’ve got a few tricks of my own.”

As he piloted Epsilon through the dense field he remained calm and collected, knowing that fear and panic would only make the situation much more dire. A common aspect all astronauts followed when venturing in or far from Eridani. Paranoia would only spell certain demise. Sebastian circled another set of rocks before raising his altitude, catching the tailing ship off guard. The ship slammed into the side of the asteroid at an intense velocity. Engulfing the ship in a silent explosion as the flames vanished. 

“One down, one more to go.” Sebastian said. “Hm?”

He stabilized his altitude and ceased all movement to find the last remaining pirate ship before him; it was a few thousand feet away but close enough for Sebaatian to see. Strangely it made no attempts to move, no communication from its crew, all he could see was the low-budget ship flash a red light from its bridge area occasionally. 

“What the heck are they doing…?”

Sebastian realized too late. Within several seconds his spacecraft's systems suddenly began to go haywire, the electricity malfunctioning and life support beginning to fail. Putting on his helmet Sebastian quickly maneuvered Epsilon out of view from the Outcasts using what little power from the spacecraft's backup systems he had. He’d been hit with an EMP. 

“We’ve got him. Finish him off so we can claim our prize.”

Sebastian began to assess the situation as the pirate's spacecraft hovered towards him, the Outcast fired another stream of energy towards Epsilon causing the ship's hull to deteriorate. Using the thrusters Sebastian shifted behind an asteroid to avoid another oncoming stream of energy. Several minutes had passed with Epsilon sneaking around the Outcast ship and avoiding whatever attacks it could. Eventually the two ships found themselves coming within range of a pocket of controlled space within the Strain Belt, Sebastian could spot the orbital infrastructure that made up Ophir Strait. One of only two clear paths of the Strain Belt that served as a trade route between Fiore and Eria. 

“Damn it.” he grunted, hitting the dashboard. “If I don’t end this quickly then we’re both gonna be fired on by the security bots.”
Separated by fifty miles, Sebastian was well outside the exclusion zone of the trade route, and with Epsilon's systems finally back online he ran another scan for the remaining Outcast ship. He spotted him several thousand kilometers in front of him once more, only this time he couldn't see him out the canopy window.
Sebastian squinted his eyes as he looked out the window, his grip firm on the stick as he came to realize that he had to. He thought of Alvia and Jeremy back on Fiore, both of them waiting for his safe return and comforting presence once more. Taking in a breath, he gradually began to speed towards the craft.
“Alright…we got one shot at this.” Sebastian said. “This doesn’t work, then Ophir Strait falls apart.”

Sebastian locked onto the Outcast ahead of him and fired one of the missiles beneath the spacecraft, but not before slightly altering its trajectory. Epsilon increased its speed enough causing the interior to shake and vibrate, the energy shields surrounding the outside were activated once again, as asteroids flew past the canopy glass at a high velocity. Within just a few minutes the Outcast ship came within sight. It fired its directed energy once again straight towards Epsilon which made contact with the energy shield. However Sebastian continued to fly straight towards the craft, ignoring the reducing shield's power. The Outcast panicked, as it appeared that Sebastian would crash Epsilon straight into his ship. 

“Are you crazy?!” the pirate shouted.
Sebastian was unfazed. “Maybe.”

Before he knew it the Outcast was closer than ever, within a split second Sebastian's spacecraft zipped by the pirate in a swift clean motion. Epsilon then used its thrusters to reduce its velocity once more, the pirate beginning to laugh. 

“What the hell was that? No guts to finish it huh?” His ship's energy weapon began to charge. “Looks like this is it then, butterfly.”
“Yeah. For you at least.”

Confused, the Outcast demanded to know what he meant. Sebastian for his part, chuckled as he directed the pirate to look behind him. The two missiles Epsilon fired earlier had reemerged and, with brute force, smashed into the pirates ship from both port and starboard side. A ball of fire engulfed the surrounding space followed by a brief blinding light. All of which could be seen, but not heard. The flames vanished. Filling the space with debris from the destroyed ship that floated off into various directions. Sebastian let out a breath of relief as Epsilon, damaged but still alive, gently raised its altitude to be above the Strain Belt. The sun’s light shone through the glass as he took off his helmet and accepted the light.’ 

“Epsilon, this is Fiore! Epsilon, do you read?” a voice spoke through comms.
“Fiore this is Epsilon, good to hear your voice.”
“Sebastian? Thank God. What’s happening up there? The signal cut out and we’ve been trying to reach you!”

Looking around the interior of the cabin he shrugged his shoulders, taking off his communications cap he responded. 

“Well Fiore, I don’t know how to quite say this….”
Two months had passed since the incident in the Strain Belt, the Xanadu artifact had been secured by the company and taken to an orbital research station on one of Fiore’s moons.

The stadium had been packed to the rim with civilians from all across Eridani filling the twenty thousand seats that surrounded the massive holographic screen at the center of the ring. Fireworks lit the dim sky accompanied by confetti raining from passing overhead ships, and the cheers of all resonated throughout the air. Flags of the various inhabited worlds throughout Eridani flew along the center. 

Among the thousands of civilians, Sebastian sat beside his wife with their son between them.
“Hey, look.” Alvia said, pointing upward. “They’re starting.”

Sebastian glanced towards the sky and his eyes were as wide as dinner plates, as five spacecraft conducting a flyover soared over the stadium in formation. Leaving behind trails blue and white smoke that casted the air in a striped pattern. They were Epsilon spacecraft, the very type that saved his life in a far, dangerous region of space. It was the second day of the 2273 Interstellar Aerospace Expo, hosted by the Astreans that lived on the planet Seira, the day that would kick off with a traditional anti-gravity race between the humans teams from Fiore, and the Jurahan teams from Eden. 

“Dad, are we gonna win?” Jeremy asked.
Sebastian smiled and ruffled his hair. “I sure as hell hope so kid. That way Alex will be getting me lunch when we head back.”
Alvia covered Jeremy’s ears. “Sebastian, language. Not in front of Jeremy.”
“What? If I remember correctly you did the same before we left.”
Alvia playfully punched his arm before placing Jeremy on her lap.

Within moments of the racers being introduced the host of the show gave a brief speech to the people, welcoming all in attendance to both the race and the exposition. Upon finishing the anti-gravity timer began its countdown from ten, with the people all counting in unison as per tradition. Sebastian was happy. Happy that everything in the end worked out, from getting Epsilon approved in time for the exposition, to satisfying his son’s thirst for adventure. As the race began he pulled his wife closer and stroked the tip of her tail as they watched. 

“You know you still owe me an explanation about what happened.” she said. “I want to know all about your first time back up in space.”
“Yeah. Well I’ll tell you…most of what happened.”
Sebastian pecked Alvia’s cheek, as the romanticized scale of the race continued.

The subject of how to safeguard a home from likely harm while pressure washing is significant for any property holder. To guarantee that the home remaining parts protected and in one piece, it is important to comprehend the dangers related with this undertaking as well as manners by which these can be limited. This article will examine the prescribed procedures for safeguarding a home during pressure washing, including readiness prior to starting the work, choosing the right hardware, and avoiding potential risk during use.
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​

My wood deck can I use a pressure washer on?

Utilizing a strain washer on a wood deck can be a powerful method for cleaning and keep up with it, as long as the legitimate precautionary measures are taken. Pressure washing is best when done at lower pressures, so that no harm happens to the basic surface. It is critical to guarantee that any soil or trash has been taken out from the deck prior to starting the cycle. This will assist with forestalling any further harm during the cleaning system.
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Hello! I tested the spark plug by grounding it to the body, and it definitely has a spark.
I’ve tried starting it with starter fluid but that won’t get it running. It also sounds like it has good compression.
(Air filter removed)
Any ideas? Thanks!

The following description is not provided by this sub or any of its contributors.
£64.99 - Euro Car Parts
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  This deal can be found on hotukdeals via this link: https://ift.tt/9pJaZdx
  

2008, 165k miles. I have a iCarsoft diagnostic reader for Honda.
I've gotten these errors before... Here's the history: Get P2646 (actuator arm stuck, bank 1) error: -Replace VTEC solenoid -Replace oil pressure switch -Clean front oil screen behind power steering pump -Replace coils and plugs -Problem goes away
Soon after, get another P2646 and P0302 (cylinder misfire): -take to shop, one of the coils i had replaced was bad (bought off Amazon; mistake) -shop replaces coil -life is good, take long road trip.
Mid-winter, get another misfire code -replace remaining 3 coils from Amazon with Car Quest brand from Advance Auto Parts -Replace all plugs with NGK -Life is good
Driving home tonight, get P2646 and P0302 errors again. -I'm stumped -Thinking timing chain, if it weren't for replacing coils and plugs resolved the issue before, BUT plugs and coils should last a lot longer than a season. It's not like we've put thousands and thousands of miles on it since the last coil/plug change.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. If it really is a bad coil , plug or VTEC, what's causing them to burn up so quickly? Or should I be looking elsewhere?
Thank you

Here I reevaluate and analyze each type of Nen. Making it clear that what I am going to do here is my opinion based on what I have seen in the manga and anime and not the absolute truth. As I mentioned before, I would like to know your opinion on this.
The description given in the manga and anime is:
Specialization: Produces effects that don't belong to any of the other 5 categories.
Which doesn't tell us anything, in fact, if we look at the hatsus diagram, we can split it into two parts.
​
https://preview.redd.it/nl8hbfe1broa1.jpg?width=1337&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3975e72a582879a6fdafe86a080f6c8ccfaa6898
Being that, the upper part, enhancement, emission and transmutation, is oriented to use the aura, in different ways. While the lower part, conjuration and manipulation, is geared towards creating and manipulating physical matter, however, Specialization doesn't seem to fit this description, or at least not entirely. so we will first analyze some specialist users.
Komugi
​
https://i.redd.it/g076bzcsiroa1.gif
she practiced, days and nights, without eating or sleeping, literally putting her life into each game, since if she lost and if not being the most renowned Gungi player in the country, she would consider herself a burden to her family and would rather die before to be a burden. While playing against Meruem, being pressured to constantly beat the king, she awakens her Nen, being able to exceed the limits of a normal Gungi player.
There is another Nen user who has this obsessive behavior, and that is Netero. We all know that Netero is an enhancer, but when he reached the limit of his physical training, he underwent a compulsive training, in which he was, for days, months and years, every day, praying and throwing, 10,000 thanks punches to martial arts, the power awakened, at the end of his training, which gives the sensation of stopping time for the rest of the world, making his blows inevitable, I infer that it may be a specialization.
​
https://i.redd.it/h8z9lnjdiroa1.gif
Let's analyze it carefully:
Enhancement, is what gives powerful damage to his technique.
Emission, equivalent to the projected form of Guanyin Bodhisattva.
Specialization, this being the speed that causes instant movement.
Neon Nostrade
​
https://i.redd.it/0aoga1x0jroa1.gif
Neon, during her conversation with Chrollo, implies that for a while she practiced and wished very much to be able to predict the future, until one day her predictions came true, giving life to the ability that she herself demonstrates. And just like Komugi, they both learned to use Nen, autonomously, without being aware that they knew Nen.
For now, our last example will be Meleoron
​
https://i.redd.it/dnb4tqf5lroa1.gif
He is a chameleon Chimera ant , and like a chameleon, he can camouflage himself, which makes sense that his specialist ability has allowed him to develop the ability to become invisible and undetectable.
After seeing this, we can deduce that the four of them were experts in something, Komugi in Gungi and strategy, Netero in martial arts, Neon in divination and Meleoron in camouflage.
So we can conclude that:
Specialization: Allows you to develop a skill, beyond the natural limits of the human. Obtaining surprising results, which cannot be obtained using other branches of Nen.
For other individuals, specialization has a 0% chance of being developed, because we all tend to have a certain balance in our lives, and we tend to develop different areas (painting, sports, cooking, etc.) But to be a specialist, have to go to the extreme, being obsessed with a single activity.
However, we'll see what Kurapika's master mentions to him about specialization. He says "they are either genetic abilities or acquired from growing up in extreme conditions", and if we think about it carefully, both Chrollo and Kurapika are polar opposites of this description.
Chrollo is one of the most mysterious and complex characters in this story, we don't know much about him. But, he has shown certain actions that would help us to infer his history and personality, if we look at the Ryodan, we may come to think that he only uses his members to achieve his personal goals, but if we examine closely, Chrollo has a deep feeling for something, at first, we could say that it is empathy for the lives of his companions and in turn, I regret, every time he loses one of his comrades.
In chapters 395 to 397, his personality is shown much more before and until the formation of the Ryodan, where after a traumatic situation he seems to have lost all faith in humans, stating that he would become a villain, but if we analyze it well It seems that he has a crisis of identity and complexity, to understand what a human being is.
If we remember the conversation he has with Gon...
​
https://reddit.com/link/11vyiy3/video/ralj8be9froa1/player
It isn't out of indifference, he seems disoriented and wonders if it is the key to understanding himself.
​
https://i.redd.it/cuasbmt7froa1.gif
This may be related to his abilities. The Nen is something very personal, since many abilities are related to the personality and mental state of its user. And if we see Chrollo's ability, he steals the abilities of others and in turn steals part of his identity, so he can adopt it himself.
The other example is Kurapika, her situation is somewhat special, as she changes her Nen type every time her eyes turn red, and while it's not definitive, it's clear that a person's personality determines their Nen type, therefore the change of the type of Nen in Kurapika, lies first in a change of personality.
He is normally analytical and cautious, much like a conjurer is, according to personality analysis and Nen.
​
https://i.redd.it/2yv37vs5froa1.gif
But, when her eyes turn red, she acts impulsive and individualistic. Kurapika Emperor Time's ability, we can consider it as a genetic ability, since he did not require extensive training to develop it.
If any doubts remain about Nen's personalities and types, in the Ryodan's past, Franklin is shown to have been much more impulsive, as an emitter would be. Personality is something that we cannot change, but we can control, with something called maturity.
This would even explain the ability of Meruem, being a genetic condition, who, like Chimera ant, which are able to inherit the characteristics of those individuals that consume and pass them on to the next generation.
​
https://i.redd.it/0de15bi2froa1.gif
It's logical to think that Meruem, being in the epitome of His species, his Nen ability is derived from this capacity, being a much more evolved version, being able to obtain the Nen abilities of the individuals he digests.
But there are also cases like Pitou who, despite being a specialist, of all her skills, hasn't shown any that falls into this category. And we also have the fourth prince Tserriednich, whose ability, compared with King Crimsom, since, aside from the fact that he is a sociopath, as far as we know the Kakin royal family are human, which would not be a genetic ability, or perhaps if it is and it's some kind of inherited ability, but until we have more information, we can't make a conclusion.

This week’s vintage batch features Parkers from the 1930s-60s. Nibs range from Firm to Semi-Flex. As always, all are fully restored and ready to write.
 
ALBUM & TIMESTAMP
 
Pastable link: https://imgur.com/a/TodAONX
 
Condition (n.b.): All pens listed below have been disassembled, cleaned and restored with new sac/diaphragms installed in the last couple weeks. Vacumatic fillers are something of a specialty of mine and I take pride in the amount of attention I devote to each. Any dried/coagulated ink is removed from feed channels. All remnants of thread sealant and ossified diaphragms are cleaned away. Threads are meticulously chased. Interiors of barrels are cleaned and polished to remove ink staining and restore transparency. Sections are sealed against leaks using Main Street Pens' rosin-based thread sealant. Each of these pens is guaranteed to fill and write as designed without leaks or other problems. Nibs have been adjusted when necessary to ensure that all lay down a smooth and consistent line.
THESE PENS HAVE NO CRACKS, CHIPS, PERSONALIZATIONS, LOOSE OR MISSING PARTS, BENT NIBS, MISALIGNED TINES, BROKEN/WORN OFF TIPPING, OR THREADING ISSUES.
 
Line Widths and Writing Samples: To provide buyers with as much information as possible, I have started to adopt the following line width standards: XXF (.1-.2mm); XF (approx .3mm); F (approx .4mm); M (approx .6mm); B (approx .8mm). Nib flexibility is determined by variation (max line width under pressure) and softness (amount of pressure). Flexibility designations based on variation generally run as follows for an XF/F nib: Semi-Flex (approx. 1mm); Flex (1.2-1.9mm); Superflex (>2mm). All line width measurements are taken with a digital caliper but should be considered approximations providing a general guide. Width may vary slightly depending on type of ink and paper used as well as amount of pressure applied. All writing samples are on Rhodia dot paper using Waterman Serenity Blue.
 
 
1. c.1930 Parker Duofold Junior Streamlined (Lapis Lazuli [white-on-blue], celluloid, GFT, button filler, 14k F Semi-Flex nib). This short, standard girth model measures 4 3/4" capped and 5 5/8" posted. The pen is made of Permanite (DuPont's proprietary celluloid) in the Lapis white-on-blue color, but its blind cap, crown/clip lock, and section are black hard rubber. Slightly streamlined profile, which Parker started to phase in c.1929, presumably in response to the streamlined fashions popularized by Sheaffer's Balance. This is a button filler. To fill, simply unscrew the blind cap, submerse the nib, and depress the brass button once. Semi-Flexible 14k Duofold nib lays down a smooth and consistent F line that widens to a 3B+ (approx 1.4mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). A great choice for shaded writing when you need it, having reliable flow over its full range of flex. Condition: excellent [B]. Gold-plated trim is exceptionally clean with only the typical spots of brassing on the sides of the clip ball. Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous finish with no deep scratches or other significant flaws. Hard rubber parts are nice and black with no discernible fading. Manufacturer imprint on the barrel is deep and fully legible with only slight weakening to parts of a couple letters in the center. Price: $190 SOLD
 
2. 1930 Parker Duofold Senior (red Permanite, GPT, button filler, 14k F nib). This oversized model has a thick girth and measures 5 1/2" capped – a very large pen by vintage standards. It's made of Permanite (Dupont's proprietary celluloid) complemented by gold-plated trim and black hard rubber clip lock, section, and blind cap. This is a button filler. To fill, simply unscrew the blind cap, submerse the nib, and depress the brass button once. 14k Duofold Arrow nib with star on the shank lays down a firm yet smooth and consistent F line (see WRITING SAMPLE). Condition: excellent [B]. Gold-plated trim is clean aside from the brassing on the clip washer and the typical spot on the clip-ball. Celluloid surface is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes apart from a small, dark mark on the barrel that appears to be situated below the surface – possibly a factory aberration (see timestamp and imprints photos)? Hard rubber blind cap and clip lock retain their dark black color and knurling has minimal wear but there are a couple inconspicuous scratches on the side of the clip lock. Manufacturer imprint and date code on the barrel are deep and fully legible. Price: $290 SOLD
 
On Filling Vacumatics: Each of the 3 Vacumatic fillers below is filled by removing the blind cap, submering the nib, and depresses the plunger until the barrel is full.
 
3. 1945 Parker Vac Duofold Senior (Green and Gold, celluloid, GPT, Vacumatic Speedline filler, 14k XF/F nib). This oversized model measures 5 3/8” capped. The Senior was Parker's premier Duofold in the 1940s. It features gold-plated trim with chevron cap band and Blue Diamond clip signifying Parker's lifetime guarantee. This pen is made of the celluloid in green and gold pearl marble interspersed with transparent barrel striations. You would expect to find a plastic plunger on a model of this year, but it's been upgraded with a metal Speedline filler, with which first year Vac Duofolds came from the factory. The 14k Parker V-nib lays down a smooth and consistent XF/F line (see WRITING SAMPLE). Condition: excellent [B]. Gold-plated trim is exceptionally clean with no brassing or other notable flaws. Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous finish with no deep scratches or other noteworthy blemishes. Excellent transparency with ink level visible when held to light (see DETAIL PHOTO). Manufacturer imprint and date code on barrel are deep and fully legible. Price: $250 $230
 
4. 1942 Parker Vacumatic Junior (Silver Pearl, NPT, Vacumatic filler, 14k F Semi-Flex nib). This full-sized 3rd gen model measures 5" capped. The Junior was basically a Major with a different trim configuration, its non-BD clip indicating that it did not carry Parker's lifetime guarantee, for which one paid a premium. This is a Junior in Silver Pearl with nickel-plated trim. Semi-Flex Vac Arrow nib lays down a smooth and consistent F line that widens to a 3B or so (approx. 1.2mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). A nice nib for expressive writing styles, having reliable flow over its full range of flex. Condition: excellent [B-]. Nickel-plated trim is clean aside from some spots of brassing on the clip tassie on the back of the cap. Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous surface with no notable blemishes aside from one scratch just under the imprint (see imprints photo). Color has darkened a bit from age. But there is excellent barrel transparency with ink level visible when held to light (DETAIL PHOTO). Manufacturer imprint and date code on the barrel is deep and fully legible. Price: $140 $130
 
5. 1936 Parker Parkette Deluxe Set (black, celluloid, NPT, lever filler, 14k F Semi-Flex nib). FP measures 5 1/16” capped. The Parkette Deluxe is an unusual and unusually scarce model. It’s essentially a Parkette with some dramatic changes to the design. First, the cap and barrel is of a faceted construction like Eversharp’s Doric. Second, it has a deluxe trim configuration with triple cap bands like a Vacumatic Standard as well as decorative bands on the ends. Finally, again like the Vac Std, it’s equipped with a two-tone 14k nib. This FP and MP “set” was likely purchased when the merchant had a surplus of older models in stock, because the FP looks to slightly predate the MP, which has a more decorative clip and white band in place of metal trim ring on the cap. Both are made of black celluloid with nickel-plated trim. Semi-Flexible 14k two-tone Parkette nib lays down a smooth and consistent F line that widens to a 3B+(approx. 1.4mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). A good nib for shaded writing styles when you need it, having reliable flow over its full range of flex. Condition: excellent+ [B+]. Short of New Old Stock, the nickel-plated trim is as clean as you’re going to find it on these, having no brassing or other notable blemishes. The only exception is a couple scratches to the nose cone of the MP. Celluloid has a smooth, lustrous surface with no notable flaws. Manufacturer imprints and date code on the FP barrel are deep and fully legible. MP is fully functional, retracting, expelling, and gripping lead as designed. Price: $180 $170
 
6. 1948 Uninked Parker 51 Vac in Box (Dove Grey, Lucite w/ Lustraloy cap, Vacumatic filler, 14k XF nib). This full-sized model measures 5 7/16” capped. This FP comes in its factory original box (DETAIL PHOTO). I believe it to be uninked as there is no evidence of ink in the cap, on the underside of the nib, or anywhere else. This was also confirmed when I filled the pen with water and emptied it – not trace of ink. For sake of preservation, I haven’t inked it to provide a writing sample. But if you purchase this pen with the intention of using it, I can make sure that it writes smoothly and reliably as designed before shipment. It’s made of Lucite in the Dove Grey color with frosted Lustraloy cap. Condition: mint [A1]. As mentioned, this pen appears to have never been inked and was simply laid by in its box all these years. No signs of use, just minor drawer wear. The frosted Lustraloy caps usually show significant wear through the frosted surface and scratches, but this one has just a microscratch here and there. Ditto the barrel. Manufacturer imprints and date code on the barrel are factory deep and fully legible. Price: $190 SOLD
 
7. 1965-9 Parker 75 (Sterling Silver Ciselé, Cartridge/Converter filler, 14k Stubby F nib). This full-sized model measures 5” capped. It’s an early “flat top” model made before the ends were dished c.1970. Sterling silver in the ciselé pattern with gold-plated trim. Original Parker converter is included and fills to factory capacity (see fillers photo). 18k Parker nib is a springy and stubby F nib, laying down a smooth and consistent F line on the down-strokes and XF line on the cross-strokes (see WRITING SAMPLE). Condition: excellent+ [B+]. No dents dings, or other notable blemishes aside from some pin-sized marks on the barrel tassie. A clean pen and a lovely write. Price: $170 SOLD
 
 
 
Shipping: Pens purchased on the weekend are mailed on Tuesday. Otherwise they are mailed within 2 business days of payment. All pens that do not come with their original boxes are packaged in PVC or thick plastic tubes to protect them in transit. To CONUS locations the following shipping options are available:

• USPS First-Class with tracking for $5 Due to the delivery delays that continue under postmaster general DeJoy, I strongly recommend that the Priority shipping option be chosen. All packages will include full insurance (covered by me). Rest assured that a full refund is guaranteed (issued through Paypal) in the event of a lost parcel and you will not have to wait until I receive a reimbursement from the USPS.
  
• USPS Priority with tracking for $9
  

International Customers: Please contact me for shipping quote if located abroad (delivery confirmation required). (Note: due to the issues stated above, my international shipping options are currently limited. PM for more info). Please do not ask me to commit mail fraud by altering the declared value of a pen for customs. Not only am I registered as a business but shipping insurance is based on declared value.
New York Customers: For tax purposes, I am now required to add an 8% sales tax on any sale made in the state of NY. If your shipping address is in NY state, please let me know before payment to receive an adjusted total. Discounted shipping is included for NY State residents to help defray the extra cost.
Ordering: Pens are placed on hold for the first person to reply to the thread and PM me with firm request to purchase (no chat DMs please). A request with the words “I'd like to purchase [pen number]” would be best to avoid confusion), to which I’ll reply with payment details. Please note that a message inquiring into a price discount does not suffice to place a pen on hold. If I haven't received Paypal payment within 24 hrs after a hold is placed, then pen(s) may become available to the next person.
Payment, & Guarantee: Payment by Paypal only. All pens are guaranteed to be in the condition in which I've described them. If I've missed something objectionable or the filling mechanism is not fully functional, the buyer may contact me up to 7 days after receiving the pen for a full refund (issued once I receive the pen back in the same condition as sold). Buyer must ship the return no later than 2 weeks after it was delivered to receive a refund. I've sold pens online for over a decade. Please check my past listings here as well as on the classifieds and historical sales forums on FPN (username: Estragon) and FPGeeks (popcod) for some of my previous offerings.
 
 
OTHER OPEN LISTINGS:

• Parker Vacumatic Oversize Stub and Major
  
• Conway Stewart Le Tigre MHR Oblique
  
• Solid Gold Ring Top
  
• Esterbrook Relief #12 by Conway Stewart
  
• Jade Sheaffer OS Flat Top
  
• Parker Vacumatic Shadow Wave, Grey Marble Jr
  
• Superflex Burnhams in Colorful Casein
  
• Conklin Enduras, Lizard, Nozac
  
• Waterman Patrician
  

30+ Years off grid, 100 (or more) solar installs, over 1,000 trouble shoots of solar installs, I owned electric motor re-winding, generator, alternator, starter, and battery sales business for 25 years. I've been to battery manufacturing plants, talked extensively with engineers, and work regularly with power plant engineers.
The Best Money/Time You Can Spend Is On EDUCATION.
There simply is no substitute for basic electrical education, and/or solar education. Absloutely no one can do this effectively without the basics, and since those basics are written, graphically illustrated and shown in videos, no one has an excuse for NOT learning the basics.
I can not, and won't attempt to educate anyone on electromagnetic principal, building basic electrical circuits, rules for conductor sizes, etc. That suff is all over published books, the internet, boobtube videos, etc.
I'm covering specific mistakes I see the most of, people hollering for help, generally in self-inflicted situations, and how to recognize what you might be doing, or have done you could do better...
One. BAD CONNECTIONS.
A full HALF of trouble shooting service calls are bad connections. Electrical circuits heat up, cool down, expand/contract, and DIY types RARELY (if ever) check for corrosion or retorque screw/bolt terminal connections.
My first 'Inspection'/trouble shooting trick is to TUG (gentle pull, related to wire size) on wires...
A FULL HALF of the time this finds bad connections since most connections on devices is wire in clamp terminals (screws/bolts) and/or the wire in a crimp terminal, that connection is compromized.
Small crimp connectors have no way to retain compression through heating cycles, once they expand/loosen, the connection is compromized.
Solder fills in gaps in crimp on terminals, also makes ADDED electrical contact, along with securing the wire in the terminal.
In 30 years exactly ONE (just ONE) owner had an adjustable torque screwdriver...
These things are cheap people! Like $30-$50 cheap!
They keep your terminal connection screws tight, every manufacturer has a torque spec for their terminals, the driver keeps you from stripping out holes, twisting off screws, and ensure you have the correct clamp pressure on the wiring for the system to work. It's really easy to check torque on your inspections/maintenance runs, a 'Click' lets you know everything is up to specification.
Two. Crappy/Cheap terminal ends and/or crappy/cheap crimp tool.
COPPER TERMINAL ENDS ONLY! They can be copper with anti-corrosion plating, but don't be fooled by tin or aluminum base metal with COPPER PLATING. The base metal MUST be copper!
Know the difference between OPEN BARREL, the socket where the wire goes, if you can see through it, it's OPEN BARREL,
And CLOSED, or 'Blind' terminal ends. You CANT see through the barrel, and the wire can't come completely through the barrel.
SMALL, open barrel terminal ends, you CAN NOT put enough force on the barrel to make terminal bond with wire. The wire/terminal barrel will not stand the pressure required to make a mash/molecular bond.
It's simply a mechanical connection, and moisture or acid can pass right through the barrel into the copper in the wire. This includes the terminals with heat shrink attached since the heat shrink never covers the 'Flag' (terminal part that connects to something else, like battery) and seals that end up.
These are NOT outdoor, or vented battery rated, they are for clean, dry spaces only.
Blind, or socket terminals have the 'Flag' side CLOSED, acid/moisture can't migrate between wire strands through the barrel and into the insulation of the wire.
CRIMP is a mechanical connection. When you use heavy copper terminals, and heavy copper wire, you CAN put enough mechanical force to get the two pieces to bond moisture tight. You simply can't put enough force on smaller terminals to do this, the copper will simply deform and squeeze out of the crimp tool.
CRIMP FIRST, then use a proper ELECTRICAL SOLDER to seal up the open barrel/wire, then use heat shrink.
Three. Contact Patch, Surface Area.
The screw/bolt is NOT the contact. The metal plate (copper in better equipment) is the contact surface area. Your wire terminal SHOULD make as much contact area with that connection point as possible. The 'Eye' terminal should ideally be as large, or larger than the contact plate on the device.
Fat wire, fat contact patch on the device, little skinny contact patch on the terminal ring 'Eye'... Guess where the restriction is?
Little skinny 'Neck' between ring 'Eye' and wire barrel, guess where the restriction is?
Four. BAD WIRE!
ALL COPPER, 100% OF THE TIME.
No 'alloy' wire, or 'Copper plated' base metal wire, like copper plated aluminum. All 100% copper only!
If the wire isn't the bright, shiny copper color ALL THE WAY THROUGH when you cut/strip, then don't use it.
A lot of the 'Cheap' imported wire is base metal with copper plating, and this will cause nightmares with your builds, everything from corrosion in places you would never imagine, to fires when the base metal expands/contracts, loosens in terminals.
Common sale U.S. approved equipment REQUIRES pure copper wire, that's all its rated for. Most industrialized countries are the same... The reason is FIRE, they learned that lesson the hard way.
Five. Drip Loops.
A Drip Loop is exactly what it sounds like, a loop of wire at the LOW POINT before the wire enters a device. This is to let the rain/water pool and drip off BEFORE it rides the wire into the device.
Simple concept, easy to do, doesn't cost anything but a zip/wire tie to hold the loop in place, and stops SO MUCH water damage it isn't funny.
This is also the reason so many outdoor rated components have the connections/wire entry points ON THE BOTTOM, so you have to put a 'U' shape in the wire before it enters the device.
Six. The Crimp Or Solder Battle.
Crimp is a MECHANICAL connection. It does NOT guarantee an ELECTRICAL connection. Corrosion can creep in, cripple or break the electrical connection with no visible means to detect it. Quite common where a plated terminal adds a dissimilar metal to the mix.
High Amp DC connections are always both Crimped, AND Silver Soldered. See big generators for things like power plants, subway system generators, commutators on starters or other big Amp DC systems.
Solder in small connections is AFTER the mechanical Crimp, and is to SEAL UP the connection, make 100% contact area between wire and terminal. Crimp first, then solder. Then heat shrink if you are smart, add that extra layer of environmental protection.
Low temp melt ELECTRICAL solder with silver content, called silver bearing solder is cheap, fairly easy to use, and at 2% to 6% silver makes good electrical connections. Remember, solder only fills in GAPS, where moisture can get in. Solder fills those gaps, and gives you 100% electrical contact at the same time.
The argument is, the solder isn't as conductive as copper is crap, since the solder only fills gaps where ZERO electrical current was passing, so you are increasing electrical contact over ZERO.
Seven. Steel Or Brass Fasteners.
Basic electrical laws here. Electrical current will ALWAYS take the path of least resistance. Period.
A steel bolt (Stainless Steel = Less Corrosion), is LESS CONDUCTIVE than the copper, brass, bronze, etc since brass or bronze is high copper content and a better electrical conductor.
For instance, you use a steel bolt to hold a copper terminal to a brass battery terminal. The copper to brass will be the lower resistance, the electrical current will essentially IGNORE the steel bolt.
Use a Brass Bolt, copper washers, and you will pull electrical current from the FAR side of the brass battery terminal, and deliver it to the FAR side of the copper cable terminal. More connection capacity with nothing more than brass bolts & copper washers.
Now this is an extreme example, your primary contact patch (connection surface area) SHOULD be large enough to do 100% duty cycle on the device you have connected. The brass bolt/copper washers are INSURANCE to a properly sized/built system, a margin for error like corrosion...
Brass bolts are another good reason to own a torque screw drivewrench, they twist off easy when over torqued, but work spectacularly well in these situations.
Eight. CHECK YOUR VOLTAGES BEFORE CONNECTION!
Every day, all day, "My charge controller won't charge the battery off my 100 Watt panel."
Well, NO, just NO.
Check the MINIMUM voltage the charge controller opens/operates at!
A single, or PARALLEL (Low Voltage, High Amperage) wired panels often DO NOT produce the minimum VOLTAGE requirement for small charge controllers, particularly PWM controllers, which are the cheapest, most common on the market right now.
"I flipped the switch now nothing works." Is pretty common. When you check they have panels in SERIES (High Voltage, Low Amperage).
The VOC (Volts Open Circuit, no Amps, no work being done) is WAY ABOVE the charge controller's MAXIMUM capacity and they smoked/fried/cooked it.
VOC means NO AMPS (work) being done, so VOC can shoot to the moon. Check the voltage BEFORE connection.
Little multi-meters (display several things, multi use meter) are as little as $5, commony under $20, and stupid simple to operate. I teach grade school kids how to operate a multimeter in under 10 minutes... So get one, learn to use it!
Nine. Solar Panels & Shade Trees Are Mutually Exclusive.
You can have solar power, OR (no AND) You can have shade trees, the two simply DO NOT MIX.
Shaded solar panels are a very expensive yard/home ornament.
It's in the name SOLAR / Photo Volatiac, if it doesn't 'See' Solar (the sun) then it doesn't make Volts.
Customer, "I parked my van/RV and the solar doesn't work."
Me, "You mean parked it under a shade tree, or in the shadow of a building? No wonder the solar doesn't work..."
Customer, "My home solar doesn't work past noon."
Me, "Do you have afternoon shade trees that shade the panels during peak sun hours?"
Ten. Expansion Capabilities.
All in one, combined charger, inverter, maybe batteries... Vs... Modular, more wiring for separate inverters, charge controllers, batteries, etc.
Pros of combined systems, less wiring, everything matched in one box.
Cons, little to no expansion capabilities, stuck with a proprietary manufacturer, if ANYTHING fails the entire unit has to go in for service. If you can expand at all, it will only work with the same manufacturers hardware.
Pros of modular systems, MUCH CHEAPER 1/2 to 2/3 less expensive, infinitely expandable, any component can be replaced without shutting the entire system down, replacments can be what's most cost effective for the system/application.
Cons, you WILL need to learn basic connections/wiring. It takes up more space, doesn't have the sleek look of combined systems.
I can't recommend AC coupled systems at all for small users. The different manufacturers all have different software, different protocols, the base controller units are phrobatively expensive and have short warranties.
For micro and mini systems, DC couple let's you expand infinitely, use different manufacturers equipment, is both forward & backwards compatible.
For instance, you buy basic system now, in five years you add MORE EFFICIENT panels & storage batteries, on a DC coupled system that's no issue at all.
New panels to new charge controller, to new battery. The battery simply has to be the same voltage as what you current system is.
Batteries are connected to main DC Buss lines (Buss Bars or Cables) and you can add new inverters from any manufacturer onto the DC Buss for more AC power.
DC isn't efficient over long distance, but not a lot of DIY systems cover more than home, well water pump and garage/barn/shop, so the short distance isn't a big factor.
Even GRID TIED units come in single solar panel string, or dual panel string versions. Two strings being the most common, but you can get inverters that handle more solar strings, which is expansion capable.
The capability for expanding to second, third or even fourth panel strings is expansion capable, and the cost is moderate between single string and multi string capable units.
There IS a direct correlation between SCALE and ECONOMY with solar PV. Expansion capabilities should be on everyone's top ten list...
Eleven. Mixing Batteries.
It CAN be done, but not recommended.
Lead/Acid (L/A) batteries are a 300 year old technology. They are SERIOUSLY inefficient, dangerous, demand constant maintiance, and don't play well with other, newer battery chemestries.
The fastest way to kill a Lead/Acid battery is TAP WATER. All kinds of contaminants in tap water, from heavy metals that short out cells, to minerals that neutralize the acid based electrolyte.
De-Ionized water is best, what the battery manufacturers use, and distilled water is second.
The second fastest way to kill batteries of any kind is to completely discharge them. No battery survives a complete discharge without SERIOUS damage or complete failure.
Mixing Lead/Acid with Lithium Can be done, but there is extra equipment and rules you must follow. I had both during upgrade/transition to Lithium and leaned most mistakes the hard way, including fires.
Lead/Acid has a very short lifespan compared to Lithium, every L/A comes with an expiration date even if they are properly charged and NOT used, while some Lithium can sit on a shelf for 10 years and not significantly degrade.
If you build you own Lithium battery, start with the BIGGEST (highest Amp Hour capacity) cells you can find, TEST THEM, capacity, high & low voltage thresholds, and get a programmable BMS (Battery MANAGMENT System) to protect those cells.
Some guys wire a bunch of little (cheap) cells together, this can cause some real problems because of the limitations of little cells.
Test your cells. VERIFY they do what you PAID FOR! There is a crap ton of factory second cells and re-labeld cells out there. Verify you got what you paid for...
Twelve. BMS. Battery MonitoManagment Systems.
A MONITOR is just that. It might have a charge regulator and display built in, so YOU can monitor what the battery is doing.
A Battery MANAGMENT System automatically controls the upper and lower limit voltage so you SPECIFIC CELLS aren't undeover charged, automatically BALANCES the cell voltages, has thermal protections so the cells can't get damaged from freezing or over heating, has maximum current demand shut off so the cells aren't damaged from short circuits/improper wiring, etc, and has an automatic shut down if a CELL goes bad.
This makes it MUCH easier to gang charge batteries 'En Banc', the charge controller throws amps at the BMS, the BMS does the fine tuning, control to protect each (expensive) cell.
It's REALLY CHEAP insurance for your expensive cells, and the added life span of the battery is well worth the cost in the front end.
Small cells are wired in PARALLEL to increase the Amp/Hour capacity. Cells wired in parallel can NOT be individually monitored/managed.
So you do a bunch of parallel, then wire in series to raise voltage. The BMS can only connect/control SERIES connections, this leaves a lot of parallel connected cells that can't be monitored/protected, or if need be, isolated/shut down...
An example would be ONE cell in a parallel set internally shorts out, begins to heat, the BMS often times can't detect that, and you CAN wind up with a very hard to extinguish metal fire in extreme cases.
What you will probably wind up with is a battery demanding all kinds of charge (watts cost money in panels & chargers), and not getting much use from that battery, shifting the load, and increased degradation, onto your other batteries.
Big cells, series wired so you can manage each cell via BMS = better battery.
Thirteen. Storage Capacity.
How many and how big of batteries...?
Well, if you have one battery, and that battery barely does 100% of the work you want, than that battery is working 100% of capacity, 100% of the time.
Battrries are CHEMICAL STORAGE, meaning electrical energy is convertered to chemical storage, then back into electrical energy when needed.
You can and will eventually wear out the chemicals, and the chemical storage process will fail.
TWO batteries, each one takes 50% of the load, they are discharged less, recharged less, and theoretically last twice as long in the above application.
This is also redundancy AND reserve. One battery can do the job, so if one fails there is still one to do the job, redundancy.
You have TWICE the storage you had, assuming the loads stayed the same, you have 100% more storage, so you have an extra day before both batteries are discharged and you have to stop and recharge.
Have 4 batteries with the same load, 400% capacity with the same load as above, 25% the duty cycle of each battery, the longer all batteries live.
This example ASSUMES a simple linear comparison, but batteries don't work that way. The more load sharing you have, the longer the service life of the battery extends...
Look up "Colomb's Law" for exact details, there is a BUNCH of sites and videos explaining 'C' Rate charging/discharging.
Fourteen. Label Your Wires! Make A Diagram!
I spend WAY too much time chasing wires! Wires can be color coded, number coded, both/neither...
Doesn't matter when you don't have at least at least a rough diagram with colonumber codes, device instructions, etc.
What I recommend, Solid Red, directly powered DC, like battery connections. No breaker or switch, full time 'Hot'. Soild Red means NO TOUCH.
Red with a White stripe, or White heat shrink at the terminals... AFTER Switch/Breaker. Can be turned off. This let's me FIND THAT BREAKER OR SWITCH.
DIAGRAMS, colored pencils, paper and ruler are cheap! Even the most simple/crude diagram gets me WAY down the path to figuring things out!
No one is going to remember what goes where when everything is red or black 5 or 10 years down the road. If you have the red spaghetti nightmare wiring, BUY A LABEL MAKER and label the wires while you still remember what they go to.
Honestly, sometimes it's easier to rip everything out and start over with color codes/number codes, labeling wiring as I go than try to untangle a decade of spaghetti... And that will be at $40-$50 an hour, so it really benefits YOU to put the time in now.
If you do your own troubleshooting/maintiance/repairs/upgrades, then it will make YOUR life so much easier...
Example, you bought a roll of red wire in the beginning, then added on more, all red wire until the roll was gone...
Heat shrink can be cut into bands, slipped over existing terminal ends, and you can use more than one color band to identify circuits.
Those little label makers, under $30, adhesive labels, just make them and wrap name or number around the wire tagging it.
Need to reuse a color? Simple, the first use is no color code, second gets a heat shrink band of a different color at the terminal. The little heat shrink comes in every color of the rainbow, and a few that aren't.
When you run out of single band colors, switch to a different wire color and start again,
OR,
Use two color bands. It's cheap, effective and permanent.
Label makers are direct read, no diagram needed when you use the proper name (from what to what, which terminal its supposed to be hooked to, etc).
Those little tags look "Ugly" to bystanders, but it's pure gold for the guy wiring things up! Function over form here goes a LONG way.
PRO TRICK...
Vacuum sealer bags, like for freezing food. Stuff a copy of the paperwork, diagram, notes, etc in the bag, heat seal it up. Keeps everything together and protects from elements.
System diagram I print on white card stock (with a paper copy inside the documentation packet) and put it on the outside of the packet.
Some vacuum bags are pretty see though, the card stock protects the packet from UV/bleach out, while the diagram is visible for quick reference.
Larger diagrams I do front & back of the packet, like solar panels/field, combiner boxes, etc on one side, AND invertecharge controller on the other side.

Pictures https://imgur.com/a/lJumWwz
​
Expobar Brewtus IV-R. Purchased new from Whole Latte Love in Jan 2013. Used daily for usually one or two espressos with the occasional cortado or flat white thrown in. This has been an awesome machine for my family. It was my first real espresso machine and I've enjoyed it for the past ten years. However, I recently upgraded, and need to move this on to a new home.
This machine is in very good condition for its age. It definitely works as intended. Pulls coffee, steams milk, etc. I describe a few of its imperfections and idiosyncrasies below.
I bought this machine based on its value for the price and the features of: 1) plumbing, 2) PID-control dual boiler, 3) and rotary pump. I have not been let down. Plumbing is strongly encouraged for this machine, as there is no reservoir. However, it is possible to drop the water line into a tank of water. I have done this many times and it works fine. It was easy for me to access a water source in my kitchen, and I definitely enjoy the ability to never fill a water tank. Similarly, I also plumbed in the waste, so I never had to empty a drip tray. Plumbing out the waste line is optional. I know it's not an option for everyone, but now that I've had a plumbed in coffee machine, I would never go back to filling a reservoir. If you can access water, I highly recommend plumbing in.
The PID-controlled dual boiler setup allows you to set your brew boiler water temp at up to 1 degree F resolution. Steam and hot water are in a different boiler, and you can definitely steam milk and pull shots simultaneously. Recover time is very fast for brew and steam. Of course, if you dump all the hot water out for (e.g.) an Americano, it'll take a little longer to bring that back up to temp.
The rotary pump is quiet and steady. It's not a make-it-or-break-it feature, but it's a nice upgrade from a vibe pump.
I just descaled it, the third or time since I've owned it. Our municipal water is just about perfect for coffee. I researched the water content as analyzed by the city's report when I first bought this machine. The descale process has always come out very clean. I have never used a water filter on this machine.
Because this machine is a fairly typical E-61 grouphead, it's easy to source parts and work on. I have purchased parts at cafeparts.com several times; they have a good diagram of the machine and what you might need. WholeLatteLove.com will also service it, of course, but I would avoid shipping it anywhere if possible.
I've added a US-based water line. This means that the water line will connect to a 'normal' plumbing valve as you would connect a faucet. Previously, this was a European hose that required a variety of adapters to make work. This also means that, if something happened to the water line, it is easily replaced with parts from the local hardware store.
I added joystick valves for hot water and steam wands. These are a personal preference. I like them because they are quicker to turn on and off, they seem a little more 'pro', and they're just plain cool. I'll also include the original spin-valves. Additionally, for the steam wand, I have one-, two-, and four-hole steam tips (the single-hole is the original part).
This machine runs on a 110V 15A circuit.
Given that this machine has been in use at my house for ten years, it can't be perfect, right? Here's a list of those imperfections.
Several of the LEDs in the PID display have burnt out. This doesn't affect functionality of the machine, but it does make it more challenging to read the display. Still, it's entirely possible to understand the temp and what's going on. See pictures for it in action. In total, there are four of 21 segments that are dead. To fix this, you could replace the Gicar PID (maybe $200, I think). That's an easy fix for someone willing to get in there. For someone more adventurous, you could try to replace the seven segment displays only. This requires more surgery. I decided the cost of a full replacement wasn't worth it, and I didn't want to deal with the surgical replacement. So, I just left it.
There's a ding on the top of the grouphead, and some tool marks. There are the requisite scratches here and there. There's nothing that's terrible, and it's definitely not been abused. I tried to capture these in the pictures.
I saw this a few times, but I'm hoping my recent descale and clean addresses this. Nonetheless, I want to mention that the steam boiler has released pressure a few times via the safety valve. I inspected and cleaned the capillary line that feeds the pressurestat, and I also cleaned the pressurestat itself. This is not a major problem, but if it continues, the pressurestat should be replaced ($67 at CafeParts.com). I replaced this in 2021 so it's still pretty new -- I think it just needed to be cleaned/convinced. This has not occurred since I cleaned it in March 2023. I'm not using it daily, but I have brought it up to temp several times looking for this problem and it hasn't happened again.
The "EXPOBAR" badge on the front has some funk to it. Totally cosmetic, but it's there.
While this machine is in very good working condition, I would not be surprised by any issues that could arise. This is great for someone that doesn't mind learning and tinkering. I'm sure there are also businesses locall that will do the work for you, though I don't know who. As mentioned, parts are easy to find, and it's easy to open the machine up.
I'm going to start as local pickup only northern Colorado, cash/Venmo. We can meet up in a suitable location for inspection.
As you can tell, I've done my best to describe everything about this machine. Let me know if you have any questions, happy to discuss in detail whatever.
Features:* Dual-boiler* Rotary pump* PID temp control* Plumbing requirement (or drop in a jug of water).* Plumbable drip tray* Line pressure pre-infusion (when plumbed to a water line)
Recent work:* Full descale (March 2023)* Cam lever clean & lube (March 2023)* New top and bottom pistons in the grouphead (2022)* New cam lever (2022)* Replaced vacuum relief valve O-ring (2022)* New pressurestat (2021)* New shower screen & PF gasket (2020)
Includes:* Attached plumbing line* Removable plumbable drip tray* Double spouted portafilter* Bottomless portafilter* Single & double baskets* Triple basket* Metal blind basket* Brand new ECM tamper* Multiple steam wand tips* Original valves for hot water and steam wands* Original manual, and whatever other paperwork came with it* My notes on how to descale, and whatever else I might have along those lines.
**** I do not have the box or any packaging ****

Working on hydraulic clutches for a manual car. I have replaced both master cylinder and the slave, but I can’t seem to get all the air bubbles out. I touqued down on the banjo fitting and even got new brass washers to allow a new solid fit. The lines are old but there are no visible leaks. It’s a pressurized system so I figure if there where leaks I’d be able to see them. I had it all in the car and was having issues bleeding it so know I’ve taken an made a mock set up on the bench with the parts to bench bleed them. However still endless air bubbles. Any advice?

Good morning, I am doing research regarding a hood cleaning business. I currently own a hvac/refrigeration company that services restaurants almost exclusively. I service and replace hoods and must have been asked 100x for a good cleaner recommendation from my clients. It was never a venture i had time for but have a partner interested doing it. We have been tossing around ideas and i have a couple questions….and suggestions or recommendations, unconsidered issues are welcome.
1)$600-$750 per hood seem like an accurate price range? 2)All ive ever seen anyone use for this is a trailer pressure washer with heated pressure water, usually a honda northstar from northern tool. We had considered repurposing a carpet cleaning truck, is this an option? The main reason the idea came to us is because we are pretty sure we are supposed to reclaim and document proper disposal of waste water. i know carpet cleaning trucks have vac hose, hot pressure water, fresh and waster tanks. seems like everything in one. 3)Where to look for the regulations regarding aforementioned reclaiming of waste water? Doesn’t anyone service hoods in placed that require reclamation and documented disposal of the waste water? How is that process? How costly is it to dispose?

Motor is a 6.5hp Briggs and Stratton, it wants to run, but having issues. Replaced the carburetor, there isn't adjustments for it. But, the throttle "input rod?", it's what hooks into the gas butterfly valve, won't return to neutral under its own spring pressure. This "rod" runs to the back of the motor and has what sounds like a flap inside that it connects to. What is that called and how do I fix it so the carb isn't getting 100% throttle all the time and flooding the damn cylinder? It's so bad it has gas coming out of the air intake side of the carb.
Any help is appreciated.

So I've watched a bunch of videos on youtube in regards to building my first trailer. I came across this one youtube short (below) and its a very clean setup that i would be willing to replicate. The question is, is he soft washing using that setup by down streaming it and soft washing with his pressure washer like with a Jrod? Cause he only has the one garden hose line and then the pressure line so thats what im assuming. Or would he be having to go back to his trailer to cut off the bleach to rinse off. I'm not too mechanically inclined or versed in plumbing for that matter and there many ways that people set up theirs with it without a pump so it can get confusing.
https://youtube.com/shorts/uKRWhMkkd5Q?feature=share
And since this one is the same size (below), I was thinking that if I do start with that ^^ setup, then eventually, on the same size trailer, I'd be able to upgrade to something like this one
https://youtu.be/i4P7AkwubMA
1 more question since I am building my first trailer, I am also upgrading from my 4 gpm direct drive to a 4 gpm belt driven unit. I've been Looking around and I found this one (below). It is up there for a good price and I know Pressure Pro makes some good units but it's all about having a good Honda engine and a good pump to go with it. It has a Gx390 but it has a Hp V-belt drive triplex pump, and I haven't seen too much info about it online if its good or bad and was wondering if someone else might know or should I refrain. The pump was the problem i had on my last 4 gpm direct drive but it was a AAA triplex pump on the simpson 4200 psi unit. Are the triplex pumps a no go even from a different brand?
https://www.johnsmowerstore.com/pressure-pro-4000-psi-gas-pressure-washer--hp-pump--eb4040hg
Any and all responses please throw them at me I'm here to learn so.

I think a big part of the needless consumption/consumerism we face in the US is the total lack of durability of modern appliances and the addition of of needless "bullshit" features to them to justify their outrageous prices.
I am writing this specifically because I am old enough to remember when these appliances were durable and repairable. I remember the KitchenAid dish washer my parents had. They bought it in 1978 (I remember because they got it right before my 4th birthday) and it still worked up until they finally replaced it back in 2016 because the pump went bad and it was near impossible to find a new one. Since 2016, they have gone through two more dishwashers.
I am also dealing with the same thing. When we moved into our house 5 years ago the kitchen had a 2 year old dishwasher. It died in 2020, so I replaced it. Now 35 months later (1 month shy of 3 years) it started puking all over the floor. The pump is leaking and the replacement part is almost as much as another dishwasher. The electronic display panel is already glitchy so I am not willing to change a pump only to have another $300 part fail soon after.
I would love it if I could buy a new dishwasher that had no frills, basic controls, chunky mechanical pushbuttons and would be able to last 30 years, like that KitchenAid dishwasher my parents bought in 1978 (except maybe without the woodgrain trim). Even if I had to spend twice as much.
I think a market exists for a company that would build no frills, basic appliances with good function and designed to last 30 years or more. I am talking about Dishwashers, Washing Machines, Dryers, Refrigerators, Stoves, Ovens, Window Air Conditioners, etc.
Even modern equivalents to late 1990s Toyota Camrys and Honda Accords that meet modern safety standards but don't have touch screens and all the other useless crap that modern cars do.
Am I wrong?

Dr Daniel Vance was a smart man. Too smart for his own good, maybe. Forty years old, a lecturer in fluid dynamics with a mind made of shapes and numbers. No one knows why but one day, on a whim, he crunched the numbers on the apocalypse and came to a troubling conclusion. He didn’t share exactly what it was he’d deduced, but given that he immediately quit his job and liquidated his many assets, it’s fair to say it wasn’t positive. Swept up in the wake of this tremendous upheaval was his wife, a twenty-four year old PhD student who had grown infatuated with Daniel some time before. She loved the strange bear of a man who could just as easily build a log cabin as he could explain the idiosyncrasies of an asteroid’s orbit. Speaking to Daniel always left you with the profound impression he was right, so when he told her what he wanted to do, she agreed.
Fifteen years and five children later, the Vances were living in the distant woods just beyond my hometown. They were enigmatic, richer than the Pope, and extremely serious about their prepper lifestyle. But they were also funny, easygoing, and incredibly compelling to speak to. Larger than life survivalists who swept into town with bizarre requests that thrilled local businesses. Vast quantities of cement, iron, lead, and steel were all shipped through the remote mountains so that the Vances could build their shelter. The advanced methods they used to keep it secret were legendary. Daniel had once spent six months earning the licence necessary to drive HGVs up to his compound so that no one else would lay eyes on it. And on one occasion when a company had refused his request for GPS tracker-free vehicles, he bought them out wholesale so that they had no choice.
So when they stopped appearing in town during the pandemic, when requests for food and goods stopped and all contact was dropped, most attributed it to lockdown. They had a bunker and had spent their entire lives training to be self-sufficient in the face of civilisation’s collapse. Even Alexander, the youngest at just three, was already collecting firewood as a chore, and learning what local plants were edible. Most of us just assumed that if anyone could ride out Covid without breaking a sweat, it would be the Vances.
The reality turned out to be something else.
When the worst came to light, we discovered that Daniel had used the pandemic as an excuse for a dry-run. The family intended to spend six months in lockdown and essentially beta test their fallout bunker. Three months in and the Sheriff received a distress call on the radio. Coordinates were provided by the hushed voice of a sobbing child that most assume was Alexander, even though that’s never been proven.
The police arrived and found the bunker still sealed. It took hours for emergency responders to cut into the door, all the while efforts were made to contact the family within but to no avail. Once inside, police were left dumbfounded. There was no one to be rescued. No bodies. No survivors. There was evidence the door’s locking mechanism had failed and trapped the Vances inside with no way out, but if so where had they gone?
Beds and cots lay everywhere with mouldering yellow sheets, buckets close to hand with stains all around them. Some doors were barred, others smashed to pieces. There was even evidence of makeshift quarantines and, in places, what looked like violence. The police, usually a fantastic source of gossip, were not forthcoming until the town demanded answers and the Sheriff was forced to offer only the barest of outlines.
An outbreak of a waterborne illness had struck the Vances down not long after they were locked inside and unable to seek help. Rumours of contagion were overstated, fuelled by the unrelated rise of Covid. Whatever contaminant had killed the Vances, it was non-organic in nature. No need to panic. The Vances loved-ones had been notified. The bunker was going to be demolished, and we could all put this terrible tragedy behind us.
Of course we still had questions. A thousand of them. Why hadn’t the family called for help? They had radios, computers, smartphones too. They were survivalists, not Amish. And where were they? What had happened to their bodies? Why hadn’t they simply left? We shouted these and more at the town meeting but the police simply refused to comment. For most of us the excitement lasted another week or two until we realised we weren’t getting answers any time soon. Besides, the pandemic was in full swing and most of us had other things to worry about. The tragic story eventually faded until it was just one of those awful things in the town’s history that we didn’t talk about. I was as guilty as anyone else of just forgetting about it.
I certainly never expected to find the bunker out there in the woods, faded police tape still on the open door that hung wide open with scorch marks around the lock. It stood out in the woods like someone had cut a hole right in the fabric of reality, the darkness so deep and black it almost ached to look at. The sight of it made my heart drop into my stomach. It radiated pain. Does that make sense? I think some part of my lizard brain picked out details that wouldn’t become apparent to me until I got closer, like the bloody finger streaks that stained the handle from where someone had scrabbled furiously at the lock without success. And the tiny viewing window had been smashed with a hammer that still lay nearby. I needed only to glimpse it to imagine the family taking turns to stand there and scream into the woods desperate for rescue.
Under any other circumstances, I would have run.
But I’d gone there looking for my dog, and my light revealed a few wet paw prints making their way down the dusty concrete tunnel. Half Bernese and half collie, Ripley is the sort of dog who trembles in my arms when a storm buffets the windows and needs his paws held when we brush him. I love him. I do not have much of a family, or a wife, or even many friends. But I have Ripley, and I could no more have turned around and gone home to an empty apartment where I would have to sob my grief away than I could flap my arms and fly. He was my dog and I’d raised him since he was a puppy, and I wasn’t going to leave him out in those woods.
I went in after him.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Whatever the police had found, they’d not only kept most of the morbid details to themselves, they had also lied. The bunker was not demolished, or even sealed off. In fact, looking at the occasional blue latex glove tossed aside and the one or two broken police-issue flashlights, it seemed like the last people inside had been in a hurry to get out. Given this was where seven people had presumably died, I assumed it was someone’s job to clean it all up. But the corridor looked largely untouched. Just a few metres in and manic writing started to cover the walls, the desperate scrawls of a lone survivor left there to be rediscovered like cave paintings. Most were deliberations on how to get out. Diagrams. Blueprints. Equations and formulae. All focused on the door and the circuits responsible for its faulty lock. I instinctively assumed they belonged to Daniel and that he’d been the last to die. What a God awful fate for a man to outlive his children. And yet it got worse. Slowly the writing changed from equations and plans to a desperate scrawl. The same few phrases repeated over and over.
Five doors. Five. Not six. Six. Didn’t make it. Didn’t make it. Six doors. Six.
It seemed like the kind of thing you’d find in an asylum. A psychotic rambling punctuated only by six paragraphs right at the end. Each letter was impeccably neat, and each small paragraph was topped with a beautifully drawn Christian cross.
Elliott Vance aged fifteen. A gifted guitarist. He liked boys even though he thought I did not know. I loved him with everything I had. He would have made a great man.
Alicia Vance aged fourteen. She liked to paint and to shoot. She had her mother’s mean streak. It would have served her well in the future.
Elijah Vance aged eight. The smartest of us all…
These were Daniel’s memorials to his family, and seeing the words lit up by my torch was a haunting insight into the overwhelming despair he’d endured. He must have realised he wouldn’t get the chance to speak at his family’s funerals or to write their obituaries. This was his last desperate way of making sure the world might one day know them as he did - as real people.
The words marked the end of the tunnel, standing adjacent to a trapdoor in the ground. It was not open but the tunnel came to a dead end immediately afterwards and Ripley’s prints disappeared at the hatch. I feared he might be in danger, but still I stopped and looked at the bunker door twenty metres behind me. The once gloomy forest looked so bright, even on this cloudy day, the air dotted with rain. A part of me felt like I was leaving the whole world behind as I began to climb the ladder down.
I entered a large circular living space that was packed with furniture and little nooks and crannies. The walls were covered with folding beds and tables and every inch was multifunctional. A dining space could become a sitting space, which in turn might be where someone slept, or even exercised. It all depended on what particular bit of furniture you unfolded or unclipped or unfurled. Seven people in close quarters, nowhere near enough privacy, it made sense they went with this cluttered overlapping use of space. But it was still a large room, bigger than most studio apartments. And there were a few corridors that led deeper into the Earth telling me the bunker had unseen depths.
I looked for some sign of my dog and soon found his trail, but this far from the rainy copse Ripley’s prints were starting to fade. After barely a few metres they petered out vaguely in the direction of a nearby door. I wanted to follow but stopped myself from rushing onwards. It was unlikely Ripley was getting out any other way, and I’d do us no good getting hurt myself. I decided to take a look around and quickly spotted a dinner table.
If I needed proof the police had not bothered with a clean up, this was it. The plates were still out, the food rotten to a strange blackened husk. A child’s hat lay across one place-setting, the once-creamy fleece turned a sickly green and yellow. The chairs had their backs reinforced with wooden beams fitted with long grooves so that something the width of a nail could slide into them. And on each of the cushions were foul smelling stains that looked oddly like an ass print. I touched one with gloved hands and the material crackled audibly. Whatever it was, similar stains were on the cutlery and plates, and there were even handprints of it placed firmly on the tablecloth. At first I thought it was blood, but that wasn’t quite right. It was too contained to be from leaking blood. On the back of one of the chairs a stain tapered exactly where a woman’s waist would be like a near perfect silhouette. I shivered as I remembered that Miranda Vance had always been a slim woman and wondered how she had left her imprint on the grey fabric.
Using my torch, I saw that these stains repeated in the oddest of places. Yes, there were some on beds and blankets and even patches of plain floor exactly like you might expect in a room full of sick people. But why did one stain on the floor bear such a strong resemblance to a child huddled in the foetal position? And why was the same stuff all over the tv remote, and on books on shelves, and board games too. Everything from sofa cushions to DVD boxes to piles of dirty laundry were covered in the same dried brownish material that gave off a foul coppery miasma.
I found the jigsaw particularly baffling. Someone had set up another table with four chairs, all modified with the same back support as those by the dinner table. And a jigsaw had been lain out with four separate piles, but only one was depleted. The rest looked largely untouched, almost like someone had portioned out pieces for three other people who had absolutely no interest in going along with it. Maybe Daniel had tried to keep up morale while the family were sick? God help me, if that were true I couldn’t help but imagine the poor man sat there with his loved ones close to death, desperately trying to encourage them to click their own pieces into place while they faded in and out of consciousness.
Something about that room emanated madness, and the longer I stayed down there flicking the bright disk of light of my torch from one detail to another, the more I wanted to leave. One door had wooden beams nailed across it. One sofa had been partially disassembled. Multiple beds had been burned. And all the light bulbs had been removed and put in a box on the kitchen counter top. Looking up at the ceiling, I finally had some insight into why the police were so confident the Vances had not survived despite never finding their bodies. Someone had jammed a human finger into one of the empty sockets, almost like they’d expected it to glow with the flick of a switch.
What was it about this place that had caused the police to leave and never return? Not to even take that finger and test it for signs of illness, or even just to confirm who it belonged to?
I decided it was time to hurry up and find my dog. People had died in that place, and while I’m not superstitious, I can’t be the only sceptic who has done the calculations in his head and realised it costs nothing to be respectful of ghosts. That bunker was cramped, terrifying, and the air stank so bad I started to worry I’d get sick myself. It served no one any good to linger. But I’d be damned if I’d just walk away and leave Ripley to rot down there. It’s not like he could climb a ladder and get out on his own (even if I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten down there in the first place).
Summoning what little bravery I had left I called out and broke the silence, something which felt like a terrible taboo in that God awful place, like screaming in a graveyard.
“Ripley!”
I waited and hoped to hell I’d hear the pitter patter of his paws, but for the longest of moments there was only the kind of silence that makes you wonder if someone or something in the darkness is holding its breath trying to look like just another patch of nothing. Biding its time until you finally turn around and show it your back…
The TV came on with a blurt of white noise that was so loud and so sudden I cried, threw my arms up, and nearly fell backwards onto a rolled-out sleeping bag that looked like it had spent a week in the sewer. By the time I realised what had caused the noise, I could already hear a tinny rendition of Daniel Vance’s voice.
…I realise the issue here. I need to emphasise just how little I understand anything that’s…
I frowned at the screen as I approached. It showed a greenish infrared view of the bunker with Daniel upfront, and the dinner table behind him. It was grainy and hard to see, but I could clearly tell that his family were sitting in those chairs.
…Miranda was first to fall ill. Looking back it makes perfect sense. Miranda often went into storage to fetch food for cooking and we found it behind one of the refrigerators. So that’s–ah shit..
One of the figures in the background slumped onto the table with a loud clank and sent a plate spinning off onto the ground.
Shit shit shit, Daniel muttered as he got up and grabbed the woman by the shoulders and sat her upright. Miranda never did like my cooking! He snorted a laugh as he fussed with something at the back of the chair. The rods are much better than tape. All those hours spent taping them upright to the chairs. Never worked. But the rods… they fit right into the spine and with a little modification I can just slot them into the chairs. That way everyone is able to join in for dinner. I’m working on something similar for family game night.
Daniel wandered over to the camera and with a grin he lifted it from the tripod and scanned the dinner table. What I saw nearly made me drop my torch.
His family were long dead. Gaunt faces. Missing noses. Lips that had receded to reveal awful grins. These were corpses, plain as day, even when viewed through such a low resolution image. The only thing that made them seem remotely alive was the way their eyes still reflected the infrared back so that they glowed in the dark. And yet Daniel seemed oblivious to it all. He tousled Elliot’s hair. Kissed his wife on the cheek. Run a hand across one young girl’s shoulder. He even picked the young Alexander up from his high chair and I assume he coddled him. I don’t know for sure because I looked away, unwilling to see the poor boy up close.
Eyes averted from the screen, I couldn’t help but pan my torch across to that same dinner table and shiver as I finally realised what all those stains were. Not quite blood. But close. Liquefying flesh. Left alone for months, Daniel had not put his family’s bodies to rest. Instead he had moved them around from place to place and puppeted them, living life as if nothing had really changed. Looking at where those stains had settled I saw a clear pattern emerge. He had put them to bed. He had set them dinner. He had propped them up to watch TV, or gave them their favourite books. They even sat there as lifeless husks while Daniel waited for them complete a fucking jigsaw. The idea horrified me to my core.
…back to work. It’s obviously not part of the original designs. No room on the other side, not on the blueprints. Elliot didn’t believe me and why would he? I made every inch of this place, but I did not install that door in storage on the bottom level. I checked the cameras and some of the photos I took during the build and the wall is just blank. But the door is there now and it must lead somewhere. I don’t know when or why it opens, but it does and the next time I’ll be ready. Because I have to know what’s on the other side, and why it did this to us. Alone down here, often all asleep at once. Anything could have slit our throats and been done with it. But it didn’t. It took its time and I have to know why!
It took our radios and computers and phones. One by one. None of us noticing until it was far too late. I kept telling the kids they needed to take better care of their things, and even as they complained I just assumed the phones were lying behind some shelf. Where else could they go in a locked bunker? But it wasn’t the children at all. Looking back there are so many signs… who kept taking away the lights? Who kept draining the batteries in our torches? How long did we live with it before we finally realised we weren’t alone? Was it here every step of the way?
A door out of nothing that leads to nowhere, at least most of the time. Because I know for a fact it does not always open onto a blank wall. There is something behind it. I can hear it shuffling around in there, wet breath rattling in its lungs, a horrible sound I hear roaming these halls when it thinks I’m asleep…
I listened to Daniel, fascinated by this strangely compelling rant, when movement caught my eye. An infrared camera running in the dark, its image a roiling mess of uniform noise. What was it I’d seen? I paused the tape and rewound. Squinting, I saw two pinpricks of light in the darkness just over Daniel’s shoulder. Slowly, the image resolved itself in my mind. I knew what I was seeing and it turned my blood to ice.
Miranda Vance had turned her head, and her lifeless eyes glowed as she fixed them on the back of Daniel’s head.
…not even any point leaving at this stage. I’m no doctor, but that door is giving off enough radiation to… well, to kill a family of seven. If none of us had touched it… Being in the same room is risky, but not lethal. But given how sick we’ve become, it’s pretty obvious our curiosity got the better of us, one by one, and we all got too close. Or maybe not. Maybe that thing on the other side came through and did this. I don’t even kn… wait… what was that?
Daniel turned and the camera stopped recording. The image it froze on was of a lone man, bright as a star in the camera’s lens, facing off against unknowable darkness broken only by six pairs of white, glowing eyes.
I became painfully aware of my position relative to the table and I had the painful premonition that if I turned, those chairs would not be empty. I would see the Vances, all of them, Daniel as well, waiting for me. Heads turned. Bodies left to rot for years in the dark. Behind me something shifted. It breathed. Loud. Quick. I knew what it was. I knew. It came at me so fast that when I felt something hot and wet touch my hand I screamed, only for the presence to suddenly recoil. But then, without hesitation, it leapt at me and bore me to the ground.
I wept as Ripley licked my face. He was shivering and, worst of all, silent which was not normal. He was not a quiet dog, not when greeting me and not when excited like he was now. But whatever he’d seen down here, he clung to me and dug his paws into my shoulders like he wanted to be cradled over the shoulder, something he has been too big to do for years.
“Oh you fucking idiot,” I cooed in a soft whisper and even in the dark I could feel his tail wagging. Joking aside, I felt nothing but relief at finding him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I picked him up, straining a little under the weight but refusing to give into tired muscles, and made for the ladder. It wasn’t easy climbing the three or four rungs to the hatch, but I managed it and gave the hatch a shove. First one hand, then two. Again and again, with everything I had, but still that hatch refused to budge.
“Shit!” I cried while pounding at it with my fists, but all I achieved was a sore wrist. The hatch had jammed when, somehow, the handle had been snapped clean off. Now I’d need a pair of pliers or something to cut through the metal bar locking it shut. My fingers couldn’t move it, nor could I brute force the hatch open. The metal bar was an inch thick and, at the very least, I’d need some tools to get at it from this side.
At least it’s fixable, I thought as I climbed back down and caught my breath. On one wall I noticed a simple diagram of the bunker made in chalk. It had three floors. The bottom was storage–Daniel had mentioned that before, and I noticed that he had drawn through it with a large red X–and the top floor was labelled Quarters, where I stood now. But the middle floor was labelled workshops and it was there I realised that I’d find what I needed.
There was one door that opened onto a concrete stairwell and, standing at the top, I shone my light down the spiralling guard rails unsure of what it was I hoped to see. There were only harsh shadows and the sense of something foul rising up on the air. A smell that tickled my throat and burned a little in my lungs. Had the police even gone down this far? Had they seen what I’d seen on that TV and just left? Somehow I thought it was unlikely that had been enough to send the entire Sheriff’s department running, so was it something else that had done it. Something that had been enough to terrify dozens of armed men. Something that was almost definitely down there.
The door…
I went down quietly. At first I considered leaving Ripley behind, but after losing him the first time I decided I’d rather risk it just to know that he was right next to me. Besides, he was being quieter than I was, and I didn’t feel much like going down those stairs on my own. He accompanied me with only the quiet click clack of his paws on concrete, a sound I found deeply comforting as I barely managed to keep my torch from shaking in my hand and my breathing steady.
Down one floor and I found the workshop exactly as you might expect. A large space filled with generators and fuel and water tanks and boilers and heaters and pretty much anything and everything that you’d need to survive but which you couldn’t put outside due to fallout. Wires pipes and tubes ran from one end of the room to the other and even years later, most of the machinery still hummed in the pitch black emptiness, an idea I found deeply unsettling. Taking one look at that strange tangle of harsh shapes and industrial figures looming out of the walls and floor, I shivered and looked around, quickly finding a small area Daniel had cordoned off for his own use. About a fifth of the total floor space, there was a large workbench and some seriously high end machining equipment, all very well used. Lathes. Buzzsaws. Drills. Belt sanders. Welding torches. Everything a man needed to do-it-himself.
And Daniel had been busy.
I’m not sure exactly what it was he’d been working, but there was an arm on the bench. It sat atop a pile of papers that had slowly turned brown over the years until the whole thing looked like it had been soaked in tobacco spit. On the whiteboard was a faded but still visible diagram of what looked to me like a ball-and-socket joint. I thought of the tape, of Daniel’s little mechanism to keep his family upright, and then looked at the arm and suppressed a momentary gag reflex. I don’t know if Dan had been working on posable limbs, or just a way to put the decomposing remains back together after they’d started to fall apart, but the size of the arm suggested a pre-teen child, and he’d left it out on the surface like it was a disassembled clock. It was also missing a finger. Just how fucking crazy was he? I wondered as I pinched my nose with one hand and began overturning boxes looking for a hefty pair of pliers, or maybe a hacksaw. Ripley backed away from the noise, but once I made sure he wasn’t going anywhere I carried on grabbing and pulling at box after box hoping I’d find what I was looking for. Anything to break that fucking metal bar.
In the end I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters, a crowbar, and a heavy duty pair of pliers. One went in my pocket, one went down the back of my jeans, and the other was clutched in my fist, too large to be tucked away in my clothes. The bolt cutters felt hefty in my hand which was a bit of comfort, but that feeling didn’t last long.
Something moved in the darkness, out there in the twisted jungle of shadows cast by all those pipes and wires that ran from one machine to the next. A figure moved. Thin, but unmistakably human in its outline. I couldn’t help but remember what I’d seen on that tape. Surely it couldn’t have been real? Maybe Daniel had rigged something up. Some fishing wire and a motor, maybe? The idea that those bodies had been moving on their own… I couldn’t be sure of that, could I? It was a frightening idea, one my mind had latched onto out of sheer panic. That was all…
And then I saw them. A pair of white pin-pricks reflecting back at me from the depths of that cluttered room. Ripley, already behind me, head nuzzled into my leg, pushed even closer against me and let out a barely audible whine under his breath. The behaviour of a dog who was terrified, close to pissing himself with fear.
Just a bit of metal, I told myself as the light shook so violently in my hand I struggled to see straight. Just two shiny bits of metal…
They blinked and began to come towards me. If I had any doubts left, they were dispersed by the sight of a pale white hand emerging into the light.
I ran straight to the stairs and went to climb them, but only one or two steps in and I saw something gripping the handrail on the top floor. A mouldy clump of flesh only just recognisable as a fist, the flesh withered until the fingers were basically bone. Without meaning to, I brought my light up out of habit and I saw the bloated face of a hairless corpse glaring down at me. I couldn’t even tell you if it had been a teenage girl or the sixty-year-old Daniel, either way I instinctively turned and found another body shambling towards me out of the workshop. I was trapped. Nowhere to go. By the feel of warm fluid on the back of my leg I could tell Ripley had finally pissed himself. An adult dog, tail between his legs, shivering like a puppy and desperate to be picked up. God I needed him to just stay together for a little longer. I couldn’t take him in my arms, but I couldn’t leave him behind either…
With nowhere to go I ran down and entered storage. There was the temptation to stop once I hit the bottom. Down here the air was thicker and the sounds of my breathing were muted, somehow distant. But I only had to look back up to see three pairs of eyes glaring down at me, so without giving any of it much further thought I barreled down the corridor and stumbled onto a door at random. Opening it, I saw what looked like your standard storage room, only most of the shelves had been overturned and the food left to rot on the floor. One or two shelving units were still upright though, and their shelves were covered in tall opaque boxes that made them a fantastic hiding spot. That, I decided, would have to be where I crouched down and turned off my light.
I was already inside when I realised that wasn’t all that was in there…
The door almost looked normal. I could see why Daniel must have been confused by it because it looked a little bit like all the other doors down there, but it was different too. It was too tall and too wide, about a foot and a half off the ground, and the metal rusted in its entirety like it had aged out of sync with everything else down there. All around the jamb was a profusion of wet soppy moss like the kind you find hanging off trees in a swamp, and every few seconds the door would leak something strange and oily, like the kind of thing you find in a parking lot on a rainy day. Of course that wasn’t too strange in itself, but the leak was horizontal, defying gravity so that every few seconds a large glob of the stuff would whip across the room and slap into the wall opposite creating a puddle about the size of a man that defied all reason.
Remembering Daniel’s words about radiation, I instinctively inched away from this puddle and the door on the opposite wall, backing myself into the darkest quietest corner I could while I pulled Ripley behind me and hoped to hell he wouldn’t give me away. Once I was in there I turned off my light and waited.
I must have taken longer than I’d thought to hide spot because it was barely two seconds later when a few figures entered the room. It was pitch black after I’d turned off my torch, but they made enough noise to let me know that at least two of them had stumbled in after me. I stayed there, unable to see anything, not sure if they were heading straight for me or just getting ready to leave, forced to hold out and let luck decide my fate. When I finally heard something scrape against the wall barely two feet from where I stood, I gave up and switched my light on, desperate to know what was coming for me.
The sound had been terribly misleading.
Daniel Vance was no more than six inches from my face.
“Get out,” he hissed from a toothless and cracked mouth. A living corpse just like the others, somehow a flash of intelligence remained in those wide, terrified eyes.
And then I heard it. The creaking of a door. And without even thinking I turned the light and saw it on the wall. I saw it open, and behind the strange steel there was more than just plain old concrete. Much more. I saw a raging gullet of flesh. A ringed tube of pulsing muscle lined with teeth the size of hands. A spiralling descent into madness. Hot foetid air washed into the room, buffeting me and the rotting corpses, all of us paralysed by what we were seeing, even if for most of the figures beside Daniel and myself, they didn’t have eyes to see with.
“What the fuck…?” I muttered, unable to take my eyes from the flesh tube beyond that doorway.
“It’s coming,” Daniel whispered as he grabbed me with one fist and hurled me out of the room. I hit the floor and skidded along a slick fluid left by the Vance’s footprints, the smell of which turned my stomach. Perhaps the worst detail was that it was cold. I don’t know why, I’d just expected whatever oozed them off them to be feverishly hot. But it wasn’t. It soaked my shirt like I’d fallen into a muddy puddle.
“It’s coming.”
This voice wasn’t Daniel’s. I couldn’t say for sure, but it sounded like a child’s whisper. One by one the bodies shuffled over to the open door and knelt before it. I don’t know why but I got the impression the others had lost pretty much everything left of their minds, but Daniel remained aware. He looked back at me once more and spoke before he pressed his head to the floor in supplication with the others.
“The only thing we did wrong was being here for it to torture. It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity. Leave. It won’t let us go. It won’t even let us die. And if it catches you, it won’t let you go either.”
His forehead kissed the dirt.
And then something reached through the door and gripped his head in its palm the way you or I might pick up an apple.
In full panic, I ran over and grabbed my dog and the bolt cutters and I ran like my legs were pistons, machines whose signals of exhaustion and fatigue could not slow me down, or cause me to fall. I had to move. I had to leave. The hand that had grabbed Daniel… the sight of it flushed my mind clean like some kind of enema. It hurt to see the image replay in my mind but there was nothing else in my head echoing around except the sight of fingers with one too many knuckles, and nails as large as a smartphone.
I reached the top floor and nearly collapsed from breathlessness, but I wouldn’t let myself stay down for long. I crawled over to the ladder and climbed up and immediately went to work trying to cut the metal lock. It was hell with just one hand, the other clinging to the torch that I kept frantically pointing at the door behind me, and it wasn’t long before I fumbled one too many times and dropped my only source of light.
“No no no no…” I mewed. But there was no time to look for it. I had to get out and I had to get out fast! I couldn’t see but I was sure I could hear something climbing up those stairs. Not the steady thump thump of human feet. No this was different. This was a rapid pitter patter of a spider, maybe. Something with hundreds of feet or hands, or God knows what, skittering along the floor and walls and ceiling, pulling itself along with a body whose mere shape would offend God.
Using all my strength I leaned hard on the bolt cutters and, at last, the bolt gave. I threw the hatch open and got just enough ambient light to see Ripley hovering at the bottom of the ladder, growling ineffectually at the doorway. I crouched down, scooped him up, and fled up the ladder so quickly that my muscles turned to jelly at the top and I fell over onto hands and knees. But still, I was out. The long corridor covered in writing was ahead of me, and at the very end a doorway capped now by the tired blue light of a full moon.
Ripley needed no encouragement. He whipped down the corridor with canine speed and I followed at a broken and stumbling crawl, eventually shouldering past the open door and collapsing onto the forest floor.
For a few seconds I drifted in and out of consciousness, but when I looked up and saw the canopy overhead moving–the branches backlit by a full moon–I snapped awake and glared down at something gripping my ankle. The hand had reached out of the dark and seized me and was slowly dragging me back into the Earth below. Whatever it was, most of its body lurked out of sight in the shadows behind the doorway, but the hand that crushed my leg was the size of my torso with an arm that looked like it belonged to a mole rat.
I struck it with my own fist. I dug my nails in. I cried and kicked and screamed, but nothing could stop it. From behind the door, something like a face grinned and leered at me with joy. It was taking its time, sure enough, pulling me in so slowly that it gave my mind all the time in the world to appreciate the nightmare that awaited me. I think if, in that moment, you’d given me a gun, I would’ve shot myself because God help me I couldn’t escape the look in Daniel’s eyes, how he’d knelt to worship this thing like a man who knew that hope or pride or joy or anything with even a hint of goodness to it was so far out of reach for him it might as well be a dream. How long was this thing going to keep them down there? How long did it intend to keep me!?
I wept like a child, feeling like my mind was slowly cracking as I tried everything to stop that fucking pulling me into the shadows. I kicked at the earth. I dug into it using my hands looking for a root or a pipe or anything to hold onto. Nothing, nothing, I did would slow it down.
I was no more than a foot from the doorway when Ripley reappeared.
A dog afraid of hoovers and plastic bags and doors that move on their own. A dog who once got stared down by a particularly feisty rabbit who stopped mid chase and turned around, baffling the predator on its tail. A dog you couldn’t even watch scary movies around…
And he lunged at that arm like he was a wolf, like he’d always been one. And while he didn’t quite break the skin, the pressure was enough to make the thing’s grip weaken and I slid my leg out. Unable to stand, I knelt and grabbed the dog and pulled as hard as I could and now that fucking thing bled at last as the pressure of the jaws and the sliding teeth ripped into its flesh. Together, at last, Ripley and I were let go and sent rolling backwards head over hells.
I wasted no time waiting or looking or processing. I heaved the dog to my chest and crawled until I passed out, making it maybe half a kilometre away. Only when I could no longer see the door did I let myself fall to the ground face first and gave up consciousness.
-
The doctors said I had pneumonia, which I suppose made some kind of sense. I might have even believed them were it not for the Sheriff’s visit, asking strange questions of me as I lay in bed about what I may or may not have seen. I dismissed them to the best of my ability. I wasn’t interested in chasing that particular nightmare down, figuring out if it had been real or not, at least not while I lay there half-drowning in my own infection. To be fair, I had at least some sympathy for why the police had done so little to seal that place off. I have, on occasion, thought about going and doing the job myself, but to this day I still have nightmares about being pulled into the dark beyond that door. Not just the bunker door, the one I narrowly avoided at the end, but the one below. What I saw was a kind of madness, I’m sure of it, and I often think of Daniel’s words.
It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity.
Somehow, the Vances were that opportunity. Maybe they built their bunker on a leyline, or a weak spot between dimensions, or the site of former Satanic rituals. I’m not sure it even matters. They went into the dark thinking it’d be a safe place to wait out the world’s troubles, but something had been down there waiting for them, waiting for a chance to get at a family of seven people, to lock them in and deprive them of escape and slowly take from them everything it could.
I’ve moved since then. Couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the memories you see. It was the short-wave radio I kept in my basement. Something my father passed onto me when I was just a boy. God I’d forgotten about it… at least until I woke up one day to the sound of it blaring white noise down in the dark.
And buried in that sound was the faint whispering of a man, his voice barely recognisable, but unmistakably his.
…let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go…

Dr Daniel Vance was a smart man. Too smart for his own good, maybe. Forty years old, a lecturer in fluid dynamics with a mind made of shapes and numbers. No one knows why but one day, on a whim, he crunched the numbers on the apocalypse and came to a troubling conclusion. He didn’t share exactly what it was he’d deduced, but given that he immediately quit his job and liquidated his many assets, it’s fair to say it wasn’t positive. Swept up in the wake of this tremendous upheaval was his wife, a twenty-four year old PhD student who had grown infatuated with Daniel some time before. She loved the strange bear of a man who could just as easily build a log cabin as he could explain the idiosyncrasies of an asteroid’s orbit. Speaking to Daniel always left you with the profound impression he was right, so when he told her what he wanted to do, she agreed.
Fifteen years and five children later, the Vances were living in the distant woods just beyond my hometown. They were enigmatic, richer than the Pope, and extremely serious about their prepper lifestyle. But they were also funny, easygoing, and incredibly compelling to speak to. Larger than life survivalists who swept into town with bizarre requests that thrilled local businesses. Vast quantities of cement, iron, lead, and steel were all shipped through the remote mountains so that the Vances could build their shelter. The advanced methods they used to keep it secret were legendary. Daniel had once spent six months earning the licence necessary to drive HGVs up to his compound so that no one else would lay eyes on it. And on one occasion when a company had refused his request for GPS tracker-free vehicles, he bought them out wholesale so that they had no choice.
So when they stopped appearing in town during the pandemic, when requests for food and goods stopped and all contact was dropped, most attributed it to lockdown. They had a bunker and had spent their entire lives training to be self-sufficient in the face of civilisation’s collapse. Even Alexander, the youngest at just three, was already collecting firewood as a chore, and learning what local plants were edible. Most of us just assumed that if anyone could ride out Covid without breaking a sweat, it would be the Vances.
The reality turned out to be something else.
When the worst came to light, we discovered that Daniel had used the pandemic as an excuse for a dry-run. The family intended to spend six months in lockdown and essentially beta test their fallout bunker. Three months in and the Sheriff received a distress call on the radio. Coordinates were provided by the hushed voice of a sobbing child that most assume was Alexander, even though that’s never been proven.
The police arrived and found the bunker still sealed. It took hours for emergency responders to cut into the door, all the while efforts were made to contact the family within but to no avail. Once inside, police were left dumbfounded. There was no one to be rescued. No bodies. No survivors. There was evidence the door’s locking mechanism had failed and trapped the Vances inside with no way out, but if so where had they gone?
Beds and cots lay everywhere with mouldering yellow sheets, buckets close to hand with stains all around them. Some doors were barred, others smashed to pieces. There was even evidence of makeshift quarantines and, in places, what looked like violence. The police, usually a fantastic source of gossip, were not forthcoming until the town demanded answers and the Sheriff was forced to offer only the barest of outlines.
An outbreak of a waterborne illness had struck the Vances down not long after they were locked inside and unable to seek help. Rumours of contagion were overstated, fuelled by the unrelated rise of Covid. Whatever contaminant had killed the Vances, it was non-organic in nature. No need to panic. The Vances loved-ones had been notified. The bunker was going to be demolished, and we could all put this terrible tragedy behind us.
Of course we still had questions. A thousand of them. Why hadn’t the family called for help? They had radios, computers, smartphones too. They were survivalists, not Amish. And where were they? What had happened to their bodies? Why hadn’t they simply left? We shouted these and more at the town meeting but the police simply refused to comment. For most of us the excitement lasted another week or two until we realised we weren’t getting answers any time soon. Besides, the pandemic was in full swing and most of us had other things to worry about. The tragic story eventually faded until it was just one of those awful things in the town’s history that we didn’t talk about. I was as guilty as anyone else of just forgetting about it.
I certainly never expected to find the bunker out there in the woods, faded police tape still on the open door that hung wide open with scorch marks around the lock. It stood out in the woods like someone had cut a hole right in the fabric of reality, the darkness so deep and black it almost ached to look at. The sight of it made my heart drop into my stomach. It radiated pain. Does that make sense? I think some part of my lizard brain picked out details that wouldn’t become apparent to me until I got closer, like the bloody finger streaks that stained the handle from where someone had scrabbled furiously at the lock without success. And the tiny viewing window had been smashed with a hammer that still lay nearby. I needed only to glimpse it to imagine the family taking turns to stand there and scream into the woods desperate for rescue.
Under any other circumstances, I would have run.
But I’d gone there looking for my dog, and my light revealed a few wet paw prints making their way down the dusty concrete tunnel. Half Bernese and half collie, Ripley is the sort of dog who trembles in my arms when a storm buffets the windows and needs his paws held when we brush him. I love him. I do not have much of a family, or a wife, or even many friends. But I have Ripley, and I could no more have turned around and gone home to an empty apartment where I would have to sob my grief away than I could flap my arms and fly. He was my dog and I’d raised him since he was a puppy, and I wasn’t going to leave him out in those woods.
I went in after him.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Whatever the police had found, they’d not only kept most of the morbid details to themselves, they had also lied. The bunker was not demolished, or even sealed off. In fact, looking at the occasional blue latex glove tossed aside and the one or two broken police-issue flashlights, it seemed like the last people inside had been in a hurry to get out. Given this was where seven people had presumably died, I assumed it was someone’s job to clean it all up. But the corridor looked largely untouched. Just a few metres in and manic writing started to cover the walls, the desperate scrawls of a lone survivor left there to be rediscovered like cave paintings. Most were deliberations on how to get out. Diagrams. Blueprints. Equations and formulae. All focused on the door and the circuits responsible for its faulty lock. I instinctively assumed they belonged to Daniel and that he’d been the last to die. What a God awful fate for a man to outlive his children. And yet it got worse. Slowly the writing changed from equations and plans to a desperate scrawl. The same few phrases repeated over and over.
Five doors. Five. Not six. Six. Didn’t make it. Didn’t make it. Six doors. Six.
It seemed like the kind of thing you’d find in an asylum. A psychotic rambling punctuated only by six paragraphs right at the end. Each letter was impeccably neat, and each small paragraph was topped with a beautifully drawn Christian cross.
Elliott Vance aged fifteen. A gifted guitarist. He liked boys even though he thought I did not know. I loved him with everything I had. He would have made a great man.
Alicia Vance aged fourteen. She liked to paint and to shoot. She had her mother’s mean streak. It would have served her well in the future.
Elijah Vance aged eight. The smartest of us all…
These were Daniel’s memorials to his family, and seeing the words lit up by my torch was a haunting insight into the overwhelming despair he’d endured. He must have realised he wouldn’t get the chance to speak at his family’s funerals or to write their obituaries. This was his last desperate way of making sure the world might one day know them as he did - as real people.
The words marked the end of the tunnel, standing adjacent to a trapdoor in the ground. It was not open but the tunnel came to a dead end immediately afterwards and Ripley’s prints disappeared at the hatch. I feared he might be in danger, but still I stopped and looked at the bunker door twenty metres behind me. The once gloomy forest looked so bright, even on this cloudy day, the air dotted with rain. A part of me felt like I was leaving the whole world behind as I began to climb the ladder down.
I entered a large circular living space that was packed with furniture and little nooks and crannies. The walls were covered with folding beds and tables and every inch was multifunctional. A dining space could become a sitting space, which in turn might be where someone slept, or even exercised. It all depended on what particular bit of furniture you unfolded or unclipped or unfurled. Seven people in close quarters, nowhere near enough privacy, it made sense they went with this cluttered overlapping use of space. But it was still a large room, bigger than most studio apartments. And there were a few corridors that led deeper into the Earth telling me the bunker had unseen depths.
I looked for some sign of my dog and soon found his trail, but this far from the rainy copse Ripley’s prints were starting to fade. After barely a few metres they petered out vaguely in the direction of a nearby door. I wanted to follow but stopped myself from rushing onwards. It was unlikely Ripley was getting out any other way, and I’d do us no good getting hurt myself. I decided to take a look around and quickly spotted a dinner table.
If I needed proof the police had not bothered with a clean up, this was it. The plates were still out, the food rotten to a strange blackened husk. A child’s hat lay across one place-setting, the once-creamy fleece turned a sickly green and yellow. The chairs had their backs reinforced with wooden beams fitted with long grooves so that something the width of a nail could slide into them. And on each of the cushions were foul smelling stains that looked oddly like an ass print. I touched one with gloved hands and the material crackled audibly. Whatever it was, similar stains were on the cutlery and plates, and there were even handprints of it placed firmly on the tablecloth. At first I thought it was blood, but that wasn’t quite right. It was too contained to be from leaking blood. On the back of one of the chairs a stain tapered exactly where a woman’s waist would be like a near perfect silhouette. I shivered as I remembered that Miranda Vance had always been a slim woman and wondered how she had left her imprint on the grey fabric.
Using my torch, I saw that these stains repeated in the oddest of places. Yes, there were some on beds and blankets and even patches of plain floor exactly like you might expect in a room full of sick people. But why did one stain on the floor bear such a strong resemblance to a child huddled in the foetal position? And why was the same stuff all over the tv remote, and on books on shelves, and board games too. Everything from sofa cushions to DVD boxes to piles of dirty laundry were covered in the same dried brownish material that gave off a foul coppery miasma.
I found the jigsaw particularly baffling. Someone had set up another table with four chairs, all modified with the same back support as those by the dinner table. And a jigsaw had been lain out with four separate piles, but only one was depleted. The rest looked largely untouched, almost like someone had portioned out pieces for three other people who had absolutely no interest in going along with it. Maybe Daniel had tried to keep up morale while the family were sick? God help me, if that were true I couldn’t help but imagine the poor man sat there with his loved ones close to death, desperately trying to encourage them to click their own pieces into place while they faded in and out of consciousness.
Something about that room emanated madness, and the longer I stayed down there flicking the bright disk of light of my torch from one detail to another, the more I wanted to leave. One door had wooden beams nailed across it. One sofa had been partially disassembled. Multiple beds had been burned. And all the light bulbs had been removed and put in a box on the kitchen counter top. Looking up at the ceiling, I finally had some insight into why the police were so confident the Vances had not survived despite never finding their bodies. Someone had jammed a human finger into one of the empty sockets, almost like they’d expected it to glow with the flick of a switch.
What was it about this place that had caused the police to leave and never return? Not to even take that finger and test it for signs of illness, or even just to confirm who it belonged to?
I decided it was time to hurry up and find my dog. People had died in that place, and while I’m not superstitious, I can’t be the only sceptic who has done the calculations in his head and realised it costs nothing to be respectful of ghosts. That bunker was cramped, terrifying, and the air stank so bad I started to worry I’d get sick myself. It served no one any good to linger. But I’d be damned if I’d just walk away and leave Ripley to rot down there. It’s not like he could climb a ladder and get out on his own (even if I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten down there in the first place).
Summoning what little bravery I had left I called out and broke the silence, something which felt like a terrible taboo in that God awful place, like screaming in a graveyard.
“Ripley!”
I waited and hoped to hell I’d hear the pitter patter of his paws, but for the longest of moments there was only the kind of silence that makes you wonder if someone or something in the darkness is holding its breath trying to look like just another patch of nothing. Biding its time until you finally turn around and show it your back…
The TV came on with a blurt of white noise that was so loud and so sudden I cried, threw my arms up, and nearly fell backwards onto a rolled-out sleeping bag that looked like it had spent a week in the sewer. By the time I realised what had caused the noise, I could already hear a tinny rendition of Daniel Vance’s voice.
…I realise the issue here. I need to emphasise just how little I understand anything that’s…
I frowned at the screen as I approached. It showed a greenish infrared view of the bunker with Daniel upfront, and the dinner table behind him. It was grainy and hard to see, but I could clearly tell that his family were sitting in those chairs.
…Miranda was first to fall ill. Looking back it makes perfect sense. Miranda often went into storage to fetch food for cooking and we found it behind one of the refrigerators. So that’s–ah shit..
One of the figures in the background slumped onto the table with a loud clank and sent a plate spinning off onto the ground.
Shit shit shit, Daniel muttered as he got up and grabbed the woman by the shoulders and sat her upright. Miranda never did like my cooking! He snorted a laugh as he fussed with something at the back of the chair. The rods are much better than tape. All those hours spent taping them upright to the chairs. Never worked. But the rods… they fit right into the spine and with a little modification I can just slot them into the chairs. That way everyone is able to join in for dinner. I’m working on something similar for family game night.
Daniel wandered over to the camera and with a grin he lifted it from the tripod and scanned the dinner table. What I saw nearly made me drop my torch.
His family were long dead. Gaunt faces. Missing noses. Lips that had receded to reveal awful grins. These were corpses, plain as day, even when viewed through such a low resolution image. The only thing that made them seem remotely alive was the way their eyes still reflected the infrared back so that they glowed in the dark. And yet Daniel seemed oblivious to it all. He tousled Elliot’s hair. Kissed his wife on the cheek. Run a hand across one young girl’s shoulder. He even picked the young Alexander up from his high chair and I assume he coddled him. I don’t know for sure because I looked away, unwilling to see the poor boy up close.
Eyes averted from the screen, I couldn’t help but pan my torch across to that same dinner table and shiver as I finally realised what all those stains were. Not quite blood. But close. Liquefying flesh. Left alone for months, Daniel had not put his family’s bodies to rest. Instead he had moved them around from place to place and puppeted them, living life as if nothing had really changed. Looking at where those stains had settled I saw a clear pattern emerge. He had put them to bed. He had set them dinner. He had propped them up to watch TV, or gave them their favourite books. They even sat there as lifeless husks while Daniel waited for them complete a fucking jigsaw. The idea horrified me to my core.
…back to work. It’s obviously not part of the original designs. No room on the other side, not on the blueprints. Elliot didn’t believe me and why would he? I made every inch of this place, but I did not install that door in storage on the bottom level. I checked the cameras and some of the photos I took during the build and the wall is just blank. But the door is there now and it must lead somewhere. I don’t know when or why it opens, but it does and the next time I’ll be ready. Because I have to know what’s on the other side, and why it did this to us. Alone down here, often all asleep at once. Anything could have slit our throats and been done with it. But it didn’t. It took its time and I have to know why!
It took our radios and computers and phones. One by one. None of us noticing until it was far too late. I kept telling the kids they needed to take better care of their things, and even as they complained I just assumed the phones were lying behind some shelf. Where else could they go in a locked bunker? But it wasn’t the children at all. Looking back there are so many signs… who kept taking away the lights? Who kept draining the batteries in our torches? How long did we live with it before we finally realised we weren’t alone? Was it here every step of the way?
A door out of nothing that leads to nowhere, at least most of the time. Because I know for a fact it does not always open onto a blank wall. There is something behind it. I can hear it shuffling around in there, wet breath rattling in its lungs, a horrible sound I hear roaming these halls when it thinks I’m asleep…
I listened to Daniel, fascinated by this strangely compelling rant, when movement caught my eye. An infrared camera running in the dark, its image a roiling mess of uniform noise. What was it I’d seen? I paused the tape and rewound. Squinting, I saw two pinpricks of light in the darkness just over Daniel’s shoulder. Slowly, the image resolved itself in my mind. I knew what I was seeing and it turned my blood to ice.
Miranda Vance had turned her head, and her lifeless eyes glowed as she fixed them on the back of Daniel’s head.
…not even any point leaving at this stage. I’m no doctor, but that door is giving off enough radiation to… well, to kill a family of seven. If none of us had touched it… Being in the same room is risky, but not lethal. But given how sick we’ve become, it’s pretty obvious our curiosity got the better of us, one by one, and we all got too close. Or maybe not. Maybe that thing on the other side came through and did this. I don’t even kn… wait… what was that?
Daniel turned and the camera stopped recording. The image it froze on was of a lone man, bright as a star in the camera’s lens, facing off against unknowable darkness broken only by six pairs of white, glowing eyes.
I became painfully aware of my position relative to the table and I had the painful premonition that if I turned, those chairs would not be empty. I would see the Vances, all of them, Daniel as well, waiting for me. Heads turned. Bodies left to rot for years in the dark. Behind me something shifted. It breathed. Loud. Quick. I knew what it was. I knew. It came at me so fast that when I felt something hot and wet touch my hand I screamed, only for the presence to suddenly recoil. But then, without hesitation, it leapt at me and bore me to the ground.
I wept as Ripley licked my face. He was shivering and, worst of all, silent which was not normal. He was not a quiet dog, not when greeting me and not when excited like he was now. But whatever he’d seen down here, he clung to me and dug his paws into my shoulders like he wanted to be cradled over the shoulder, something he has been too big to do for years.
“Oh you fucking idiot,” I cooed in a soft whisper and even in the dark I could feel his tail wagging. Joking aside, I felt nothing but relief at finding him. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I picked him up, straining a little under the weight but refusing to give into tired muscles, and made for the ladder. It wasn’t easy climbing the three or four rungs to the hatch, but I managed it and gave the hatch a shove. First one hand, then two. Again and again, with everything I had, but still that hatch refused to budge.
“Shit!” I cried while pounding at it with my fists, but all I achieved was a sore wrist. The hatch had jammed when, somehow, the handle had been snapped clean off. Now I’d need a pair of pliers or something to cut through the metal bar locking it shut. My fingers couldn’t move it, nor could I brute force the hatch open. The metal bar was an inch thick and, at the very least, I’d need some tools to get at it from this side.
At least it’s fixable, I thought as I climbed back down and caught my breath. On one wall I noticed a simple diagram of the bunker made in chalk. It had three floors. The bottom was storage–Daniel had mentioned that before, and I noticed that he had drawn through it with a large red X–and the top floor was labelled Quarters, where I stood now. But the middle floor was labelled workshops and it was there I realised that I’d find what I needed.
There was one door that opened onto a concrete stairwell and, standing at the top, I shone my light down the spiralling guard rails unsure of what it was I hoped to see. There were only harsh shadows and the sense of something foul rising up on the air. A smell that tickled my throat and burned a little in my lungs. Had the police even gone down this far? Had they seen what I’d seen on that TV and just left? Somehow I thought it was unlikely that had been enough to send the entire Sheriff’s department running, so was it something else that had done it. Something that had been enough to terrify dozens of armed men. Something that was almost definitely down there.
The door…
I went down quietly. At first I considered leaving Ripley behind, but after losing him the first time I decided I’d rather risk it just to know that he was right next to me. Besides, he was being quieter than I was, and I didn’t feel much like going down those stairs on my own. He accompanied me with only the quiet click clack of his paws on concrete, a sound I found deeply comforting as I barely managed to keep my torch from shaking in my hand and my breathing steady.
Down one floor and I found the workshop exactly as you might expect. A large space filled with generators and fuel and water tanks and boilers and heaters and pretty much anything and everything that you’d need to survive but which you couldn’t put outside due to fallout. Wires pipes and tubes ran from one end of the room to the other and even years later, most of the machinery still hummed in the pitch black emptiness, an idea I found deeply unsettling. Taking one look at that strange tangle of harsh shapes and industrial figures looming out of the walls and floor, I shivered and looked around, quickly finding a small area Daniel had cordoned off for his own use. About a fifth of the total floor space, there was a large workbench and some seriously high end machining equipment, all very well used. Lathes. Buzzsaws. Drills. Belt sanders. Welding torches. Everything a man needed to do-it-himself.
And Daniel had been busy.
I’m not sure exactly what it was he’d been working, but there was an arm on the bench. It sat atop a pile of papers that had slowly turned brown over the years until the whole thing looked like it had been soaked in tobacco spit. On the whiteboard was a faded but still visible diagram of what looked to me like a ball-and-socket joint. I thought of the tape, of Daniel’s little mechanism to keep his family upright, and then looked at the arm and suppressed a momentary gag reflex. I don’t know if Dan had been working on posable limbs, or just a way to put the decomposing remains back together after they’d started to fall apart, but the size of the arm suggested a pre-teen child, and he’d left it out on the surface like it was a disassembled clock. It was also missing a finger. Just how fucking crazy was he? I wondered as I pinched my nose with one hand and began overturning boxes looking for a hefty pair of pliers, or maybe a hacksaw. Ripley backed away from the noise, but once I made sure he wasn’t going anywhere I carried on grabbing and pulling at box after box hoping I’d find what I was looking for. Anything to break that fucking metal bar.
In the end I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters, a crowbar, and a heavy duty pair of pliers. One went in my pocket, one went down the back of my jeans, and the other was clutched in my fist, too large to be tucked away in my clothes. The bolt cutters felt hefty in my hand which was a bit of comfort, but that feeling didn’t last long.
Something moved in the darkness, out there in the twisted jungle of shadows cast by all those pipes and wires that ran from one machine to the next. A figure moved. Thin, but unmistakably human in its outline. I couldn’t help but remember what I’d seen on that tape. Surely it couldn’t have been real? Maybe Daniel had rigged something up. Some fishing wire and a motor, maybe? The idea that those bodies had been moving on their own… I couldn’t be sure of that, could I? It was a frightening idea, one my mind had latched onto out of sheer panic. That was all…
And then I saw them. A pair of white pin-pricks reflecting back at me from the depths of that cluttered room. Ripley, already behind me, head nuzzled into my leg, pushed even closer against me and let out a barely audible whine under his breath. The behaviour of a dog who was terrified, close to pissing himself with fear.
Just a bit of metal, I told myself as the light shook so violently in my hand I struggled to see straight. Just two shiny bits of metal…
They blinked and began to come towards me. If I had any doubts left, they were dispersed by the sight of a pale white hand emerging into the light.
I ran straight to the stairs and went to climb them, but only one or two steps in and I saw something gripping the handrail on the top floor. A mouldy clump of flesh only just recognisable as a fist, the flesh withered until the fingers were basically bone. Without meaning to, I brought my light up out of habit and I saw the bloated face of a hairless corpse glaring down at me. I couldn’t even tell you if it had been a teenage girl or the sixty-year-old Daniel, either way I instinctively turned and found another body shambling towards me out of the workshop. I was trapped. Nowhere to go. By the feel of warm fluid on the back of my leg I could tell Ripley had finally pissed himself. An adult dog, tail between his legs, shivering like a puppy and desperate to be picked up. God I needed him to just stay together for a little longer. I couldn’t take him in my arms, but I couldn’t leave him behind either…
With nowhere to go I ran down and entered storage. There was the temptation to stop once I hit the bottom. Down here the air was thicker and the sounds of my breathing were muted, somehow distant. But I only had to look back up to see three pairs of eyes glaring down at me, so without giving any of it much further thought I barreled down the corridor and stumbled onto a door at random. Opening it, I saw what looked like your standard storage room, only most of the shelves had been overturned and the food left to rot on the floor. One or two shelving units were still upright though, and their shelves were covered in tall opaque boxes that made them a fantastic hiding spot. That, I decided, would have to be where I crouched down and turned off my light.
I was already inside when I realised that wasn’t all that was in there…
The door almost looked normal. I could see why Daniel must have been confused by it because it looked a little bit like all the other doors down there, but it was different too. It was too tall and too wide, about a foot and a half off the ground, and the metal rusted in its entirety like it had aged out of sync with everything else down there. All around the jamb was a profusion of wet soppy moss like the kind you find hanging off trees in a swamp, and every few seconds the door would leak something strange and oily, like the kind of thing you find in a parking lot on a rainy day. Of course that wasn’t too strange in itself, but the leak was horizontal, defying gravity so that every few seconds a large glob of the stuff would whip across the room and slap into the wall opposite creating a puddle about the size of a man that defied all reason.
Remembering Daniel’s words about radiation, I instinctively inched away from this puddle and the door on the opposite wall, backing myself into the darkest quietest corner I could while I pulled Ripley behind me and hoped to hell he wouldn’t give me away. Once I was in there I turned off my light and waited.
I must have taken longer than I’d thought to hide spot because it was barely two seconds later when a few figures entered the room. It was pitch black after I’d turned off my torch, but they made enough noise to let me know that at least two of them had stumbled in after me. I stayed there, unable to see anything, not sure if they were heading straight for me or just getting ready to leave, forced to hold out and let luck decide my fate. When I finally heard something scrape against the wall barely two feet from where I stood, I gave up and switched my light on, desperate to know what was coming for me.
The sound had been terribly misleading.
Daniel Vance was no more than six inches from my face.
“Get out,” he hissed from a toothless and cracked mouth. A living corpse just like the others, somehow a flash of intelligence remained in those wide, terrified eyes.
And then I heard it. The creaking of a door. And without even thinking I turned the light and saw it on the wall. I saw it open, and behind the strange steel there was more than just plain old concrete. Much more. I saw a raging gullet of flesh. A ringed tube of pulsing muscle lined with teeth the size of hands. A spiralling descent into madness. Hot foetid air washed into the room, buffeting me and the rotting corpses, all of us paralysed by what we were seeing, even if for most of the figures beside Daniel and myself, they didn’t have eyes to see with.
“What the fuck…?” I muttered, unable to take my eyes from the flesh tube beyond that doorway.
“It’s coming,” Daniel whispered as he grabbed me with one fist and hurled me out of the room. I hit the floor and skidded along a slick fluid left by the Vance’s footprints, the smell of which turned my stomach. Perhaps the worst detail was that it was cold. I don’t know why, I’d just expected whatever oozed them off them to be feverishly hot. But it wasn’t. It soaked my shirt like I’d fallen into a muddy puddle.
“It’s coming.”
This voice wasn’t Daniel’s. I couldn’t say for sure, but it sounded like a child’s whisper. One by one the bodies shuffled over to the open door and knelt before it. I don’t know why but I got the impression the others had lost pretty much everything left of their minds, but Daniel remained aware. He looked back at me once more and spoke before he pressed his head to the floor in supplication with the others.
“The only thing we did wrong was being here for it to torture. It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity. Leave. It won’t let us go. It won’t even let us die. And if it catches you, it won’t let you go either.”
His forehead kissed the dirt.
And then something reached through the door and gripped his head in its palm the way you or I might pick up an apple.
In full panic, I ran over and grabbed my dog and the bolt cutters and I ran like my legs were pistons, machines whose signals of exhaustion and fatigue could not slow me down, or cause me to fall. I had to move. I had to leave. The hand that had grabbed Daniel… the sight of it flushed my mind clean like some kind of enema. It hurt to see the image replay in my mind but there was nothing else in my head echoing around except the sight of fingers with one too many knuckles, and nails as large as a smartphone.
I reached the top floor and nearly collapsed from breathlessness, but I wouldn’t let myself stay down for long. I crawled over to the ladder and climbed up and immediately went to work trying to cut the metal lock. It was hell with just one hand, the other clinging to the torch that I kept frantically pointing at the door behind me, and it wasn’t long before I fumbled one too many times and dropped my only source of light.
“No no no no…” I mewed. But there was no time to look for it. I had to get out and I had to get out fast! I couldn’t see but I was sure I could hear something climbing up those stairs. Not the steady thump thump of human feet. No this was different. This was a rapid pitter patter of a spider, maybe. Something with hundreds of feet or hands, or God knows what, skittering along the floor and walls and ceiling, pulling itself along with a body whose mere shape would offend God.
Using all my strength I leaned hard on the bolt cutters and, at last, the bolt gave. I threw the hatch open and got just enough ambient light to see Ripley hovering at the bottom of the ladder, growling ineffectually at the doorway. I crouched down, scooped him up, and fled up the ladder so quickly that my muscles turned to jelly at the top and I fell over onto hands and knees. But still, I was out. The long corridor covered in writing was ahead of me, and at the very end a doorway capped now by the tired blue light of a full moon.
Ripley needed no encouragement. He whipped down the corridor with canine speed and I followed at a broken and stumbling crawl, eventually shouldering past the open door and collapsing onto the forest floor.
For a few seconds I drifted in and out of consciousness, but when I looked up and saw the canopy overhead moving–the branches backlit by a full moon–I snapped awake and glared down at something gripping my ankle. The hand had reached out of the dark and seized me and was slowly dragging me back into the Earth below. Whatever it was, most of its body lurked out of sight in the shadows behind the doorway, but the hand that crushed my leg was the size of my torso with an arm that looked like it belonged to a mole rat.
I struck it with my own fist. I dug my nails in. I cried and kicked and screamed, but nothing could stop it. From behind the door, something like a face grinned and leered at me with joy. It was taking its time, sure enough, pulling me in so slowly that it gave my mind all the time in the world to appreciate the nightmare that awaited me. I think if, in that moment, you’d given me a gun, I would’ve shot myself because God help me I couldn’t escape the look in Daniel’s eyes, how he’d knelt to worship this thing like a man who knew that hope or pride or joy or anything with even a hint of goodness to it was so far out of reach for him it might as well be a dream. How long was this thing going to keep them down there? How long did it intend to keep me!?
I wept like a child, feeling like my mind was slowly cracking as I tried everything to stop that fucking pulling me into the shadows. I kicked at the earth. I dug into it using my hands looking for a root or a pipe or anything to hold onto. Nothing, nothing, I did would slow it down.
I was no more than a foot from the doorway when Ripley reappeared.
A dog afraid of hoovers and plastic bags and doors that move on their own. A dog who once got stared down by a particularly feisty rabbit who stopped mid chase and turned around, baffling the predator on its tail. A dog you couldn’t even watch scary movies around…
And he lunged at that arm like he was a wolf, like he’d always been one. And while he didn’t quite break the skin, the pressure was enough to make the thing’s grip weaken and I slid my leg out. Unable to stand, I knelt and grabbed the dog and pulled as hard as I could and now that fucking thing bled at last as the pressure of the jaws and the sliding teeth ripped into its flesh. Together, at last, Ripley and I were let go and sent rolling backwards head over hells.
I wasted no time waiting or looking or processing. I heaved the dog to my chest and crawled until I passed out, making it maybe half a kilometre away. Only when I could no longer see the door did I let myself fall to the ground face first and gave up consciousness.
-
The doctors said I had pneumonia, which I suppose made some kind of sense. I might have even believed them were it not for the Sheriff’s visit, asking strange questions of me as I lay in bed about what I may or may not have seen. I dismissed them to the best of my ability. I wasn’t interested in chasing that particular nightmare down, figuring out if it had been real or not, at least not while I lay there half-drowning in my own infection. To be fair, I had at least some sympathy for why the police had done so little to seal that place off. I have, on occasion, thought about going and doing the job myself, but to this day I still have nightmares about being pulled into the dark beyond that door. Not just the bunker door, the one I narrowly avoided at the end, but the one below. What I saw was a kind of madness, I’m sure of it, and I often think of Daniel’s words.
It didn’t need a reason, just an opportunity.
Somehow, the Vances were that opportunity. Maybe they built their bunker on a leyline, or a weak spot between dimensions, or the site of former Satanic rituals. I’m not sure it even matters. They went into the dark thinking it’d be a safe place to wait out the world’s troubles, but something had been down there waiting for them, waiting for a chance to get at a family of seven people, to lock them in and deprive them of escape and slowly take from them everything it could.
I’ve moved since then. Couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the memories you see. It was the short-wave radio I kept in my basement. Something my father passed onto me when I was just a boy. God I’d forgotten about it… at least until I woke up one day to the sound of it blaring white noise down in the dark.
And buried in that sound was the faint whispering of a man, his voice barely recognisable, but unmistakably his.
…let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go let them go…