What’s Been Here, and Will Continue to Be Here

A barefoot girl, barely twelve years in age, wearing ripped and baggy jeans that were too big on her and a grey sweatshirt smaller than her size, was running from her mum’s council house to her dad’s four-bedroom house at 11 pm. Her Afro-black hair collected all the dust floating on the impure air, and a recent scar, stretching from her right cheek to her forehead, alloyed itself on her light brown complexion. The street, where her mother lived, had the aroma of dead animals oozing from the carcass of stray cats around, mixing with the rancid sewage that's always present. Resembling the stench of rotten eggs, hydrogen sulphide gas was endlessly seeping from the factories close by, combining with everything else and producing a smell that no one made the effort or had the care to handle. Known in the southern, poorer part of Rao, the smell equally spreads and situates itself exclusively in this part of the capital, never protruding into the adjacent areas.

The child was nearly alone. Unaware, she kept walking. Where she was treading was almost complete darkness. For better or worse, she wouldn’t be able to see if a person was around. There was no one, but the possibility of it amidst the dark heightened her anxiety.

The place she now encroaches on was near silence. The child stepped on a punctured sewer manhole, which was sealed. But such a loud noise caused by the stepping would have alerted everyone and everything within a short radius. No person was there.

But, there was a thing. Sticky, blue and durable tentacles strike from the darkness under the manhole. It wraps three of its limbs around the child’s calf. The child struggles to get it off; the power of three men cannot remove a single one of these swift limbs. She erratically switches between putting all her energy into screaming for help, with every breath in her lungs, or making use of her puny muscles to remove the extra five limbs now wrapping around her neck and chest. It ascends through the manhole without opening it, and she couldn’t make out what it is or what it looks like – only that a silhouette imposed itself with its towering height, at about five times her size. Her pupils shrink at the sight of this thing coming closer, looming from atop.

Its translucent body was painted in a light-blue colour, its skin viscous but firm in texture. The being’s head resembled an oval, with no face on it. Its body was eerily thin, a bit bigger than the width of a hand, and was a slim oval in shape, which made most of its height. Two limbs protruded to form legs, which were basic cylinders in structure with flat surfaces. Tough and agile limbs in every shape jut from many places of its upper body at an uncountable amount.

It is now standing tall right before the child, for seconds that she was perceiving as minutes. It descends through the steel and openings of the sealed manhole, dragging the kid to itself. It didn’t intend to make her entrance graceful.

The child could not enter through the openings.

It is now pulling harder.

A blood-curdling scream erupts from the girl’s mouth as bones start to break.

After a handful of pulls, each with more strength and force than the next, all the energy in her dissipates, and she falls unconscious. Her calf as well as her entire lower body made it to the other side, drooping and with the skin shredded off. As it tries to get the organs across, it continues to tug, having trouble getting the chest through, but eventually, it dislodges the rib cage. The force of the beast manages to crack the skull into pieces, which successfully got through the other side and has now erased the child’s presence with nothing left behind.

No missing person reports were filed from the only relatives she has, her parents, or anyone. The creature has not made an appearance since.

(An excerpt from an interview)

“As a scholar of this sort of thing, could you give the public the best description of the recent appearances of the ‘Phy’?”

“I could never tell you a useful one. The best we can conjure up is that it is a manifestation of… something. Something ranging from inexplicable to honestly just out of this universe. It is occurrences that present themselves in random and infinite ways, which do not confine themselves in ‘nature’, whatever that is. Sometimes it even seems like a reaction to us, to be frank…”

(An article from EIO News)

We find that the consistent pattern found among all types of Phy is that we cannot observe the Phy’s initial appearance, and with some of them, we cannot observe them even during their manifestation. Always seen after they are already here, not from where they come from. For example, never has a person witnessed an open and clear sky, and, at constant observation without blinking, the stars rearrange to form an eye (the environmental Phy #0009). Or another one, never has a person reported where any of the creature Phy come from or where they live, if they do. It is always *POOF*, and now they are there. In our blind spots, they prepare. In that unknown abyss…

(An article from a scientific journal in 2001)

A meta-analysis reliably suggests that the appearance of Phy has been on a gradual increase since 1938, regardless of the type. But, findings suggest an exponential increase in this trend, starting from the year 2000. No evidence suggests any stopping of their increased appearance.

(Phy Search report, Week #243 since 24th October 1996)

This is to report that the 243rd search for the Earth Movers yielded the first few helpful pieces of data since the beginning of this program! Three tremors located in the outskirts of Rao have been recorded…

(Phy Report #0145: 9th January 2000)

An object Phy (#0145) has been confirmed. An empty bottle, resembling the shape of most bottles of water, with the label of the ‘AquaPino’ company. It can be found in Rao, the capital city of Gader. Its exact location is in an alleyway, found before the shop ‘Bark Bites’ which is situated on Cawton Street, right before its intersection with Maroon Road. The object does not seem to be a temporary Phy, like other creature Phys and even some object and environmental ones; it has stayed for the 2 days to 2 months range we empirically concluded to be the average time a Phy has to stay before it disappears and is rendered a temporary one.

The manifestation of the Phy conditions an observation from a subject. When under observation, the subject must wait for 9 to 10 minutes, looking at it. After a point in that time range, a mandatory gust of wind hits 0145, and the object Phy spins. Like a normal bottle. Once it stops, what happens is unconfirmed. However, conclusive evidence shows that the observing subject disappears and is not seen after. Belongings and gear carried by the subject vanish as well. Audio has been recorded of 6 experiments interacting with 0145. Each recording shows a clear, but indeterminate sound after the subjects report the Phy stopped spinning. It is always then met by silence.