Who Paid for the New Kingsmouth?

 

Feed the Moths | Jenna McKendrik | Filed under: Kingsmouth, Orochi, Corporate Weirdness, Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Noticed

Pretty towns cost money.

That sounds obvious, but think about it for a second. Kingsmouth in 2012 was not a wealthy place. It was a working harbour town with a declining fishing industry, a slightly cursed reputation, and the kind of infrastructure that suggests the council hadn't had a meaningful budget since approximately 1987.

And now it has repaved streets. A new harbour office. Restored civic buildings. Bunting. A mural that must have cost someone a genuinely uncomfortable amount of money to commission.

So I started asking the obvious question.

Who paid for all this?

The Official Story (Such As It Is)

The Kingsmouth Regeneration Initiative — which is apparently what they're calling it, with the kind of name that sounds like it was generated by a committee specifically to be un-googleable — has a very tidy public narrative.

Regional development funding. A coastal communities grant from somewhere federal. Private investment from "local business interests." An anonymous charitable trust established in 2013, the year after everything, called the Solomon Island Community Foundation.

It all sounds perfectly reasonable.

This is, in my experience, the first warning sign.

I've spent enough time poking at things that are meant to be left alone to know that legitimate funding is usually messy. It's council minutes and competing grant applications and someone's name spelled three different ways across four documents. It's boring and human and slightly chaotic.

The Kingsmouth regeneration paperwork is clean. It's almost elegant. Everything traces back neatly to the right places, every reference resolves, every grant has a corresponding acknowledgment plaque on the appropriate building.

It looks like a paper trail that someone built rather than one that grew.

The Noticeboard Outside the Planning Office

I want to be clear that I was not doing anything unusual here. I was standing on a public street, looking at a publicly accessible noticeboard, through a window that was at street level and unobstructed.

The planning office for the harbour development is in a converted building on Marsh Road — new paint, new signage, a logo that manages to be both nautical and corporate in a way that takes real effort. The noticeboard inside the front window has the usual assortment of planning notices and consultation documents, the kind of thing that's legally required to be visible to the public.

 

I was reading it because I'm exactly the kind of person who reads planning notices on holiday, yes, thank you, moving on.

Most of it was routine. Permitted development. Drainage consultation. An application for external signage on the new café.

But tucked in the lower left corner, slightly behind a flood risk assessment, was a contractor invoice. Or part of one — the top was obscured. What I could see was a line-item breakdown for groundworks on the harbour office project: materials, labour, site clearance.

And at the top of the visible section, where the contractor's details would normally be, a company name.

The name on the invoice was Meridian Groundworks (a BlackGlass Company).

I took the photo, put my phone in my pocket, and walked very calmly to the bench across the street, where I sat down and stared at the harbour for a while.

So Here's Where Things Get Weird

BlackGlass.

If you've been following this blog for a while — and specifically if you read the Black House posts from two years ago, or the Lost Broadcast material from last year — that name is going to do something to your stomach. The same thing it did to mine.

It appeared in the Black House investigation as a partial document header. I noted it at the time, couldn't place it, moved on because there were about forty other things demanding my attention in that particular rabbit hole. It showed up again in the Lost Broadcast material, in the metadata of one of the audio files that got pulled before I could do a full analysis. I flagged it in my notes and then the notes got complicated and BlackGlass ended up in a folder called follow up eventually.

Naturally, I had to investigate.

Here's what I found, which is not very much, which is itself interesting:

BlackGlass does not have a website. It has a Companies House registration — or the American equivalent, depending on which jurisdiction you're looking in, because it appears to exist in several — with a filing history that is perfectly maintained and almost completely uninformative. The registered address is a law firm. The listed directors are two names that resolve to nothing useful when you search them.

It is not a shell company in the obvious sense. It pays its taxes. It has employees — you can find LinkedIn profiles for people who list it as an employer, though the job titles are all variations of consultant or project manager with no further detail.

It is a company that exists entirely to not be noticed.

And it did the groundworks on Kingsmouth harbour.

The Harbour Office

The new harbour office is a neat single-storey building at the end of the repaved waterfront. It has large windows, a very clean logo on the door, and a small garden bed along the front that someone is maintaining with real dedication.

On my second morning, I walked past it slowly on the way to get coffee. (There is a very good coffee place now. I'm still suspicious of Kingsmouth but I will give them the coffee.)

On the right-hand side of the building, at about knee height, half-hidden by the garden bed, there was a small brass plate fixed to the render.

The kind of plate that contractors sometimes affix to buildings they've worked on. A quiet credit. Most people never notice them.

This one said: BlackGlass Infrastructure Division | Project: KM-2013-04

I crouched down and photographed it. Then I photographed the building. Then I went and got my coffee and came back.

The plate was gone.

Not removed messily — no drill holes, no raw render where fixings had been pulled out. Just gone. As if it had never been there, except that I have a photograph of it on my phone, timestamped 8:47am, in which you can clearly read every word.

I have looked at that photograph a lot.

What I Think I Know

I want to be careful here, because I don't have enough to make a definitive claim and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

What I have is this:

A company called BlackGlass, which appears in the background of at least two previous investigations into things that were very much not normal, has a documented presence in the Kingsmouth regeneration project. They did groundworks. They had a plate on the harbour office. Project reference KM-2013-04 — which means they were here in 2013. The year after the fog. The year the cleanup, whatever that looked like, would have started.

Orochi Group has a lot of subsidiaries. Most of them have sensible, forgettable names. Meridian this, Atlantic that, Pacific something-or-other.

BlackGlass doesn't feel like those names. BlackGlass feels like something you name a project when the project isn't, technically, about groundworks.

"BlackGlass Infrastructure Division."

Infrastructure. Right.

I'm going back through the Black House files tonight. And the Lost Broadcast metadata. And whatever else I have in that follow-up folder that I should have followed up on months ago.

One More Thing

On my way out of Kingsmouth this afternoon I drove past the stretch of old harbour wall. The one I photographed on my first day. The one with the wrong shadows.

The dark substance in the cracks — whatever it was — is gone. The wall looks like it's just been cleaned. There's a council maintenance van parked nearby, two workers packing up equipment.

I slowed down. One of them looked up at me.

I kept driving.

The Black House posts and Lost Broadcast investigation are in the archive. I'd suggest reading them before the next post.

I'm going back to Kingsmouth.

There are people there who remember 2012. And at least one of them is ready to talk.

© Feed the Moths | All content Jenna McKendrik | BlackGlass is not in my head. I have the photograph.

Kingsmouth Got a Lick of Paint. I'm Not Convinced.

 

Feed the Moths | Jenna McKendrik | Filed under: Kingsmouth, New England, Places That Should Know Better

So here's the thing about Kingsmouth.

I've been putting off coming back for about eight months. Not because I was scared — I mean, obviously not because I was scared — but because I'd built up a very specific picture of what it would be like, and I wasn't ready to have that picture complicated.

I expected fog. I expected peeling paint and empty windows and that particular flavour of coastal decay that Kingsmouth used to do so well. I expected to feel the wrongness of the place the moment I crossed the town line, like I did last time. Like a pressure change. Like something noticing.

What I did not expect was a farmers market.

 

"Welcome to Kingsmouth! (Please Enjoy Our Artisan Preserves)"

They've got bunting up. Actual bunting. Little triangular flags strung between the lamp posts all the way down Marsh Road, in alternating blue and white, snapping cheerfully in the sea breeze. There's a chalkboard sign outside what used to be a very sad-looking hardware store, advertising something called The Saltbox Kitchen and their award-winning chowder.

(Award-winning. In Kingsmouth. I have questions about the judging panel.)

The harbour front has been repaved. The boats look maintained. There's a mural on the wall of the old cannery building — a big, bright thing, all blues and greens, fishing boats and wheeling gulls and a sunrise that is, I promise you, physically painful to look at in its cheerfulness.

I stood in front of that mural for a while.

I'm not sure what I was looking for. A crack in it, maybe. Some evidence that underneath the fresh paint, the wall remembered what 2012 felt like.

The Smell of Fresh Paint and Something Else

Here's the thing about Kingsmouth that the bunting can't quite fix.

It's quiet in the wrong way.

Not empty-quiet. There are people here. Tourists, even — a couple with a pushchair, a man eating a pastry on a bench, a group of women doing a walking tour with little printed maps. The town is producing the correct amount of human noise.

But underneath it, there's another quiet. A held-breath kind of quiet. The kind of quiet that a place makes when it's concentrating on something.

I noticed it most on the side streets. The ones that weren't quite on the main drag, that hadn't quite got the full renovation treatment. The shop fronts still look new enough, but the colour choices are a bit off — slightly too deliberate, like someone picked them from a 'reassuring coastal town' mood board rather than, you know, just painting their shop. And if you look at the upper floors, above the neat window boxes and the freshly painted sills, some of the windows are still dark. Still boarded, but with boards that have been painted to match the render.

Cheerful boards. Very convincing, from a distance.

I only noticed because I was looking.

 

Talking to People (A Study in Conversational Redirection)

I tried talking to a few locals. Not in a I'm investigating your town way — just chatting, the way you do when you're a stranger somewhere and you want to get a feel for a place.

It went like this:

The woman at the market stall selling jam was lovely. Absolutely lovely. Told me about the new community garden project, the council's regeneration grant, how the school had just been repainted. When I mentioned that I'd visited before — back in 2012 — she smiled and said "Oh, things are very different now," and then found something urgent to do with her display of raspberry conserve.

The man running the kayak hire hadn't been here in 2012. Moved up from Portland three years ago. Loves it. Great community. Very friendly people.

The elderly gentleman sitting on the harbour wall had definitely been here in 2012. I could tell because when I sat down next to him and said I'd been reading about the town's history, he looked at me for a long moment and then said, very quietly: "It's not gone. They just can't see it anymore."

And then his wife called him for lunch and he left.

So. That was useful.

The Wall

This is the part I keep coming back to.

At the far end of the harbour, past the new paving and the mural and the very nice new harbour office, there's a section of the old sea wall that hasn't been touched. It's maybe thirty feet long, tucked around a slight curve in the waterfront, and I think the plan is probably to renovate it eventually — there's a faded marking on the ground that might be a contractor's annotation.

But right now, it's original. Unchanged.

The stone is dark with waterlogging, or something like it. The tideline is higher than it should be given the conditions today — you can see it clearly, a distinct dark band across the lower third of the wall. And growing in the cracks, or not exactly growing, more like present, is something I can't identify. Dark and slightly glossy. Not seaweed, not lichen. Something that doesn't have the right texture for either of those things.

I photographed it.

I took about fifteen pictures from different angles, different distances. The light was good — clear afternoon sun, nothing complicated about the exposure.

Here's what came back:

The wall is there. The stone is there. The tideline is there.

The light isn't right.

I don't mean it's a bad photo. I mean the shadows are falling in a direction that doesn't match the sun. Not dramatically — you'd miss it if you weren't looking. But I was looking, because I always look, and I've been over these photos about thirty times now and I cannot make the shadows behave correctly.

Anyway

The Saltbox Kitchen does a genuinely excellent chowder, for the record.

I ate it sitting by the harbour, watching the cheerful boats and the cheerful mural and the cheerful tourists, and I thought about what the old man said. It's not gone. They just can't see it anymore.

I've got one more night here. There's a street on the west side of town that I haven't walked yet — it showed up in some older satellite imagery I was looking at before I came, but it doesn't appear on current maps. Probably a data error.

Probably.

Next post: I started looking into who actually funded all this cheerfulness. The answer is more interesting than I expected. And I've seen one of the names before — somewhere I really didn't expect to see it again.

You know me. I couldn't leave it alone.

© Feed the Moths | All content Jenna McKendrik | Don't go to Kingsmouth alone

Lady in Red (Not the Song)

 📍 Location: Denbigh Castle, North Wales

🕯️ Recovered Post | Date Unknown
#echoesbeneath // #redlady // #hauntcrawl

So, I broke my “no more castles unless dragons are confirmed” rule. Again.

Denbigh Castle, North Wales. Big walls. Bigger shadows. And a reputation that makes most ghost-hunters giggle nervously and shuffle their EMF readers like rosary beads.

See, this isn’t your standard “cold spot and sobbing in the cellar” situation. Denbigh has her. Locals call her The Red Lady. And no, it’s not because she’s fabulous in crimson. It’s because she’s always there, seen drifting the old dungeon level at night, dressed head to toe in red, always alone. No name. No motive. Just... watching.

I went in expecting one of the usuals: tragic noblewoman, flung from a tower, cursed ring, yadda yadda. But here’s the weird thing: there’s no official record of anyone matching her description. No gravestone. No journal. Not even a vague “Mistress of Denbigh” tale in the tourist gift shop guidebook. And trust me, I looked.

What I did find, however, was an old note in the chapel wall stitched into a hollowed-out hymnal (who does that?) referencing someone called Mared. No surname. Just “Mared”. And next to it: a scrap of red silk, folded neatly, like it was waiting to be picked up.

I don’t believe in coincidences.

Later, in the lower dungeons (yes, I went alone; yes, I regret that), I swear I heard footsteps — but not like boots or shoes. It sounded more like... dragging. Like someone walking barefoot through cold ash. I called out. No answer. My torch flickered. My stomach turned. And then, this part I’m still not sure I believe, my recorder caught a voice whispering, “Stay with me.”

You know me. I’m not one to spook easily. But something about this place feels held. Like it’s still playing out a scene that no one remembers starting.

I left through the east gate just before dawn, but I’m not done with Denbigh. There’s something buried deeper here, under all the moss and mortar. Something that wants to be seen, but only just.

I’ll dig again soon. Maybe next time, I’ll wear red.

– J

Bone Dust & Birthday Cheers: A Gower Adventure with Cari

 Let’s get this out of the way first: Cari is an absolute legend. I don’t mean in the exaggerated Internet way, like “oh my god slay queen” (although, yes, also that), I mean in the "get-you-down-a-windswept-cliff-path-without-dying" kind of way. Which, it turns out, is a vital skill when visiting Paviland Cave in South Wales.

But back up a bit. Why South Wales? Why caves? Why am I dusting bone particles out of my boots?

Easy. I was in Swansea visiting Cari—yes, the Cari, from the Raynor and Cari Show on Big Ear Radio, which I may or may not be a tiny bit obsessed with. (I literally made her sign my phone case. Twice.) Cari’s birthday was coming up, and I wanted to hang out somewhere legendary, spooky, and mildly dangerous. Naturally, she picked a Neolithic cave once home to the Red Lady of Paviland — who, plot twist, was actually a man. Classic misdirection. 10,000-year-old gender confusion? On-brand for the universe.

We set off early, armed with sandwiches, a questionable OS map, and Cari’s magical ability to make Welsh weather behave. After a rambling walk across sheep-studded clifftops, we finally reached the edge: the mouth of the cave, yawning open like it was mid-scream. And yes, I took so many photos, one of which may or may not contain an unexplained light anomaly that I’m 87% sure is the ghost of a prehistoric shaman giving me side-eye.

Inside, it was damp, echoey, and totally atmospheric. You could feel the history — or maybe that was just my shorts soaking through. Either way, I was loving it. Cari, meanwhile, was telling me about the burial, the beads, the mammoth bones, and making it all sound like a bedtime story for nerdy goth kids. I was enchanted. Also cold. But enchanted.

We climbed back up (Cari like a mountain goat, me like a gremlin clinging to tree roots), and made our way to the local pub, where she was greeted like royalty. I had the best pint of my life, possibly just because I’d earned it with minor cardio. We toasted her birthday, the Red Lady, and surviving slippery footpaths with dignity mostly intact.

Cari, if you’re reading this (and you’d better be), you are the warmest, wisest, most unflappable person I know, and spending the day with you was the highlight of my entire month. You made Paviland feel like home. With a side of ancient skeletons.

Happy Birthday, Cari. May your year be full of music, mischief, and more caves.
(But maybe less mud.)

Jenna.

(as always, keep feeding)

Print, Panic, and Paranoia: I Broke Into the Kingsmouth Chronicle

 I’d like to begin this post with a heartfelt apology to absolutely no one.

When the public archive fails you, and the town librarian says, “Oh honey, we don’t go back that far anymore,” what else is a girl supposed to do? Respect boundaries? Ask nicely?

No, you climb through the Chronicle’s busted side window with a torch between your teeth and a righteous obsession in your heart. And that’s exactly what I did last night.

Selfie evidence? Oh, absolutely:

So yeah. Kingsmouth Chronicle. Not exactly New York Times, but it’s charming in that abandoned-haunted-murder-den kind of way. Smells like mildew and typewriter ink. I half expected to find a raccoon with a press badge. I felt like a right PI or investigative journalist, or whatever they're called nowadays. Snoops.

The article I found in the Black House — the one dated April 4th, 2005 — turned out to be genuine after all. Tucked away in the dusty archive box at the back of the Chronicle’s basement, just like the librarian insisted. Real paper, real ink, and Jack Boone’s unmistakable signature at the bottom: JB.
Jack. Boone.

Local legend. Professional crank. Probably right about more than we’ll ever admit.

But something about it didn’t sit right. It felt incomplete — like a page was missing, or like the story had been trimmed down for public consumption. Boone was never known for subtlety. If he’d sniffed something strange, he’d have chased it to the edge of madness. So why did this piece feel so… careful?

So I needed to know: What else did Boone write about the Black House?

And so I looked. I looked and looked. Nothing. If there was anything, it didn’t exist in any known database. Not on microfiche, not in the “special collections” box the librarian swore contained all the archived local print.

And that's where things got weird.

Weirder than the dozen half-lit cult flyers pinned to the wall? Yes.

Weirder than the old editor's desk still having fresh matches and a warm mug? Yes.

Tucked in the back room, behind the weather-warped door labeled ARCHIVE, I found a terminal still connected to their internal network.

It was just humming. Like it had been waiting.

Waiting for me? Too weird.

On it? One of Boone’s notes, scrawled on a sticky, just said:

“See internal: KMCNET → /unpublished → CODED/BOONE/06-04-05”

I nearly screamed.
Instead, I took another picture:

Long story short?
The article? The real article? It’s not in the paper.
It’s in the system.

Boone started writing something bigger. Something that didn’t make it to print. Something he buried in the Chronicle’s internal website.

There’s more there than words. Far more than words. I've never heard of steg tools, but I checked it out.

Oh.

My.

God.

Not telling that here. Not after they already hacked me. You can find that out for yourselves.

I don’t know if anyone ever made it out of that office. I don't know if what I felt watching me was the story… or the thing behind it.

But I do know this much:
The house didn’t burn because of the storm. Or the mob. Or even the fear.

It was something else.

Something beneath all of that. Something that wanted out.
And I’ve seen what they buried behind login walls and blacked-out files. I followed the trail far enough to know I shouldn’t have. And maybe that’s why I can’t say it. Not all of it.

But ever since that night... I can’t stop hearing it.

Carrie is still here.

Not a rumour. Not a legend. Just a truth no one wants written down.

Stay strange,
— Jenna 🕷
keep on feeding the moths

The House That Hates You: My Night in the Black House

 You know that feeling when a place doesn’t just feel wrong — it wants you gone?

Yeah. That.

That’s the Black House, and I made the excellent life choice of going inside it. Alone. At night. With a half-charged torch and a deep-seated belief that I’m immortal because I have good hair.

So here’s your backstory, served hot and a little scorched:
April 3rd, 2005 — fire guts a twisted little cottage out on the edge of Kingsmouth. Locals say lightning struck. Locals also say the grocery store freezer aisle is haunted, so… salt that generously.

But this wasn’t just a fire. It didn’t end. The place didn’t crumble and get bulldozed into history like a normal crime scene. No. It stayed — scorched and stubborn, like the earth itself refused to forget. Even now, it feels wrong. Like walking into a bad memory that isn’t yours. The air doesn’t move right. The shadows breathe funny. And something — someone — watches.

Yeah, yeah, insert horror-blogger eye-roll. I get it. But screw you, I was there. And the house knows when you’re lying.

Now here’s where the rabbit-hole creaks open:
Buried under a pile of soot and ruined timetables, I found a Kingsmouth Chronicle clipping. Not birdcage-filler. Not souvenir-shop tat. This thing was real. Singed edges. Faded ink. But still readable. The headline?

“Woman Burned to Death in Fire — No Apologies Necessary”
Dated April 4th, 2005. One day after the blaze.
No byline — just initials scratched in at the bottom: JB.

Jack freaking Boone.
The town’s resident conspiracy magnet. Unofficial mayor of ‘Don’t Trust the Water Supply’. And now? My newest obsession.

The article was weird. Rambling quotes, odd little spiral symbols, a side-rant about local witchcraft. The woman in the fire? Carrie Killian. Loner. Bookworm. Maybe a witch. Maybe just unlucky enough to piss off the wrong crowd.

And here’s the kicker: that article? It doesn’t exist.
Not online. Not in the Chronicle’s back issues. Not even in the dusty librarian-only folders they swear haven’t been touched since MySpace was cool.

So, obviously, I did what any curious, slightly unstable person would do:
I broke into the Chronicle office.
Details coming soon — probably after three coffees and a minor existential spiral.

Stay tuned, creeps. The paper trail’s still smoking.

Spoiler alert: I found Boone’s original draft. Jack Boone. The conspiracy-chasing, chain-smoking journalist with a paranormal complex and a grudge against authority. He’d been investigating the Black House long before it burned — and what he found didn’t exactly scream "act of God.”

Anyway, I’ll let you dig through that yourself. I’ve got ash in my boots and possibly a ghost in my backpack.

Stay tuned, weirdos. There’s more under Kingsmouth than we’ve dreamed.

— Jenna
feeding the moths

Same Moths, New Flame

 

Well. That didn’t take long.

Barely six months into this new chapter and already the ghosts are nipping at my hard drive. For anyone wondering where my older posts went — yeah, that’s not me scrubbing my tracks. That’s someone else trying to.

About two weeks ago, my old blog (RIP Echoes Beneath, we hardly knew ye) suddenly locked me out. Total freeze. Then the archive started vanishing — one entry at a time. Weirdest part? It wasn’t all the posts. Just the ones where I dug too deep. The Academy, the Lighthouse, that freaky static loop I picked up near Blue Ridge? Gone.

I managed to pull a few from my personal backups, so you’ll start seeing reuploads. Don’t freak if timestamps are weird or the comment threads look stitched together. I’m doing my best to Frankenstein the old data.

And before anyone says “You probably just got phished, dummy,” I’d like to point out that the IP activity on the admin panel was bouncing through seven countries and had a ping echoing inside the site before anything even changed. One of the headers just read “13” in the auth log. No context. No domain. Just that.

Maybe I’m imagining things. Maybe it’s just some jerk with a grudge. Or maybe it’s Thirteen.

Either way — we’re live again. Same moths. New flame.
Let’s see how long I get to keep the lights on this time.

🦋
— Jenna

Campfire Cults and Creeping Fog: The Forest Wants You Dead

I went for a walk to clear my head.

I know. Hilarious.

Two miles past the bridge out of Savage Coast, there’s a barely-marked trail that slinks uphill into forest that isn’t on most maps. No trail markers. No signs. Just an opening in the trees and that little voice in your brain that says, “Go on. It’ll be fine.”

It was not fine.

I found the campfire around dusk — burned down to embers, still warm. Four stumps circled around it. No people. Just silence and the smell of old smoke.
There were bones nearby. Clean, arranged. Not animal bones.

They’d drawn something in the dirt. A ring of strange sigils with a five-sided shape in the centre. Some kind of rune that seemed to shift when I looked at it too long. I stepped back. I’m not stupid.

But the fog had come in. Thick, cold, fast. And that’s when I heard the voice.

It wasn’t behind me.
It was… under me.

I started walking back. I didn’t run — you don’t run in fog like that. You’ll turn around and the trees will be wrong.

I passed the fire again. It was cold. Ash scattered.
Like I’d imagined it. But my boots were still warm.

If you’re hiking near Blue Mountain, and you see a broken sign with a red handprint — turn back. I didn't, and I’ve had headaches ever since.
Not normal ones. I mean ones where I hear footsteps when I blink.

I don’t think they’re cultists out there.
I think they’re something older.

And I think they miss the fire.

Stay cautious,
— Jenna 🔥
keep feeding

The Ground Moves Here: Blue Mountain and the Thing in the Quarry

 I’ve had dreams about falling lately. Not from anything — just falling, into a place that doesn’t want me.

No end. No bottom. Just weightlessness and static.
The kind of dream where you wake up sweating and convinced your floor moved a few inches while you slept.

Which brings me to Blue Mountain — the part of the map where Kingsmouth whispers go to scream. The locals won’t talk about it unless they’re drunk, and even then, you’ll get words like “thin,” “bad vein,” and “don’t go alone.”

Naturally, I went alone.

🪨 The Quarry (Or: My Brain Got Rearranged by a Rock Pile)

I started near the old mining road, where the signs were more rust than metal and the fences looked like they were losing an argument with gravity. Beyond them was the quarry — carved deep into the side of the mountain like something chewed through it from beneath.

Nothing moved. No birds, no bugs. No wind. Just that kind of silence that has texture.

Halfway down the slope, I felt the pressure. Like altitude sickness, but internal — as if my thoughts were being pulled sideways. The ground under my boots felt soft, like walking across a dream stitched onto a memory.

And then… the time slip.

I checked my watch — yeah, I wear one, I’m that kind of nerd — and it was 14:42. I blinked. Took a few more steps.
Checked again. 15:04.
Twenty-two minutes.

Gone.

There were marks. Faint indentations along the quarry wall that didn’t match any mining tool I’ve ever seen. Deep gouges in a spiralling pattern, with a residue like old oil but with flecks of something… red. And warm.

Yes, I touched it.
Yes, I regret it.

Later, I found a chunk of metal embedded in the gravel — maybe part of a mining drill? But it was bent in a curve, like it had melted and reformed. I picked it up and dropped it immediately. It hummed.

As in, actually hummed.

Here’s the part where I stopped feeling brave.

🌀 The Spiral and the Sound

At the lowest point of the quarry, there’s a hollowed-out pit. Perfect circle. Something was dug — or birthed — there.
And in the dust, I saw it: a spiral stain, maybe 8 feet across. It looked like rust at first, but it smelled… wrong. Like iron mixed with old honey. I crouched to photograph it and—

I blacked out.

Just for a second, I think. But when I stood up, my knees were wet. There hadn’t been any water.

My camera roll had seven new photos.
Two were just black.
Three were of the quarry.
One was me, mid-step, walking away.
And one… one was me from behind. From about fifteen feet back.

I was alone.
I know I was alone.

Was I?

I don’t remember leaving. I just remember the road being there, and my legs moving. I didn’t think. I didn’t talk to myself out loud like I usually do (yes, I do that). I didn’t listen to music. I just walked, like something was walking through me.

When I got back to the safe zone near the inn, my boots were red. Not mud. Not blood. Something else.

I don’t think Blue Mountain is haunted. I think it’s aware.
I think it’s remembering things through people like me.
And I think it’s getting closer to remembering everything.

Next time I go back, I’m bringing a compass, a canary, and three exit strategies.

Until then:
Don't go near the quarry alone.
Don’t trust the ground.
And if something offers you a spiral? Don’t take it.

Still here. Still shaken.
— Jenna ⛰️
keep feeding