obstreperousubiquity

Beneath the suffocating fog of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, where Lake Michigan’s breath curdles into a gray shroud, it squats—a device older than bone, colder than the lake’s depths. Not a story, not a curse, but a thing: the Haunt, a slab of pitted stone masquerading as a bench, its surface veined with something too dark to be lichen. For eons, it has fed, its appetite a silent scream in the marrow of the earth. The Summoned They come, moths to a flame that does not burn but bites. Scholars from ivy-clad halls, their minds frayed by questions no book can answer. Ghost-hunters from the heartland, their gadgets buzzing like dying flies. Social media seers, faces smeared with ash and delusion, chanting of energies they cannot fathom. Wanderers with eyes like cracked glass, reeking of cedar and dread, clutching relics of forgotten gods. The warnings are carved into the air itself: A sign, No Rest Here, its letters bleeding fresh paint that smells of iron. A feral cat, ...