The Thing in the Vault

### **The Thing in the Vault**

**Case File: #4876 - Classified**

**Filed by: Agent Nathan Hale, Federal Bureau of Investigation**

**Date: October 13, 2023**

---

People think the worst monsters are the ones you can see. The psychos. The serial killers. The lunatics. They're wrong. The true horrors are the ones locked away in secret places—the ones people like me are paid to keep hidden.

For a long time, I worked in *Vault 9*, the subterranean storage facility buried a hundred feet below the FBI's Archives Division. It's where we send the things no one wants to believe in: cursed objects, impossible artifacts, and things that never should've existed in the first place. My job? Catalog and contain.

But there was one thing we couldn't contain—not really. And if you're reading this, it means it won.

---

The incident began innocently enough. I had just started a routine inventory check. Every artifact in Vault 9 has a story—a *curse*, if you want to get technical about it—so every six months, we verify their integrity. An old rule: never touch, never question, and never look at an object too long. There’s a reason the vault is low-lit.

When I reached **Container 66-13**, I paused. It wasn’t like the others. It wasn’t marked as dangerous. There was no warning label. Just a steel box about the size of a cooler, cold enough that frost had begun to form around its edges. The tag read: *Unidentified Item, Retrieved: Duluth, Minnesota, 1954*.

The weird part? The chain of custody was empty. No agent signatures, no entries in the log—like it had *always been here.*

I remember staring at it for too long. The steel wasn’t just cold—it hummed. A low, constant vibration that crawled through my fingertips and into my skull. Against every protocol, I put my ear to the box.

I *swear* I heard breathing.

---

Of course, I reported it. You don’t screw around in Vault 9. Within an hour, my supervisor, Director Langford, and a containment team were on site. Langford was an old-timer—gray around the temples, hands always steady. He took one look at the box and turned pale.

“Seal this. Now.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“You’ll never ask that question again, Agent Hale.”

I should’ve listened.

---

That night, Vault 9 went on lockdown. Something triggered the alarms at 2:43 AM. I was sleeping in the barracks when my phone buzzed: *Unauthorized Access Detected*. I groaned, grabbed my sidearm, and made my way down the steel-reinforced corridor to the vault.

As I approached, I knew something was wrong. The lights flickered. The air tasted metallic—like blood.

Vault 9’s main door was open.

Inside, every light had died. My flashlight beam swept over empty shelves, overturned containment units, shattered glass—everything wrong. And then I heard it: *something* moving in the dark.

A scrape.

A slow, deliberate drag.

I whispered into my radio. “Command, this is Hale. I need backup—now.”

Static.

The scrape grew closer.

“Who’s there?” I demanded. My voice sounded small in that endless dark.

And then I saw it.

At first, it was just *a shape* in the black—something hunched, twisted, and wrong. Its limbs were too long, joints bending the wrong way. Its skin looked slick, as though it were *drenched* in something. And its eyes… they weren’t eyes. Just black pits that swallowed the light.

It *smiled.*

No teeth. No lips. Just the suggestion of a mouth, stretching impossibly wide.

My hand shook. I fired.

The gunshots echoed off the vault walls. But it didn’t flinch. It didn’t bleed.

It *laughed.*

Not a sound made by lungs or a throat—something deeper, like stone grinding against stone. My flashlight sputtered. When it came back on, the thing was *gone.*

But the scraping began again.

Behind me.

---

When the backup team found me three hours later, I was still there—on my knees, flashlight dead, staring at the empty space where Container 66-13 had been. My sidearm was empty. I didn’t remember firing it.

Langford wouldn’t let me leave Vault 9 for weeks. He said it was for “debriefing.” I think they were waiting to see if it *followed* me out.

It didn’t. Not right away.

---

I’m writing this from a cheap motel room off Route 40. Langford’s dead. The containment team? Gone. One by one. The news will say it was accidents, suicides, bad luck—but I know the truth.

I’ve been hearing the scrape again.

Under my bed.

Behind the door.

In my own head.

I don’t think it can be contained anymore. Whatever was in that box—*whatever I let out*—it’s not done. It’s hunting.

And I’m next.