The Void Enigma

Charlie was an introverted and curious kid. He lived in a small town in Nevada where nothing interesting ever happened. People were born, raised and lived their entire lives in this town without ever really venturing out. They worked on farms, or in factories nearby. There were no tourists, or visitors. The town wasn’t even located on some maps. It was a quiet, self-sufficient, uneventful and isolated place.

Charlie had an insatiable hunger for knowledge. Unlike the other kids in his high school, he loved to learn and often knew more about any given topic than even the teachers did. He was very well-rounded, but had two particular interests that trumped all the others: cosmology, and the occult. He spent much of his time online reading about the universe and trying to understand as much as he could about it. The rest of his time was spent on obscure image boards and forums dealing with the occult. He didn’t actually believe in any of it, but for some reason, he was infatuated by it. As far as he was concerned, occultism was fiction but it was very interesting fiction nonetheless. He simply loved the absurdity of it.

One Summer evening, after a long day spent helping out his parents on the family farm, Charlie started his regular evening wind-down routine. He spent a couple hours browsing the usual science news sites, and took to his favorite occult website after. The website was truly a strange one. First of all, it wasn’t a website you could search for on a search engine and it didn’t have a simple URL you could type that would take you there. It was an anonymous, unlisted, dark web page called Insidia. He had learned about it on an occult blog he often read. Most people don’t know how to access sites on the dark web, and those that do know better than to visit random websites listed on some blog. Still, having the curious mind that he did, he took a risk. He was hooked ever since. Insidia contained posts from users all over the world and spanned a wide range of strange topics, dealing with things like occultism and conspiracy theories. Oftentimes, there was nothing to really look at. On very rare occasions however, Charlie would come across something quite bizarre and seemingly inexplicable, and that’s what kept him coming back. As Charlie was browsing tonight, he came across a post that contained what appeared to be coordinates and nothing else. No descriptions, no instructions, nothing. The post had no replies to it, and he had no way of knowing who made the post as all posts were anonymous on Insidia. He immediately typed the coordinates into his GPS app and his heart sunk when he saw where it led. It wasn’t a place he knew, but it was apparently only an hour away from where he lived. He was instantly overcome by a flurry of anxiety, and confusion. Did the person that posted these coordinates know that Charlie would see it? Was someone trying to lure him somewhere? He never shared his interest in the occult with people, so it couldn’t be someone he knew. He sat there, dazed for a moment. There was no way anyone knew his identity online. He never posted anything and he was always super careful when browsing the dark web. He decided that this simply had to be some kind of strange coincidence. Charlie didn’t have to help out on the farm on weekends, so he decided he would call it a night and drive out to the coordinates tomorrow.

It was bright and early Saturday morning, Charlie woke up in a cold sweat. He had had the most unsettling nightmares last night and couldn’t sleep much at all. He dreamt he had heard voices. They were completely unintelligible, like a foreign language he wasn’t familiar with, yet for some reason he understood them. They were sounds he had never heard before either, sounds that humans weren’t capable of making in any capacity. Though, he couldn’t seem to recall what they said for some reason. He was disturbed by how real it seemed, but he had suffered from terribly vivid nightmares, insomnia and hallucinations in the past so he chalked it up to his anxiety about the coordinates he found. Charlie hopped out of bed, threw some clothes on, brushed his teeth and left his room. It was only 6:34 but his parents were already outside working the farm. He grabbed some coffee, his keys, and hopped in his truck. The GPS began navigating, it would only take an hour and ten minutes to arrive at the location.

On his way there, Charlie couldn’t help but feel like something was off. Certain things just seemed...out of place. As he was driving by his neighbor’s house, he noticed Ms. White was walking a dog. It looked exactly like her dog, Max, who passed away a few months ago. It was unmistakable because the dog had a green left eye and a brown right eye. “Couldn’t be the same dog…kind of weird to buy a dog that looks exactly alike though.” he thought to himself. Ms. White stared uncomfortably at him as he drove by, he flashed an awkward smile and faced back towards the road. That wasn’t the only strange thing he noticed. He swore certain buildings were now slightly different colors, or contained more or less windows than he remembered. He didn’t exactly go around taking note of how many windows every building had, but the town was so small that it was hard not to notice things like that. “Man, I need some sleep.” He was very fatigued, sleep deprivation can have some seriously strange effects on the mind. After about 20 minutes, he finally reached the edge of town. From that point on, there was absolutely nothing to look at. Just empty fields for miles on each side. Charlie felt his eyes getting heavier and heavier. He had the music cranked all the way up, but it seemed to have no effect on keeping him awake. He drifted in and out of sleep a few times and somehow arrived at the location before he knew it.

Charlie hopped out of the truck and looked around. There was absolutely nothing in any direction. He was expecting some kind of landmark- a building, a tree, anything at all, but there was nothing. He was technically still a few dozen feet away from the exact coordinates, so he walked east, away from the road and towards the coordinates. He came to a stop. On the floor in front of him, there was a black box about 2 feet tall, and 4 feet wide. He couldn’t believe there was actually something there. He leaned over and carefully examined the box. It was really, really black. It appeared to absorb nearly all light. It had no gloss to it whatsoever, and the features were really hard to make out. He looked around again, half-expecting to see someone watching him but there really was nothing in sight for miles. He decided to cautiously open the box. He reached his hand out slowly and tried to feel for a latch. There didn’t seem to be one, but the box flung open regardless. It startled him a bit, but his gaze focused immediately on the contents. There was a very large sum of cash, a note, and a little black book. The note seemed to demand his attention. It was written on black parchment, as dark as the box itself. “Inside this box you will find $20,000, this note, and a black book. DO NOT OPEN THE BLACK BOOK. You may spend the money however you please, but you must always possess the book and you must never open it or allow it to be opened by anyone else. Take the contents, and leave the box here.” Charlie fell back and sat there in disbelief. He wasn’t sure what to feel. He was extremely excited for the cash but equally horrified by the fowl aura this black book emitted. “What in the hell is happening here?” He cried out. Charlie grabbed the money, the book and ran back over to his truck. “I don’t understand what’s happening but my parents could really use this money…all I need to do is safeguard this book, I’d be stupid to turn this down.” He turned the truck around and drove back towards town.

Charlie arrived home around 7PM. “Have I really been gone that long?” He always kept his school bag in the truck, so he shoved the money and book inside it and headed towards the house. He greeted his parents, made no mention of the events of today, and told them he had been studying with a friend. It wasn’t unlike Charlie to do that kind of stuff, so his parents didn’t seem suspicious at all. He ran up to his room and began counting the cash. “Wow, there really is $20,000 in cash here! I’m not sure how I’ll explain it to my parents but this will fix everything!” Charlie’s Mom suffered many ailments, but none greater than the financial burden of seeking treatment for these ailments. They had no health insurance so medication and treatment was absurdly expensive. They received discounts through special programs, charities and the like, but it just wasn’t enough. Charlie was ecstatic to be able to help them.

The following morning around 9AM, Charlie’s Mom noticed he still didn't come down for breakfast. It was very unlike Charlie to sleep in. The only time he ever did was when he wasn’t feeling well so she went to check on him. “Charlie? You feeling ok?” She asked as she knocked on his door. She waited a few seconds and knocked again, but there was no response. “I’m coming in hon.” She opened the door. A wave of fear and panic suddenly overcame her. Charlie was nowhere to be seen, but she noticed a massive pile of burnt cash on the bed. “What the...Ron! Come here now!” Ron hurried upstairs ”What is it?! What in the hell!? Call the police!” He spat out. Ron ran and grabbed his gun and immediately began searching for Charlie. Nearly ten minutes went by before Deputy Geoff arrived. He was a long-time friend of the family, so Charlie’s mom had purposefully called him. “So there ain’t no sign of him at all? You opened the door and just found a pile of burnt...cash?” Deputy Geoff asked. Charlie’s Mom was crying frantically at this point, assuming the worst had happened. “Yes...Ron went to go search for him but the truck is still parked out front and his phone, keys and wallet are all still in his room.” Deputy Geoff examined the room closely, aside from the large sum of cash there was nothing really out of the ordinary. He walked over to his desk and rummaged through Charlie’s papers. He found the coordinates. “Huh? What’s this? Any idea where this might be Darlene?” He handed her the paper. “What?” She looked at the paper and immediately typed the coordinates in her phone. She shook her head. “I have no idea.” Deputy Geoff grabbed the paper back. “Could be he was headin’ there, I’ll go there now’n check it out.” He arrived at the coordinates about an hour later. He felt very odd, but was focused on finding Charlie. “Man, what the hell? There ain’t nothin’ out here.” He parked in the road and followed the GPS on foot. “The hell is that?” He saw a black box on the floor. He ran over to it, leaned over and tried to open it. It flung open. “I don’t understand…” He looked inside. Inside the box was a very large sum of cash, a note... and a little black book.