It had been a few days since I had been at Uncle Bernard’s place and nothing was going as I had
imagined. The Uncle Bernard I knew should’ve been gushing about his new research the second
I met at the airport, but I was wrong. He had hardly talked during the car ride to his place and
seemed to be in deep thought. When I asked him what was wrong, he snapped at me, “Mind your
own business, will you?” I stared. Uncle Bernard had never snapped before, at least not at me.
I saw him going in and out of the house, ordering me to stay inside. He had this manic glint in
his eyes that did not belong to my Uncle Bernard. He sleepwalked and I heard him talking about
the mythical Mongolian Death Worm with such relish and affection you’d probably mistake the
Worm for a beloved and much loved pet of his. He’d stay locked in his own room and I’d hear a
sob one second then hysterical laughter the next.
It scared me to no end.
I had decided to find the source of this problem. Talking to him wouldn’t have been effective
at all, so I in my desperate situation decided to turn to the source of all answers: Google.
Being a light sleeper, I woke up instantly the second someone opened the door and sat up,
alarmed. I saw a shadow looming across the open door and saw it open further to find Uncle
Bernard, looking at me with urgency written all over his face.
“What’s the matter, Uncle?” I asked immediately, I had already decided to act as normally as
possible around him.
“Come with me.” he ordered, his voice raspy and sharp, not sounding like Uncle Bernard’s deep
and comforting voice at all. I decided to follow him and see what was going on. But before that, I
took the paper on my desk; the paper that had probably all the answers to why Uncle Bernard had
been acting so strangely.
It was a very cold and wintry night and it seemed the wind just seemed to get harsher
the longer we walked on the vast sand of the Desert. All I could get out of him after tons of
questioning on where we were going was, “Middle of Gobi Desert. Now stop asking.”
I tried to take deep calming breaths and told myself that Uncle Bernard probably has to tell me
something really important or was in trouble, or else he wouldn’t have told me to follow him all the
way here. Maybe that would explained why he had been acting so strangely for the past few days.
How wrong I was.
It was as if stepping on the dusty copper sand had done something to my uncle: his smiles
seemed to be growing unnaturally wide with every step he took, his eyes bulging.
Then he stopped walking.
“Want to know why I brought you here, Harold?” he whispered, but it wasn’t his voice. It seemed
like something deep inside him was speaking, his voice deep, harsh and cold. It wasn’t human.
I took a step back, my mind paralyzed with fear. I clutched the paper in my hand even
more tightly.
This wasn’t my Uncle Bernard, at least I knew that.
“W-who are you?” I managed to get out.
Hysterical laughter. “Who am I? Who am I? Don’t you know by now? Haven’t you realized?
I, have been in this Desert for a thousands of years, back when this place was still fertile and we
could food and water in here. I, am one of the holy refugees that took shelter here thousands of
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