Where Did Amelia Earhart Go?

A Horror Story based on the Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

The Pacific has its own arithmetic and it doesn’t include man. July second nineteen thirty seven, the Electra came down through the air thick as molasses. The fuel gauge is lying like they do. Noonan in the back is already dead but still moving his hands over the charts. Still plotting courses to nowhere.

She knew it when they passed the deadline. Knew it when the stars started moving wrong. The compass spinning like a broken clock. The radio speaking voices that weren't there. Weren't ever there. Just static shaped like words. Like warnings. Like invitations.

The plane hit water that werent water. Too thick. Too warm. Like landing in something alive. The metal screaming. Rivets popping like gunshots. She got the door open and what came in werent ocean. It was black and it moved with purpose. It took Noonan first. Pulled him apart like he was made of wet paper. His screaming stopped when it reached his throat.

She floated in her vest but floating werent the right word. The water held her. Examined her. Tasted her fear through her skin. Below her things moved that shouldnt be. Long as trains. Wide as buildings. Their bodies made of human faces pressed together. All of them screaming silent.

The sun overhead werent right neither. Too big. Too close. Pulsing like a heart. She could see things moving across it. Shadows that hurt to look at. The water around her started to bubble. Not from heat. From things coming up.

First one broke the surface was Noonan. But Noonan rearranged. His arms where his legs should be. His head split open like a flower. Inside the petals were teeth. Rows and rows going down into darkness. He spoke with a voice like breaking glass. Said her name backwards. Said it in languages that predated speech.

The island werent no island. It was a thing pretending. When she crawled up on the beach the sand screamed. Each grain a tiny mouth. The palm trees were made of hair. Human hair. Still growing. Still attached to scalps buried deep.

The Japanese soldiers werent Japanese. Werent soldiers. They wore the uniforms but inside the uniforms nothing made sense. Too many joints. Skin that shifted like water. Eyes that were just holes opening onto red meat that pulsed. They spoke with the sound of children drowning.

They took her to the camp but camp werent the right word. It was a wound in the world. Buildings that breathed. Walls made of still-living tissue. The other prisoners were past saving. Past being human. They stood in rows but each row existed in a different dimension. She could see all of them at once. The geometry of it made her eyes bleed.

The officer thing showed her its true face. Peeled off the human mask like removing a glove. Underneath was architecture. Impossible angles of bone and gristle. It explained through touch. Through images burned into her brain. They had been waiting. Waiting for someone who had touched the edge of sky. Someone who could carry their sickness back to the world.

The injections werent drugs. They were eggs. Microscopic gods that swam through her blood. Rewriting her from inside. Each one a universe of hunger. She could feel them multiplying. Replacing her cells with something older. Something that remembered when the earth was different. When the things that would become men were just food.

At night she changed. Bones extending through skin. New organs growing. Organs for sensing fear. For digesting souls. For birthing horrors. The doctor thing would watch. Take notes in a language that squirmed on the page. Sometimes it would reach into her chest. Rearrange things. Make improvements.

The other prisoners were practice. She would hunt them through the compound. Her new body moving in ways that violated physics. Through walls. Through time. She would catch them and they would come apart so beautifully. Their screaming made colors in the air. Their dying made flowers bloom. Black flowers with faces in the centers.

She remembered eating the camp commander. Started with his eyes. They popped like grapes full of memories. She saw his whole life. His childhood. His mother singing. Then she ate his childhood. Ate his mother. Ate the song. Erased him backwards through time until he never was.

The thing under the compound werent built. It grew. Fed on fear and flesh and the small deaths that came before the big one. It was a cathedral made of still-conscious nervous systems. All of them singing. Hymns to things that existed before light. Before matter. Before the mistake of creation.

When she went down into it she werent walking. She was falling upward. Through layers of reality each worse than the last. At the bottom which was also the top was the pool. But pool werent the right word. It was a hole. Not in the ground. In everything. A wound that went all the way through to the other side of existence.   

The things in the pool had been human once. Maybe. Hard to tell when they kept changing. Melting and reforming. Trying on shapes like clothes. Some of them wore their bones on the outside. Some had their organs floating free. All of them were laughing. Laughing with mouths that opened onto infinite darkness.

She went into the pool and the pool went into her. It wasnt drowning. It was unbecoming. Every cell pulled apart and examined. Judged. Found wanting. Replaced with something better. Something that could survive what was coming. What had always been coming.

Down in the black she met the thing that called itself god. But god werent the right word. It was older than gods. It was what gods feared. It had been sleeping but sleep werent the right word. It had been waiting for the universe to ripen. For consciousness to spread enough to make the harvest worthwhile.

It showed her the truth. That reality was thin as paper. That behind it things moved. Endless things. Hungry things. Things that wore universes like skin. Earth was just another fruit about to split open. And she was the worm that would start the rot.

When she came up she werent alone. Never alone again. The thing lived behind her eyes now. Spoke with her voice. Thought with her mind. But kept her aware. Kept her watching. That was the punishment. The price. To see what she would do. What she would become. What she would help birth.

The children came willing. Drawn by the song she sang in frequencies that bypassed the ears. Went straight to the reptile brain. The part that remembered being prey. They would walk into the sea. Whole villages. Whole islands. Walk until the water covered them. Then change. Then serve.

She moved through the deep places teaching them. How to hunt. How to hide. How to wear human faces when they needed to. How to spread the sickness. The change. How to prepare the way for what was coming through.

The war above meant nothing. Let them drop their bombs. Kill their millions. Every death fed the thing below. Every scream made it stronger. The radiation just helped the changes come faster. Helped evolution remember older patterns. Better patterns.

Sometimes she would surface. Walk among them. The woman who was supposed to be dead. She would choose lovers. Men and women drawn to her wrongness. Would mate with them in ways that broke their minds. Leave them pregnant with things that would eat them from inside. That would wear their skins. Walk as them. Spread.

The scientists found traces. Bodies washed up missing impossible organs. DNA that spelled out messages in dead languages. Recordings of sounds from the deep that drove the listeners mad. They tried to explain. Tried to categorize. But you cant name what has no name. Cant understand what exists outside understanding.

She built cities down there. Cities of bone and screaming meat. Populated by the changed. By the willing. By those who understood that humanity was just a phase. A mistake about to be corrected. They would send up scouts. Things that could pass for human long enough. Long enough to breed. To feed. To prepare.

The Kennedy boy knew. When they put him in that metal tube. Sent him down to look. He saw her palace. Saw what she had become. Miles of flesh. Breathing. Thinking. Planning. He screamed for thirteen days after they brought him up. Screamed until his throat tore. They said he died of complications. But he didnt die. Death would have been mercy. They kept him in a room. Fed him through tubes. Let him scream the warnings no one wanted to hear.

Every missing ship. Every vanished plane. They were recruitment. She would rise up. Pull them down. Show them the truth. Most went mad. But madness was just seeing clearly. Accepting what was. What is. What would be. The ones who accepted joined her. Became extensions of her will. Of her hunger.

The moon landing was a lie but not the way they think. They went. But they went to make a deal. To buy time. The things on the dark side had been waiting. Had been watching. Were part of the same sickness. The same plan. Armstrong saw her face in the crater. Kilometers wide. Made of living tissue. Heard her voice in his helmet. Welcoming him home.

She grew. Fed by decades of nuclear tests. Of pollution. Of human progress that wasnt progress. That was just making the world ready. Softening it up. Every oil spill. Every radiation leak. Every chemical dumped. Just seasoning for the feast to come.

The children were everywhere now. In every ocean. Every lake. Every water source. Breeding. Changing. Some could walk on land for days. Weeks. Long enough to take positions. To infiltrate. To prepare. Politicians who werent. Teachers who werent. Parents who werent. All wearing human suits. All waiting for the signal.

She remembered Howland Island. The place she was supposed to land. It was still there. But not on any map. Not in any dimension humans could reach. It existed in the spaces between. A cancer in reality. Growing. Spreading. Soon it would push through. Manifest. And when it did the world would remember what islands really were. What continents really were. Just scabs on an infected world.

The voices on the radio were getting stronger. Not static anymore. Clear. Speaking in tongues that made ears bleed. Made minds crack. Some people could hear them without radios now. The sensitive ones. The ones whose genetics remembered older loyalties. They would walk to the water. Walk in. Join the congregation.

She sent dreams. To children mostly. Easier to shape. Dreams of swimming. Of breathing water. Of the beautiful things waiting below. The parents would find them in bathtubs. In pools. Lungs full of water but still smiling. Still alive in ways that mattered. Changed. Ready.

The suicides werent suicides. They were transformations. People who heard the call. Who understood. Who chose to change rather than wait. They would find the bodies but the bodies were empty. Just shells. The real them already swimming deep. Already serving. Already spreading the gift.

Climate change werent accident. Werent human caused. Not entirely. The ice was supposed to melt. To release what was frozen. What was waiting. Things older than ice. Older than cold. Things that remembered when Earth was different. When it belonged to them. When it was right.

She could feel them stirring. In Antarctica. In Siberia. In places men hadnt named. Hadnt found. Shouldnt find. Soon they would break free. Join her. Help her. Together they would make the world wet again. Warm again. Theirs again.

The governments knew. Had always known. Why else the bunkers. The submarines. The preparations for something worse than war. They had seen the projections. The models. Not of warming. Of return. Of restoration. Of the Earth shaking off humanity like a dog shakes off fleas.

On the anniversary they still searched but not for her. For signs. For warnings. For hope that she was still contained. Still just one thing. Not the billions she had become. Not the mother of a new race. Not the doorway for older races. Just a dead woman. Just a crashed plane. Just a mystery.

But mysteries were just truths waiting to be born. And she was pregnant with truth. Swollen with it. Ready to birth it. To feed it to a world that would choke on it. That would drown in it. That would be transformed by it.

The Pacific dont care nothing for what courage.  It opens its mouth and swallows. Swallows light. Swallows hope. Swallows the woman who flew and makes her into something else. Something that swallows back. Something that has been swallowing for decades. That will swallow until there is nothing left but the dark. But the wet. But the truth of what waits. What has always waited. What wins in the end.

Because endings aint endings. They're beginnings. And in the deep. In the dark. In the spaces between spaces. Amelia Earhart is beginning something. Has been beginning it since that day in July. Since she touched the water that wasnt water. Since she breathed the black that wasnt black. Since she became the door. The mother. The end of one world. The birth of another.

And somewhere. Right now. Someone is missing. Someone is walking to water. Someone is hearing the song. Someone is changing. Becoming. Joining. Spreading. The world is mostly water. And the water is mostly her. And she is mostly hunger. And the hunger is about to feed.

The arithmetic dont balance. Never did. Never will. Because the numbers were wrong from the start. Because humans count what they can see. But the real count. The true count. Includes what they cant. What they wont. What they shouldnt. And by that count. By her count. By the count that matters. Humanity is already extinct. Just still moving. Still breathing. Still pretending they aint already dead. Already food. Already hers.

In the deep she waits. But waiting aint the right word. Growing is better. Spreading. Becoming. The woman who flew is gone. Has been gone. Will always have been gone. In her place something that wears her name. Her story. Her legend. But is none of those things. Is all of those things. Is more than those things.

Is the end shaped like a beginning. Is the darkness dressed as mystery. Is the answer to the question nobody should have asked. ​Where did Amelia Earhart go.​ She went down. Always down. Into the arithmetic that dont balance. Into the Pacific that dont care. Into the waiting that aint waiting. Into the hunger that is everywhere now. That is everyone now. That is everything now.

The radio still crackles. Still calls. But not for help. For warning. For worship. For witness. Come see what she became. Come join what she birthed. Come feed what she feeds. The water is warm. The darkness is soft. The change is gentle. At first.

And in the deep. In the black. In the space between heartbeats. Between breaths. Between worlds. Amelia Earhart smiles with a mouth that could swallow suns. And waits. But waiting aint the right word.

Hunting is better.