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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/UnalloyedSaintTrina on 2026-05-26 19:26:52+00:00.

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There was no warning. No deafening noise. No brilliant flash of light. They all just appeared - hunched over, emaciated, and covered in translucent, pale red skin. Only those who stayed indoors lived to see the desert sun rise.

We call it the deadtide. I was sixteen when it first rolled into White Rock.

I dream about that night a lot.

Mom had just pulled into the driveway. Twilight faded overhead, drip by golden drip. Dad waved at her through the foyer window. She smiled, shut the trunk, gathered the groceries, and began walking towards the front door.

She was so close. Just a few steps away.

The sun fully set.

Instantly, they were there.

Men. Women. Even children. I witnessed at least a dozen of them blink into existence on my street, but they had materialized all over town.

Dad mumbled some meaningless half-words. I placed my trembling hand on the window. The glass was cold but alive, crackling with the phantom caress of static.

The closest one stood motionless in the middle of the street. Ribs jutted from his clay-colored chest. The oily brown hair blanketing his upper back was tangled like a thorn bush.  His eyes were gray and downcast, perpetually fixed on the sand between his gaunt feet. Then, while the rest of him stayed perfectly still, the first two fingers of his right hand began suddenly elongating, launching across the asphalt with impossible speed.

Mom dropped the groceries and started to run.

My pulse grew wild. Each frantic heartbeat seemed to rattle my teeth. I beckoned to her, wailed for her to run faster, but she wasn’t looking, she couldn’t seem to hear me. The fingers coiled up her back, curved around her neck, and latched onto her cheek, pinching her skin between a pair of long, jaundiced fingernails; the sickly fangs of a hellish viper.

Her expression twisted into something feral. A raw, animalistic contortion of lips and creases. Her gaping mouth rippled, but I heard no scream.

Then, like a fishing line being reeled in, the fingers retracted.

The force ripped her off her feet. She was briefly airborne.

Her hip crashed against the sidewalk, but I heard no painful THUMP, no shattering of bone, nothing at all.

Because the silence never wavers once the sun sets. That's how we came up with its name. It's an invisible current that surges through our town, swallowing everything in its path, silencing anything caught under its swell.

A deadtide.

Mom was dragged with such reckless effort, her body skidding across the road, and yet, her skin never broke. No, her cheek stretched. Once at his side, she hung from the man’s grasp like a burlap sack, her cheek skin stretching almost a foot above her jawbone. Her eyes vanished within the tented skin, leaving a pair of black eyeholes that made her face look like an empty mask. Being caught in the tide changes a person. Their skin becomes elastic, and they can’t seem to bleed, no matter how roughly they’re handled.

Tears streamed down my cheek.

The way she thrashed, the helpless ferocity of it all, it was just too much.

I burst from the window and bolted towards the front door.

Dad was too quick.

He dashed ahead of me and barricaded the door with his body. I battered him. Screamed at him to do something while slamming clenched fists into his stomach. Begged him to let me through. Eventually, exhaustion set in. I slumped to the floor and fell asleep in his arms.

And while I slept, the deadtide rolled on.

Dad stayed awake and watched it unfold.

The pale red bodies dragged their writhing victims due south under the moonlight. They lurched together in perfect lock-step. A silent, synchronized convoy disappearing into the horizon with its human cargo.

Dawn arrived.

Sound made an unceremonious return; a strong wind howled across the vacant streets, lifting coils of sand from the asphalt.

Far as anyone could tell, they were gone.

The town was still.

Everyone was desperate to leave, but no one was brave enough to be the first.

Our neighbor’s door slowly creaked open.

Lily inched over the threshold, glassy-eyed, still in her pajamas, the navy blue ones with the cartoon circus lions on them. A few strands of frizzy brown hair hung in the air like someone had just rubbed a balloon against her head. She called out to her parents, who were both long gone by then. Jim and Denise were Mom’s best friends, and Lily was a sweet, energetic girl. We knew them all very well.

Everyone watched as she trudged across the asphalt, alone, confused, frightened, but unharmed. The deadtide hadn’t hesitated to take children the night before.

That was enough proof.

Like someone had fired a starter pistol, people exploded from their homes all at once. Wild-eyed parents ushered startled toddlers into vans. The more religiously inclined fell to their knees in the street and offered clasped hands to the sky, pleading for mercy, apologizing for whatever transgression had warranted such a biblical massacre. Dad sprang into action. He leaped out the door, pushed through the mob, scooped Lily into his arms, brought her inside, and told me to keep an eye on her. We watched TV on the couch while he went back out and tried to control the hysteria.

“We can’t just leave - “ I heard him shout.

“There have to be others like Lily. Kids, old people, the sick. Not everyone can get out of town right this second, and nobody knows for sure that they’re not coming back.”

Some listened, but most of those who could leave were leaving, come hell or high water, though they promised to send help when they reached Tucson.

When all was said and done, only a quarter of the town remained.

As the sun dipped in the sky, we fortified our locked doors with bookcases and heavy tables. A futile measure, but it gave us something to do.

Right as the sun fully set, the deadtide rolled in.

The red bodies materialized and lurched silently through the streets. They migrated south exactly as they had the night before, eyes at their feet, never looking up, never attempting to gain entry to anyone’s home. Dad’s relief was palpable, but short-lived. Although I’m thankful for his attention to detail, his discovery was devastating. Some small part of me wishes he had never noticed.

The procession was slightly larger.

They were there. All of them. Everyone who had evacuated earlier that day was now walking amongst them, clay-skinned, starved, and hollow.

But Mom was nowhere to be seen.

---

The following morning, I woke up to find Dad on the couch.

He was staring out the window, gently rubbing the back of a snoring Lily. I approached him carefully; there was a cold emptiness in his bloodshot eyes that set me on edge.

“Glad you’re up,” he said, gaze still anchored to the glass. “I’ll be leaving in a bit to organize a meeting. You’ll stay here and look after Lily.”

“What? No! No. I can help. I need to help.”

His shoulders tensed, but he did not respond.

Heat collected in the pit of my stomach.

“Why the hell would I stay? Just for her? She’s not…”

His head snapped towards me. The coldness melted away, revealing something truly volcanic.

“She’s not what Adam?”

I considered keeping my mouth shut.

I didn’t.

“She’s…she’s not ours*!*” I shouted.

The proclamation echoed through our home.

Movement drew my attention away from Dad. A single blue eye peeked out from the kid’s chestnut curls. She sniffled. My stomach twisted. The couch leather squeaked as she rotated herself away. Lily nestled against the cushion, pushing her face into the back of the couch like she was attempting to burrow inside the fabric.

Dad sighed. He stood, tucking the fleece blanket around her before turning back to me.

“Listen…there is no ours and yours, there’s just us. We’re all one big, unified thing. Caring for her is just another way of caring for all of us.”

I nodded.

A bitter smile crept across his lips. He was about to pass by, but he paused. His breaths were heavy.

“You know what? I think Mom taught me that.”

---

Dad and the other survivors convened in a small amphitheater where stage plays had been performed before the tide.

After some deliberation, everyone agreed that the most logical next step was to involve some outside authorities. We’d lost our chief of police that first night, as well as a sizable chunk of our officers, but the few who remained knew the proper channels to contact the Tucson PD.

“I mean, who knows? Might end up being overkill. Someone outside of White Rock must have noticed people are missing.” There was a brightness in his voice, a tenuous optimism. I clung to it.

The sun set.

The tide rolled in.

For a while, the night was silent.

I woke up to a series of piercing screams erupting from the guest bedroom.

Lily was having a night terror; the first of many. I threw a pillow over my head, but it barely muffled her shrieks. Fear gnawed at my chest; lacerating throbs of pain, like my heart was pumping fiberglass instead of blood.

Would the noise alert them?

I imagined those fingers bursting into my bedroom and dragging me away with those sickly yellow nails. I considered what it might feel like to have my skin stretch like rubber, expanding until I eventually disappeared inside myself.

But they never came.

And with Dad’s help, Lily settled.

The following afternoon, Detective Wilms arrived at our doorstep.

He was a thick man with a ...

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