Daniel Conderman 
I remember the night my grandfather, Mack, told me the story. It was late, and a vicious storm rattled the windows of their old farmhouse. Rain lashed the roof, wind howled through the trees—yet nothing outside was as terrifying as what he’d endured all those years before.
They weren’t farmers, just a large family living in a house on the outskirts of a small town. This storm back then started like any other—fast and mean, with lightning cracking the sky and thunder shaking the earth. Mack and his family huddled in the basement, listening as the rain hammered down. Then came the lights.
Not lightning. Something else.
They were massive beams of impossible color—greens, purples, and blues so deep they seemed to bore into the night sky. Instead of slashing downward like lightning, these lights landed with a bone-shaking weight, pressing down on the roof as though an unseen foot had set itself on the house.
Something was there.
Mack’s voice wavered as he recalled how the walls groaned under this crushing force. The air changed, turning thick with a wrongness that prickled the skin. And the sound—no longer thunder, but a humming so low and resonant it vibrated through their bones, inhuman and incomprehensible.
The children screamed, his wife clutched them tight, and Mack realized they had mere moments before whatever had come decided their fate—decided if they were even worth keeping. He thought about running outside, but what would he see? If he screamed, would it even register? There was no face to plead with, no eyes to beg—just that unearthly pressure bearing down.
Then, in a flash of desperate logic, he remembered the breaker box. With trembling hands, he hurried across the basement. He pried open the panel, chest heaving, each breath ragged. Maybe…maybe if he could show thought, show pattern, he could prove there was something more than just an insect cowering below.
He flicked the main breaker off. Then on. Again. Once. Twice. Three times.
Nothing changed.
The humming outside deepened, as though the presence was looming closer. The house creaked and bowed under its weight; the very air felt like a living thing forcing itself into every corner. Mack likened it to a child deciding whether or not to smash a bug.
His heart hammered. If the lights couldn’t break through… He flicked them again. 5. 7. 11. Prime numbers—simple, yet intentional.
Suddenly, the pressure shifted. Not gone, but…altered. A pause, like a drawn breath from something that did not breathe. A single pulse of light flashed back at him—then another, then another.
13.
He nearly jumped at the response. His wife clung to his arm, wide-eyed. He flicked the breaker again—17—and in a heartbeat, the lights responded: 19.
A game of cosmic call and response. And with each prime number exchanged, the crushing weight on the house lessened. The roof, once on the verge of collapsing, stopped groaning. The walls steadied. But every flick felt like balancing on a razor’s edge—one mistake, and we’re done.
23, he pressed.
The lights answered: 29.
Mack’s hand quivered, sweat dripping down his brow. His entire body screamed with terror, but he held on. One last prime—31— and the lights responded one final time:
37.
Then it all vanished. The beams, the suffocating hum, the unimaginable weight. The storm raged on, but now it was only rain and wind. Tiles had cracked, windows were loose in their frames, yet the family was alive. And no one ever spoke of it—not to neighbors, not to friends. It was like the night had never happened.
But I remember Grandpa Mack’s eyes as he whispered this story to me, how they glistened with tears he refused to let fall, how his finger tapped silently on his chair, counting. Always counting.
I’ve never forgotten the numbers. Neither did he.
