We uncovered a time capsule from 1975, but the items inside were from 2025. It was a grey April morning when the council decided to unearth it—more out of ceremony than curiosity. The capsule sat beneath the cracked concrete of the old town square, near the rusted fountain that hadn’t worked in decades. No one really remembered burying it, but everyone in Marlin’s Bay knew about it. It was town lore, a strange little footnote in a place that time had forgotten.

 

I was there, watching from the back of the small crowd. I grew up hearing the stories: how it was buried by cloaked figures during a lunar eclipse, or how a child vanished after the ceremony. But those were just stories. Weren’t they?

 

The metal box emerged cold and heavy. Sheriff Delaney, grumbling as usual, pried it open with a crowbar. I was close enough to see his expression change when the lid creaked back—how the smug detachment drained from his face, leaving something pale and shaking. Inside were a letter sealed with black wax, a photograph, and a strange chrome spider, curled and still. The photograph showed Marlin’s Bay—but not the one we knew. The buildings were burnt-out husks. The sky above was the colour of old bruises. In the centre, a girl in a yellow dress stood, her face blurred, eyes scratched out. But somehow, I knew it was me.

 

Sheriff Delaney opened the letter. His lips moved silently as his eyes scanned the page. Then he stopped, stepped back, and simply said, “No.”

 

He tried to put the lid back on—maybe out of instinct, maybe out of fear. But the spider moved. A twitch at first—barely noticeable—then it snapped upright with a mechanical jolt, its chrome legs unfolding like switchblades. Eight limbs, jointed unnaturally, too fluid for metal. Its surface pulsed faintly, like something alive beat beneath its shell.

 

Then it jumped. It landed on Delaney’s forearm with a sickening clack. Before anyone could scream, it scuttled up his sleeve, legs digging into flesh, clicking as it moved. Delaney swatted, stumbled—but it was too fast. It reached his neck in seconds, perched at the hollow of his throat like it knew exactly where to go. His body convulsed. Delaney let out a strangled gasp, as if something invisible was being pulled from him. His eyes rolled back, his limbs twisted violently, then went limp, folding like wet paper. He hit the pavement with a dull crack, limbs twitching once… then nothing.

 

The spider was gone. Vanished. No one saw where it went. Someone screamed. Several people ran. I think someone prayed. I didn’t move. Not because I was brave—because I was frozen. The air felt thick, heavy, like the sky was pressing down. My ears rang, and my stomach turned, as though I’d witnessed something fundamentally wrong, something the mind wasn’t meant to process. That’s when I saw the letter flutter to the ground, landing inches from Delaney’s lifeless hand. I picked it up with shaking fingers. The wax seal had split down the middle, like a wound. Inside, the ink was jagged, rushed—written like someone had tried to warn us too late.

 

If you’re reading this before March 2025, bury it again.

Do not touch the crawler. Do not scan the card.

Do not speak to the girl in the yellow dress.

We tried. We failed. We let it in.

 

Let it in? Let what in?

 

The spider had vanished. The capsule too. One moment they were there—shocking, real, undeniable—and the next, gone. Not fled. Not hidden. Gone, as if they’d never existed at all. We searched, of course. The square was combed by the council workers, the fire chief, and a few brave locals with rakes and flashlights. But the ground offered nothing. No tracks. No trace. Not even a dent in the dirt where Delaney’s body had fallen. It was as if the earth had swallowed everything whole.

 

Sheriff Delaney’s body was removed slowly, carefully, in silence that felt less respectful and more afraid. No ambulance. No sirens. Just a few pale men in coveralls who arrived too quickly, as if they’d been waiting nearby. No questions were asked. No one tried to stop them. We watched him go, his face covered, limbs stiff under the sheet. By nightfall, the square was cordoned off with yellow tape, but no one patrolled it. The tape sagged in the wind, flapping like a warning no one dared read.

 

And then… nothing.

 

There were no reports. No press coverage. The local paper ran a story about pothole repairs—no mention of the capsule, the sheriff, or the thing that crawled up his neck and silenced him from the inside out. No one spoke of it again. Not in public. At church, people sat a little straighter. At the diner, regulars stirred their coffee slower. Eyes shifted, conversations stopped whenever anyone mentioned that day. Kids were told not to ask questions. Adults acted like they didn’t have answers—even though their eyes betrayed them. And the unspoken truth was worse: They had seen this before. Maybe not exactly, maybe not with a spider. But something like it. Something buried. Something waiting. Something the town knew was never supposed to be opened.

 

But the town changed. First, the lights. Streetlamps flickered in patterns like Morse code. Phones rang with distorted voices, like someone underwater. Then came the dreams—shared ones. People woke describing the same pale sky, the same soundless hum, the same feeling of being watched from behind their eyes. And the girl. I saw her again. Not in dreams. Not in the photograph. In real life. She stood at the edge of the school field one morning. Same yellow dress. Same crooked posture. Her face wasn’t scratched out anymore. Now it smiled. She didn’t move. But every time I blinked, she was closer. I ran.

 

That night, my radio turned on by itself. A voice whispered my name. Not in my ears—in my bones.

 

We’re in the capsule now.

You were always going to open it.

 

I’ve tried to leave town. Three times. The roads loop back. The gas runs out faster than it should. Every time I turn around, the old town square is behind me. The fountain drips again. The air is thick with something I can’t explain. And the spider? It returns when I sleep. I wake up with its shape imprinted on my skin. I cough up tiny wires. Marlin’s Bay is no longer on the map. I checked. We’ve been erased. Or maybe we never existed outside the loop. Maybe this was 2025 all along.

 

If you find this story, burn it.

And if you ever hear tapping beneath your feet—don’t dig.