Quick Email Update
Someone here on Substack isn't who they say they are.
We need to talk.
I’ve reached out to everyone mentioned in this post directly. Zero replies. I feel like I’m going fucking insane, tbh. Email it is, I guess.
Ahem.
If you run a publication here, you know the recent headaches. The random forced logouts. The “Editor Offline” banners that wipe a thousand words of unsaved drafts. The sudden influx of blank-profile subscribers with alphanumeric handles tanking our open rates. We complain about it on Notes, blame the devs, and move on.
We were wrong. So, so fucking wrong.
Three weeks ago, I was beta-reading a draft from a prominent author on my recommended list (you know who you are). Deep in chapter four, a jarring continuity error broke the scene. A tall man in a soaked yellow raincoat stood in the background, tapping a brass coin against a windowpane.
It was a brilliant, creepy detail. I left a private note praising it.
The author replied: “What are you talking about? I never wrote that.”
I chalked it up to a bad memory.
Two days later, I was scrolling Notes. I clicked a new post from PineBox Readings . Halfway down the page—a man in a soaked yellow raincoat tapped a brass coin against a streetlamp. I assumed it was an homage, or a collab of sorts. Typical Substack shit.
I kept the tab open. I watched the screen. Every time I hit refresh, the word count of the post changed. The paragraph containing the man shifted, moving further down the page, closer to the comment section.
Then, last night, I opened my master draft for Chapter Eleven of No Such Thing As Normal. The green checkmark read Saved. I did my usual skim—a new sentence sat waiting for me near the end.
First of all, I would never write a basic ass sentence like that. Where’s the flavor?
Second—I’m a paranoid ass bitch, so I immediately went to my Settings.
Substack requires us to list a physical mailing address at the bottom of our emails for CAN-SPAM compliance. Most of us use a PO Box. Some use their actual homes. I checked my publication’s footer. My PO Box address was gone. It had been replaced by my home address. My actual, physical home address.
I stopped writing and started looking closer at the actual pages of the people I’ve interacted with recently: Bradley Ramsey, Edith Bow, Tom Schecter, Johanna C. Eschwald, Laura Teodorescu, Sean Thomas McDonnell. What I found proves this thing is sentient. Incredibly so. It’s not some bot farm product. It’s—this thing—it’s like a parasite, and it’s moving through the people on this app. And every time I catch him, he looks more and more like someone I know.
Bradley Ramsey (The Writer’s Journey): Go listen to his latest Saved as Draft podcast episode. Listen past the halfway mark, right during the sponsor segment. There is a three-second dead-air silence where you can hear a faint, wet fabric shifting right next to the microphone. Similar to the sound of someone breathing heavily through damp cloth, right into his studio space. Or so I’d imagine.
Edith Bow: She put out a Note joking about writing until she felt a “fever dream” coming on. But if you look at the paragraph formatting on her recent posts, the line breaks get narrower and tighter at the bottom of the page, like the text is physically being squeezed or choked out. Coincidence? I think not.
Tom Schecter (The Shieldbreaker Saga): His whole brand is gritty, magic-free historical fantasy about the collapse of civilizations. It is deeply grounded prose. Yet, in one of his most recent chapter posts, there is a single, bizarre sentence fragment buried in the middle of a paragraph about ancient ruins: “...and the raincoat does not dry.” It completely breaks his style. I don’t think he wrote it.
Johanna C. Eschwald (The Tainted Gardens): She updated her profile saying she’s been offline less because “life is lifing.” But her recent story updates are dropping at 3:00 AM her local time, every single night, on the dot. Someone—or something—is keeping her schedule while she sleeps.
Laura Teodorescu: Her dark folklore and heavy symbolism are being subtly hijacked. A recurring character in her latest serial draft suddenly shifted descriptions mid-scene. The character started as a blind village elder, but three paragraphs later, without any narrative transition, the text describes the elder as having “yellow cloth clinging to his shoulders.”
Sean Thomas McDonnell (Automatic Writer): Go to his page. If you subscribe right now, the automated welcome email you get is just a completely blank email. No text, no header. But the subject line is just a single punctuation mark: a solitary period. Like a rhythmic, metallic strike.
Go to your dashboard. Click the Subscribers tab. Export your list to a CSV file and open it in Excel. Sort by “Subscription Date.” Look at the drop-offs. Have you noticed prominent authors missing their upload schedules recently? Look at your subscriber list on the exact days they went dark. You will find a new free subscriber. The email address will be a string of numbers. The location data will be blank.
I spent hours staring at the screen last night, tracing the links. This thing is using our connections against us. Every time we recommend a peer, we are opening a door. It walks right through the endorsement network, slipping from our reading lists straight into our actual lives. Then it learns how to look exactly like a person, an author—one of us.
By the time you open this email, it probably already knows your face.
I need you to open your subscriber list right now. Check your mailing address in the footer settings to see if it has changed. Comb through the last few updates from the authors you subscribe to and look for the yellow raincoat. If you find him, do not leave a comment on their page. Don’t type his name. Engaging with the infected pages only lets him follow the digital trail back to you.
Unsubscribe immediately. Sever the connection. And if you hear a faint, metallic tapping on your window tonight, do not look up. Keep your eyes on the screen. Don’t let it get a good look at your face.
I think he knows mine pretty well by now.
If you’ve seen the man in the yellow raincoat, let me know in the comments. Please. I need to know you’ve seen him too.
Until the next imposter,
—The Narrator.
DISCLAIMER (to reassure your peace of mind): This is entirely a work of fiction, inspired by Changeling from It’s Not Art Until It Hangs, an anthology by Dylan Bosworth (BUY THE BOOK HERE).
Your Stripe account remains un-hacked, your dashboard data is safe, and there is absolutely no man in a wet yellow raincoat lurking in your peripheral vision right now (unless you really need to do laundry). As far as I’m aware, at least.
Think of this as a community playground. If you—any of you, even if you weren’t tagged—want to run with this lore, plant a weird raincoat Easter egg in your next story, or document your own “Haunted Substack,” please jump in! Take the details and build on them however you like. Or don’t. I’m not your boss, or your mother.
Just remember to tag me when (if) you drop your posts. I also highly enjoy a good existential crisis, and would like to see how deep we can make this rabbit hole go. No pressure though.
Lost? That's The Point.
Welcome. You’ve stumbled into some of the best dark fiction on Substack. I’m Nikki Houle, a.k.a. Nocturnal Narrator, author of The Narrator’s Collection. This is where I store the rest of my dark fiction and other prose.
Everything You Need To Know About No Such Thing As Normal
No Such Thing As Normal is a dark, dual-narrative thriller that pairs a psychopathic researcher who can predict violence with a combat-hardened soldier who’s spent years carrying it out. Their lives collide when a quiet Midwest town becomes the staging ground for a very personal hunt. As Olivia turns data into a weapon and Ben wrestles with the ghosts o…
My goodness you had me going for a moment 🤣
Haha, you gave yourself away when you praised the "brilliant, creepy" sentence that's also "basic ass" :P
Still, this post is cool af!