Chapter Four: Screams Behind the Glass
The morning air was drenched in a dull gray mist, wrapping the city like a shroud. John shoved his hands into his pockets as he approached the towering structure of the North Haven Police Precinct. Its concrete walls loomed like a fortress—silent, stern, and completely unaware of the war he was about to bring inside.
Beside him, Luna hovered just a few inches above the sidewalk, invisible to the rest of the world, but very real to him. Her form flickered slightly in the sunless light, her expression tense.
"You sure they'll even believe you?" she asked, eyes fixed on the entrance.
"They won't," John said flatly, pulling his ID from his coat. "But I'm not giving them a choice."
As he passed through the security scanner, the metal detector let out a weak beep, but the guards barely looked up. John had been here before. He wasn't just some conspiracy theorist or ghost-hunter. He was Special Analyst John Carter—forensics consultant and off-record investigator of the bizarre. People tolerated him. Some even feared him.
"Third floor," he muttered, stepping into the elevator.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Luna hovered beside him, her reflection absent from the steel elevator walls. Her fingers clenched as if she could still feel the cold metal floor beneath them.
"I don't like this place," she said. "It's full of voices."
John glanced at her. "You hear them?"
Luna nodded slowly, her eyes turning a shade dimmer. "They don't scream… they wail. Like they're stuck in time. Like they died with no justice."
He didn't respond. He'd heard those wails too. But he couldn't afford to flinch.
The elevator dinged.
Chief Director Marianne Holt sat behind a fortress of glass and oak. She was stern-faced, her silver hair pinned tight against her skull, and her eyes as sharp as glass.
"John Carter," she said, barely glancing up. "I don't recall an appointment."
"I need five minutes," he said, stepping in. "It's about Elias Voss."
That got her attention.
She leaned back in her chair. "The Sculptor? You and every crackpot in this state think they've found his trail. I'm not entertaining ghost stories today."
He dropped a thick file onto her desk with a thud—crime scene photos, autopsy inconsistencies, overlapping timelines. And in the center, a single blurry image of Luna's doppelgänger—the girl who had been buried under Luna's name.
"She's alive," he said. "Or… not quite dead. And Voss is holding her. I have reason to believe he's keeping her in stasis, the way he did with the Shelburne girls."
Chief Holt narrowed her eyes. "That case was closed. They were found mutilated in a storage unit, John."
"Exactly," he snapped. "But not the real girls. The faces were reconstructed postmortem. I did the DNA work on two of them myself—bodies swapped, identities erased."
He leaned in. "That's Voss's signature. He doesn't kill. He sculpts. He manipulates what we believe about death."
Holt exhaled. "And what do you suggest? We dig up every Jane Doe and compare dental records for fun?"
Luna floated behind the chief, her fingers brushing the glass window. "She doesn't believe you," she whispered.
"I don't need you to believe me," John said, voice low. "I need access to the hospital basement archives. Redwood Memorial. That's where he hides his works-in-progress."
Chief Holt's face twisted into a frown. "Even if I wanted to give you that clearance, Redwood isn't under our jurisdiction. It's private. And protected."
"That never stopped me before."
She leaned forward. "What do you really want, Carter? A chase? A headline? You're still chasing your sister's ghost."
John's jaw clenched. "No," he whispered. "She chased me."
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Luna gasped—loud, almost shrieking—and dropped to her knees in the corner of the room. John turned instantly.
"Luna?"
Her head was bowed, hands clutched to her temples. "I see it," she whispered. "Oh God, I see it."
The room grew cold.
In her mind's eye, she was no longer in the precinct. She was inside a dark, sterile basement. A hospital bed. Metal trays. Surgeon's tools glinting under flickering lights. The hum of machines that should not be running.
Then—a body.
Hers.
Not decayed. Not damaged. But pale. Sleeping. Tubes running from her arms to an IV bag. Her chest barely rising.
And above her… a man in surgical scrubs, humming a lullaby as he adjusted a mask on his face.
Elias Voss.
She screamed.
In the precinct, John's heart slammed as he knelt beside her. "What is it? Luna—what do you see?"
Luna raised her eyes. Blood tears slid down her translucent cheeks.
"He's with me," she choked out. "Down there. Right now. Watching my body. Like it's a project."
John stood, slamming his fist on the desk. "NOW do you believe me?!"
Chief Holt rose slowly, shaken. She didn't understand everything—but something about that moment chilled her to her marrow.
"I'll make a call," she said. "You'll get your clearance. But if this goes sideways, John…"
"I'll take full responsibility," he said. "But I'm not letting her become another file in your drawer."
He turned and helped Luna to her feet, though his hands passed through her like mist.
Outside the precinct, the clouds cracked open, and rain fell like ash from a burning sky.
John stared up at it, lollipop forgotten in his coat.
"We're coming for you, Voss," he murmured.
Beside him, Luna trembled—but nodded. Her strength was returning. And her resolve was no longer bound by fear.