Chapter 17: SOMETHING IN THE MUSEUM
The artifact room door hadn't changed since my first visit. Same blessed wood. Same crosses carved into the frame. Same complex lock that Ed had designed himself, built to be opened only by someone with genuine faith.
But something behind it had changed.
I could feel the pressure from ten feet away—a weight against my senses, like standing too close to a furnace. The air itself seemed to thicken near the door, resisting movement, warning away anyone foolish enough to approach.
"She's been active for weeks," Lorraine said. "Ever since you started coming around more often."
"Me?" My hand found the rosary at my chest—Ed's father's rosary, warm against my skin. "Why me?"
"I don't know." Lorraine held a blessed candle, its flame burning steady despite the spiritual turbulence I could feel radiating from beyond the door. "But whatever's in that doll has been watching. Waiting. And now it's pushing against the seals in a way it hasn't in months."
[WARNING: HIGH-TIER ENTITY DETECTED]
[ENTITY: MALTHUS — TIER 3 DEMON]
[EXTREME CAUTION ADVISED]
I dismissed the notification. I didn't need the system to tell me what I was walking into.
"Should we get Ed?"
"Ed is in Boston. Won't be back until tomorrow." Lorraine's jaw set in a line I recognized—determination masking fear. "The seals need reinforcing now. I've done it before, but never with the doll this active. I could use another pair of hands."
"Then let's do it."
The lock clicked open at Lorraine's touch. The door swung inward on silent hinges.
The artifact room was exactly as I remembered. Shelves of cursed objects, each in blessed cases. Photographs of horrors. Relics of battles won and nearly lost. And there, in its glass case at the center of the room, illuminated by a single overhead light:
Annabelle.
Raggedy Ann. Red yarn hair. Button eyes. A child's toy that radiated wrongness so intense I nearly staggered.
I activated Spirit Sight.
And I saw it.
Malthus didn't look like a demon from paintings—no horns, no pitchfork, no cartoonish evil. The thing inside the doll was smoke given will, darkness compressed into a shape that hurt to perceive. It coiled within the glass case like a serpent waiting to strike, ancient and patient and utterly, terribly aware.
Its attention fixed on me.
"There you are."
The voice didn't come through my ears. It bypassed them entirely, speaking directly into my mind—cold, oily, intimate.
"I've been watching you, little anomaly. Since the first time you crossed my threshold. Do you know how rare you are?"
I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. The demon's presence was a weight on my chest, crushing the air from my lungs.
"Wrong soul. Wrong body. Wrong world. I can taste the displacement on you. The edges that don't quite fit. Did you think no one would notice?"
Panic surged through me. It knew. Somehow, impossibly, it knew what I was.
"Such a delicious secret. Such a valuable piece of information. I wonder who else might be interested..."
"Paul."
Lorraine's voice cut through the fog. Her hand gripped my arm, anchoring me to reality.
"Paul, whatever it's showing you, it's not real. Focus on my voice. Focus on what's true."
I forced myself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The weight on my chest eased slightly.
"She can't hear me," Malthus whispered. "This is just between us. Between the demon and the thing that shouldn't exist."
"I'm not a thing."
The words came out loud, breaking whatever spell had been holding me. Lorraine looked at me sharply but didn't ask questions.
"The seals," I said. "Tell me what to do."
The reinforcement ritual took three hours.
Lorraine walked me through it step by step. Prayers in Latin, prayers in Aramaic, prayers in languages I didn't recognize. Holy water applied to every joint of the case. Salt poured in unbroken lines. Blessed candles placed at cardinal points, their flames burning with light that wasn't quite natural.
Through it all, Malthus watched.
It didn't speak again—not directly. But I could feel its attention, its amusement, its patient certainty that we were only delaying the inevitable.
When we finished, the pressure had eased. The air felt cleaner. The doll sat in its case, button eyes staring at nothing.
But I knew those eyes saw everything.
[ARTIFACT SEALS REINFORCED]
[FAITH RESONANCE +3]
[SOUL INTEGRITY -10 (DEMONIC MENTAL CONTACT)]
We emerged from the artifact room at 3:07 AM. The door sealed behind us with a click that echoed through the quiet house.
My hands were shaking.
Lorraine led me to the kitchen, made tea, pressed a warm cup into my trembling fingers.
"You did well," she said. "Most people can't even enter that room. The fact that you stayed, that you helped seal it—that takes real strength."
"It knew things." The words spilled out before I could stop them. "About me. Things it shouldn't know."
Lorraine was quiet for a long moment. Her eyes studied me with that intensity I'd learned to recognize—the look of a psychic reading something beyond the surface.
"Demons lie," she said finally. "It's what they do. They take our fears, our secrets, our doubts, and they twist them into weapons. Whatever it said to you—"
"What if it was true?"
The question hung in the air.
Lorraine set down her cup. She reached across the table and took my hand.
"Paul. I've known from the first moment I saw you that there was something different about you. Something I've never encountered before. Your soul has... edges. Like it doesn't quite fit where it's supposed to be."
My heart stopped.
"But different doesn't mean wrong. Different doesn't mean evil." Her grip tightened. "Whatever your secret is—and I know you have one—it doesn't change who you are. It doesn't change what you've done, the people you've helped, the family you've become part of. Do you understand?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
"Good." She released my hand, picked up her tea again. "Now get some sleep. We'll tell Ed in the morning. And we'll double the prayers on that room."
I drove home as dawn broke over Connecticut. The demon's words echoed in my head: Wrong soul, wrong body, wrong world.
How much did it know? What else could it see? And if it told the wrong people—the wrong entities—what would come for me?
Sleep didn't come easy that night.
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