Cedric's hand was a sudden, shocking pressure over Ace's mouth—not a gentle cover, but a hard, silencing clamp. At the same instant, his other hand gripped Ace's shoulder and shook, not to rouse, but to startle awake.
Ace's body reacted before his mind. His eyes snapped open in the pitch dark of the RV bedroom, seeing nothing but feeling the invasion. Every muscle coiled tight, his hand instinctively shooting toward the space under the pillow where he usually kept a knife. Adrenaline, bitter and electric, flooded his veins, burning away the deep, clingy residue of a sleep that had felt like being submerged in tar.
He saw the pale oval of Cedric's face hovering above him, close enough to feel his breath. Cedric's eyes weren't just open; they were wide, the whites stark, fixed on Ace with an intensity that spoke of pure alarm. No joke. No annoyance. This was the look that preceded a fight.
"Shut up," Cedric mouthed, the words forming in utter silence. Then, barely a whisper of sound escaped his lips. "And listen."
Slowly, Cedric peeled his hand away from Ace's mouth. Ace didn't move. He lay rigid on Garath's stiff bed, the clean pillowcase cool against his cheek, and did what he was told. He listened.
At first, there was only the frantic thump of his own heart in his ears. He heard the soft, rhythmic sigh of his own breathing. He heard the faint, almost imperceptible creak of the RV's frame—a living vehicle sighing in the cold.
Then he filtered it out. He pushed past the internal noise, tuning his hearing to the world outside the thin shell of metal.
"What?" Ace whispered back, the word a dry, sleep-ravaged scrape in his throat. He felt stupid asking. "Hear what?"
Cedric didn't answer. He just stared, waiting for Ace to catch up.
And then, Ace heard it.
Nothing.
It wasn't the peaceful quiet of a sleeping suburb. It was an absolute, suffocating void. The low, constant moan of the wind that had sawed at the edges of their sanity for over a week—it was gone. Not fading, but severed. The faint rustle of leaves in distant trees, the occasional scuttle of a night creature, the buzz of a lone insect… all of it had been erased. The world outside had been plunged into a soundproof chamber. The silence was so complete it had a weight, a pressure against Ace's eardrums. It was the silence of a vacuum, of a breath held too long. It was the sound of the world pausing, of something moving into the space where ordinary noise belonged.
That was what Cedric meant. Not a sound, but the absence of one. The absence of everything.
"Shit," Ace breathed out. The word felt small and useless in the face of that utter stillness. The last clinging warmth of sleep sloughed off him like a shed skin, leaving him cold and acutely, painfully alert.
In the gloom, their eyes met again. No discussion. No debate. It was the hunter's exchange, a language older than words. A hard look, a shared understanding of threat, and a silent agreement on what came next.
Cedric was already a shifting shadow. He snatched his dark jacket from the floor where he'd dumped it, the material whispering as he shoved his arms into the sleeves. His movements were economical, precise. He reached for his sidearm on the small shelf—a Glock 19—and his fingers found it in the dark. The shick-shick as he pulled the slide back a half-inch to check the chamber was a tiny, violent sound in the pressurized quiet. Satisfied, he slapped a fresh magazine home with a solid, reassuring thunk.
Ace threw the stiff blanket aside. The air in the RV was suddenly icy, raising goosebumps on his arms. He pushed himself up, his body a chorus of aches—the deep throb in his lower back from too many hours standing, the soreness in his legs from endless patrols. But his mind was no longer a foggy battleground. It was a cold, clean line of focus. He found his own jacket, the leather worn soft in places, and shrugged into it. His hand reached for the Beretta 92MS on the bedside table. The grip was comfortable, the checkering worn smooth in the spots where his palm were always trained to sat.
He didn't think about the next step. His training, drilled into him by Garath and Axl through countless dry runs, took over. His thumb found the magazine release. The standard, lead-nosed magazine dropped onto the neat bedspread with a soft, final plop. From the inner pocket of his jacket, his fingers closed around cold, machined metal. He drew out the alternate magazine. Even in the near-dark, the rounds had a different quality. They weren't brass; they were a dull, slate-grey alloy, etched with faint, spiraling lines that seemed to swallow the faint light from the digital clock rather than reflect it. Enchanted rounds. Soul-stuff and cold iron pressed into a shape that could breach the Veil. He slid the magazine into the pistol's well. The sound it made as it locked into place—a solid, heavy CHUNK—was more than mechanics. It was a shift in intent. A declaration.
They converged at the RV's side door, two shadows moving on the same wavelength. Cedric went first. He didn't yank the door open. He placed his palm against it, leaned his weight slowly to take up the slack in the latch, and then inched it outward, millimeter by millimeter, preventing the metallic groan that usually announced their exit. He slipped through the crack like smoke. Ace was right behind him, the door sighing shut at his back.
The night that swallowed them was a physical shock.
It wasn't just dark. It was choked. The cloud cover was total, a woolen blanket smothering the moon and stars. The temperature had dropped sharply. The air was dead still, lifeless, and carried a damp, earthy scent laced with something acrid—like burnt wiring.
The neighborhood was a still-life painting of suburban normalcy rendered terrifying in its absolute silence. No wind stirred the perfectly trimmed laurel hedges. The leaves on the maple trees hung motionless, as if carved from stone. The distant, ever-present drone of highway traffic from miles away had vanished. The world had been muted. The only light was the harsh, buzzing fluorescence of the convenience store sign twenty yards away. It painted the asphalt, the parked cars, the siding of the nearby houses in a sickly, vibrating pallor, making everything look unreal, like a stage set.
Ace leaned in so close his lips almost brushed Cedric's ear. His whisper was a blade cutting the thick air. "Call Axl and Garath. Tell them it's here. Now."
Cedric gave a single, sharp nod, his head already turning, his hunter's gaze sweeping the dark outlines of windows and gables and shadowy driveways. His phone was in his hand, the screen's sudden glow a shocking rectangle of blue-white in the gloom. His thumb stabbed the screen, bringing up Axl's contact.
Ace didn't wait for the call to connect. His target was clear: the house directly adjacent to the convenience store lot, separated by a low wall of crumbling red brick. A two-story with tired grey siding and a roof of moss-speckled green shingles. The source of the soundless dread.
He broke from cover, moving in a low, fast crouch across the empty expanse of the parking lot. His boots made no sound on the asphalt. At the wall, he didn't break stride. He planted his left hand on the rough, cold capstone, pushed off with his right foot, and swung his legs over, dropping into a deep crouch on the other side. Dry leaves crunched faintly under his weight, the sound absurdly loud in the vacuum.
And then the smell ambushed him.
It was old dust, the kind that coats forgotten rooms, yes. But woven through it was the sharp, clean tang of ozone—the scent of a thunderstorm that never broke. And beneath that, holding it all together, was the cloying, sweet-rotten stench of decay. Not fresh death, but spoilage that had been left to fester in a sealed space, the smell of meat forgotten at the back of a fridge for months. It was a signature, as unmistakable as a fingerprint. The psychic residue of a spirit that had died in rage or terror and refused to leave. A poltergeist. Not a ghost that moaned and rattled chains, but one that remembered violence and sought to repeat it.
Shit.
His finger slid from the frame of the Beretta to the curve of the trigger, resting alongside it. The cool metal was a tether to reality. He advanced, weapon up, scanning the cluttered backyard in sweeps. A child's plastic slide, bleached by the sun. A gas grill under a torn cover.
Flicker.
An outside light above the shabby back door stuttered to life for half a second, throwing a jaundiced yellow splash across a peeling wooden deck.
Darkness.
Flicker.
The light spasmed again, illuminating a rusted patio chair, a stack of muddy flowerpots.
Darkness.
The rhythm was frantic, epileptic. A distress signal from a dying bulb, or a pulse from something else.
His eyes caught movement to his left. Not movement—trembling. A cheap, igloo-style plastic doghouse was tucked against the side of the deck. Inside, a brown and white mixed-breed dog was curled into the farthest, darkest corner. It wasn't barking. It wasn't growling. Its entire body was wracked with violent, continuous shivers, muscles jerking under its fur. A thin, high-pitched whine leaked from its throat, a sound of pure, uncomprehending terror. Its tail was invisible, tucked so far between its legs it might as well have been swallowed. It wasn't looking at Ace. It was staring, unblinking, at the back door of the house, its eyes black pools of absolute dread.
Ace's own throat constricted. He swallowed, but the taste was still there—coppery, like licking a battery, the flavour of the poltergeist's malignant energy. It coated his tongue and the back of his throat. He moved forward, each step deliberate, his aim never wavering from the flickering doorway. The silent, trembling dog was all the confirmation he needed.
This was the place. The waiting was over.
He tried the back door first. Logic. The knob was cold, the metal leaching the warmth from his hand even through his glove. It was locked. He threw his shoulder against it, not a running charge, but a solid, testing shove. The door didn't budge. Not just locked. Sealed. It felt less like wood and more like a single, immovable piece of the house's skeleton.
The windows. He moved left, peering through grimy glass into a dark laundry room. The sash was painted shut, ancient layers of white gloss fused to the frame. He rapped the glass lightly with the butt of his Beretta. It didn't just feel thick; it felt dense, resistant, as if the air behind it was pressurized.
It was time to stop being polite. If his theory about the smell was right—and every instinct screamed that it was—then the thing inside already knew he was here. The silence, the fear, the flickering light; it was all a broadcast. Hiding was pointless. The only move left was forward, through.
He stepped back from the door, centered himself, and raised his right leg. He didn't kick at the knob. That was for movies. He aimed for the weak point, the spot just beside the lock where the frame met the door. His boot slammed into the weathered wood with a flat, sickening THUD that shattered the neighborhood's eerie quiet.
The wood shrieked in protest, splintering. A second kick, putting his full weight behind it, and the frame gave way with a sound like a bone breaking. The door smashed inward, banging against an interior wall. A wave of stale, cold air rushed out to meet him, carrying the poltergeist's signature stench—dust, ozone, decay—now undiluted and overpowering.
Gun up, he stepped across the shattered threshold.
The darkness inside was absolute, a tangible thing that pressed against his face. It was colder than the night, a deep, damp chill that seeped through his jacket and gnawed at his bones. He blinked, willing his eyes to adjust. Slowly, shapes emerged from the gloom, defined by the faint, erratic backwash of the dying porch light spilling through the broken doorway.
He was in a kitchen. It was frozen in a moment of interrupted domesticity, a still-life of dread. A small, Formica-topped table sat in the middle of the room. On it, two plates held the fossilized remains of a meal—something that might have been pasta, now a grey, congealed mass. A glass of milk had curdled, a thick, yellow crust forming on its surface. Flies, slow and fat in the cold, traced lazy circles over the scene, their buzz the only sound in the house, a low, obscene drone.
Ace moved, his boots scuffing softly on linoleum. He cleared the corners methodically—behind the door, the space beside the refrigerator, the shadowy maw under the sink. Nothing. The oppressive feeling of being watched intensified. It wasn't a gaze from a single point. It felt like the walls themselves had eyes, like the darkness was a lens focusing on him.
The sound. The muffled, hitching breath Cedric had heard. It was clearer now, a weak, watery gasp. It came from above. Upstairs.
He found the archway leading out of the kitchen, his gun leading the way. A short hallway stretched before him, doors to a bathroom and a pantry yawning open, revealing more pockets of swallowing dark. At the end, the hallway turned right.
He inched forward, every sense screaming. The feeling of being watched was a physical pressure now, a crawly sensation on the back of his neck and across his shoulders, like spiders made of cold mist. He knew what it was. It wasn't paranoia. It was the entity, its consciousness bleeding into the fabric of the house, touching everything. The house was watching.
He reached the corner and paused, his back pressed to the wall. He took one slow, silent breath, then pivoted, bringing his gun to bear on the new space.
A staircase rose directly in front of him, ascending into an even deeper pool of blackness at the top. The banister was a vague, skeletal shape. The weak light from the kitchen didn't reach past the third step.
He took a step toward the bottom stair.
And then he saw it.
At the top of the staircase, where the shadows were thickest, a patch of darkness detached itself from the rest.
It was man-shaped, but wrong. It didn't stand; it coalesced, a figure woven from the absence of light and the cold of the grave. A low, visceral hum seemed to emanate from it, a sound felt in the teeth more than heard. The air around it warped, shimmering with a wrongness that made Ace's vision ache—a visible aura of hatred and rage made manifest. It was a vacuum of warmth, of life.
Poltergeist.
His brain processed the shape, the aura, the suffocating pressure, and his finger completed the circuit before the thought was fully formed.
He fired.
The report of the Beretta was a world-ending roar in the enclosed space. The enchanted round, a streak of brilliant, electric blue in the darkness, screamed up the staircase, tearing through the space where the thing's center mass should have been.
It didn't hit.
The shadow-figure didn't so much dodge as it un-was and then re-was, its form blurring sideways with impossible, silent speed. The blue tracer shattered the window at the top of the landing in an explosion of glass and splintered wood.
In the same microsecond Ace's shot missed, the entity reacted.
There was no windup, no gesture. The air in front of Ace simply fisted. An invisible, concussive wave of pure telekinetic force slammed into his chest. It wasn't like being pushed. It was like being hit by a speeding car made of solidified hatred.
The breath exploded from his lungs in a painful grunt. His feet left the floor. He was airborne, hurtling backward down the short hallway. Time stretched and snapped. He saw the hallway wall rush toward him.
He didn't hit it. He went through it.
The old, dry plaster offered no more resistance than a sheet of sugar glass. He crashed through in a cloud of choking white dust and splintered lath. The world became a deafening roar of breaking structure and his own stunned silence. He landed with a bone-jarring crunch on a hardwood floor, sliding several feet before fetching up against a heavy piece of furniture, his gun skittering away into the blackness.
Pain arrived—a brilliant, white-hot detonation across his ribs on the right side. Agony bloomed in his shoulder. The taste of blood and plaster dust filled his mouth. He tried to suck in air, but his diaphragm was paralyzed, seized in a spasm of shock and impact. He gasped, a wet, ragged sound, seeing stars in the darkness.
Through the jagged, man-shaped hole he'd just made in the wall, the thing flowed.
It didn't walk. It drifted down the hallway and into the ruined opening, a spill of living shadow. It filled the space, the temperature in the new room—a bedroom, he dimly registered—plummeting instantly. Frost crackled across the remaining shards of wallpaper.
Ace lay on his back, helpless, fighting to get his lungs to work. He tried to roll, to push himself up, but the pain in his side was a knife, pinning him down. He could only stare as the entity loomed over him.
It leaned down, bringing its face into the faint, dusty light filtering from the hallway.
Ace's blood went to ice.
It had the vague, distorted structure of a face, but it was a mask of misery and malice. Its surface was a shifting, unstable black, like crude oil. From it, a viscous, dark blue liquid seeped in a continuous, silent drip. The substance fell, not like water, but like cold syrup, and where each drop struck the floorboards, it sizzled and smoked, etching tiny, blackened pits into the wood. Its mouth was a crooked, gash-like rift. It wasn't smiling. Its face was frozen in a rictus of eternal, tormenting glee, a smile that was a wound, a curse given shape. It stared down at Ace with empty sockets that held a lightless, ancient hunger.
The crooked gash widened. It was leaning closer.
A thunderclap erupted from the hallway.
Not a single shot, but a deafening, sustained BRRRAP of fully automatic fire. Muzzle flashes, strobing blue-white, lit the ruined wall in a frantic, disorienting strobe.
Cedric stood in the hallway, braced against the doorframe, his rifle—a compact, black carbine—shouldered and screaming. He wasn't aiming for precision. He was hosing down the entire area between him and Ace, stitching a line of blazing blue tracers across the floor, the wall, and straight through the center of the shadowy form.
The poltergeist recoiled as if scalded. The silent hum emanating from it twisted into a soundless shriek of rage that vibrated in the fillings of Ace's teeth. The blue-tipped rounds didn't pass through it harmlessly; where they struck its form, they flashed with actinic light, tearing small, sizzling holes in its darkness. It flinched, its terrible focus breaking, twisting away from Ace and toward the new, violent source of searing pain in the hallway.
Cedric kept firing, advancing step by step, his face a mask of concentrated fury in the flashing light. "GET UP!" he roared over the gunfire, his voice raw. "ACE, MOVE!"
The thing, battered and furious, began to dissolve backward, not into the hallway, but through the interior wall of the bedroom, its form unraveling into streaks of cold shadow that bled into the plaster and were gone.
The sudden silence after the rifle's onslaught was almost as loud as the gunfire itself. Acrid gunsmoke and plaster dust hung heavy in the air. Cedric's rifle fell silent, its magazine empty, the barrel smoking.
He stood panting in the doorway, his eyes wide, scanning the empty space where the entity had vanished. Then he rushed forward, kicking aside debris, and dropped to a knee beside Ace.
"Ace! Talk to me. Where are you hit?"