Darren's eyes burned. They felt gritty and dry, like someone had rubbed sand into them. He blinked hard, trying to clear the blurry pixels swimming on the computer screen. He'd been staring at scanned newspaper articles for over half an hour. The words had started to melt together into a meaningless soup of tragic headlines: "Unsolved Stabbing in Riverside," "Body Found in Warehouse District," "Police Seek Clues in Apparent Drowning." It was all from the last year, and it was all from places within a few hours' drive. It was too much. It was just a list of horrible things happening to people he didn't know.
He peeled his eyes away from the monitor and looked over at Ace. His cousin was a statue of focus. His hood was still up, casting his face in shadow, but the pale blue light of the screen lit his jaw, which was set tight. He wasn't just reading. He was hunting. His eyes flicked from article to article, his fingers flying over a small, cheap notepad he'd pulled from his pocket. He wasn't copying articles. He was writing down dates. Locations. Specific, clinical details. "Victim: Male, 42. Location: Old Mill Road drainage ditch. Note: No blood at scene. Missing eyes." He was building a case file. A real one.
Darren looked at his own blank page. He'd doodled a monster in the corner. It wasn't as good as the one in the dirt.
Ace suddenly looked up, not at Darren, but at the large, round clock on the library's far wall. His body went rigid. He checked his own watch, a cheap digital thing, then back at the clock. A jolt of pure urgency went through him.
He stood up so fast his chair screeched on the linoleum. The sound was a gunshot in the quiet room. The bored staff member, Martin, looked up from his desk with a frown. Ace ignored him. He gathered his notepad, tucking it deep into his jacket pocket. He gave Darren a sharp, silent nod toward the stairs.
"Let's go," Ace said, his voice a low command.
Darren didn't need to be told twice. He practically launched himself out of his chair, a wave of relief washing over him. "Finally!" he whispered, but it came out too loud. He followed Ace, who was already moving toward the staircase with a tense, quick walk. "My brain was turning to mush. What a waste of time. Did you even find anything?"
Ace didn't answer. He didn't even look back. He just kept walking, down the stairs, past the rows of silent books, his shoulders tense. He pushed through the heavy front doors back out into the damp evening air.
Darren scrambled after him, confused but too relieved to be free of the library to care much. Ace had his thinking face on. The one that meant he was working a problem, turning pieces over in his head. Darren knew better than to poke at that face. For now.
***
Night had settled over the neighborhood like a thick, dark blanket. At Becca's house, the kitchen was a warm island of light and the smell of garlic and tomatoes.
They were having spaghetti. It was a good one, with a rich meat sauce and tender pieces of chicken mixed in. It sat steaming on three plates.
Cedric ate like he was fueling for a marathon. He twirled a huge forkful, stuffed it into his mouth, and chewed with a steady, mechanical intensity. The loud, rhythmic chewing cut through the quiet of the house.
"Slow down, will you?" Chloe said from across the table, pushing her own food around her plate. "You're going to choke. And it's gross."
Cedric looked up, his expression blank. He didn't slow. He swallowed the massive bite with a visible gulp and immediately speared another bunch of noodles.
Becca watched him from the head of the small table, her own plate balanced on her lap. She took a small, neat bite. "Relax, honey," she said, her voice calm. "No one's going to steal it. The food isn't running away."
Cedric just shrugged, a one-shouldered motion, and kept eating. He was staring at a point on the wall past Chloe's head, not really seeing it.
Becca studied him for a long moment. She took another bite, chewed, swallowed. She wiped her mouth with a napkin. "So," she began, her tone conversational. "What's going on with you and Ace?"
Cedric froze. His fork stopped halfway to his mouth. A long strand of spaghetti hung, dripping sauce onto the tablecloth. He slowly lowered the fork back to his plate. He looked at his mother, his eyes guarded. "What do you mean?"
Becca gave him a small, knowing smile. It was the smile that said she saw everything, even the things he tried to hide in the dark. "You think I wouldn't see it? You two are like a single organism most of the time. Lately, you've been two separate, grumpy organisms. You had a fight?"
Cedric didn't reply right away. He looked down at his plate, his appetite gone. The food just looked like a mess now. He'd been carrying the weight of the argument in his chest for days, a cold, hard knot. He'd told himself he was doing the right thing. The smart thing. So why did it feel so awful?
"No," he finally said, the word coming out flat. "Not really a fight."
"Oh, I see," Becca said, not convinced in the slightest. She took a sip of water. "So that's what's the problem, then? It wasn't a fight, it was… what?"
Cedric sighed, the sound heavy with frustration—at himself, at Ace, at the whole impossible situation. "He's grounded. He's stuck over there. And I… I guess he's mad I didn't back him up. That I'm listening to you and Axl. That I'm just… going back to normal." He said the last word like it was a curse.
Becca's expression softened, but her eyes were still sharp. She understood the weight he was talking about. The weight of choosing the safer path. "I'm sure you two will get over it. You always do. You're brothers, in all the ways that matter."
Cedric just nodded. He didn't trust himself to say more. He didn't want to talk about the things Ace had yelled, or the worse things he'd yelled back. Spoiled brat. The words still echoed. He pushed his plate away, half-finished. "I'm done. Thanks for dinner."
He stood and started clearing his dishes, the motions automatic. Becca watched him, a quiet sadness in her eyes, but she didn't press further. Some battles had to be fought alone.
Dinner ended quietly. Becca wheeled herself to the sink to start washing up. Cedric picked up a towel to dry, the familiar, silent chore a small comfort.
"Chloe, honey," Becca said, scrubbing a plate. "Can you do one last check on Layla before we turn in? Make sure she's sleeping easy."
"Sure, Mom," Chloe said. She seemed glad for the excuse to leave the quiet kitchen. She grabbed a sweater from the back of a chair and slipped out the side door that led to the backyard.
The night outside was profoundly still. No wind rustled the trees. No distant traffic hum. The only sound was the crunch of her shoes on the gravel path that led from the house to the small, standalone storage cabin at the back of the property. The basement was not inside the outside but rather below an old storage cabin.The cabin was old wood and corrugated metal, used for lawn tools and holiday decorations. And, currently, for housing a traumatized witness.
The moon was bright and high, casting sharp, black shadows. It was so bright it washed the color from the world, leaving everything in shades of silver and ink. The motion-sensitive light mounted on the side of the house didn't flicker on as she approached. The bulb was probably dead.
She was halfway down the path, not thinking of much beyond the chill and getting back inside, when she saw movement.
A shadow, near the corner of the storage cabin. It was wrong.
It wasn't a shadow cast by the moon. It was thicker. It seemed to drink the light around it. It floated a few inches above the ground, a human-shaped smear of darkness that didn't connect to anything. It was skinny, with limbs that were too long and seemed to taper into wispy tendrils.
Chloe stopped walking. Her breath caught in her throat.
The figure turned slowly. It didn't have a face, not really. Where a face should be was a shifting, unstable vortex of deeper shadow. But as it turned toward her, that vortex stretched. It formed a wide, crescent-moon curve. A smile. A wicked, silent, greeting.
Then the smell hit her.
It was the smell of a room sealed for decades. Of old dust, dry rot, and the sharp, metallic tang of static electricity. It was the smell of a poltergeist. The same smell that had clung to the air in that horrible house on Oakwood Lane. It was a smell that bypassed logic and went straight to the primal fear in her lizard brain.
Run. The command screamed in her head. But her body wouldn't listen. Her muscles were locked, frozen solid. She was a statue in the moonlight.
The shadowy figure drifted toward her. It didn't walk. It floated, its movement a smooth, silent glide that was more terrifying than any charge. The cold radiating from it reached her first, a wave of winter-deep chill that raised goosebumps all over her skin.
It was in front of her. The smiling void of its face loomed. A hand, more a solidified tendril of gloom, lifted. It was not a hand. It was the idea of a hand, made of sticky, congealed shadow. It reached for her throat.
The touch was worse than the cold. It was the cold of a grave, and it was sticky, like tar mixed with ice. It closed around her neck.
The shock of the touch broke her paralysis, but it was too late. She gasped, but no air came. The grip was iron. It wasn't just squeezing; it was leaching the warmth, the life, from her skin on contact. A faint, sickly black aura pulsed from the creature, making the moonlight around it seem to dim.
It began to lift her. Her shoes scuffed against the gravel, then left the ground entirely. She kicked, a weak, frantic motion. Her hands flew up to claw at the shadow-arm, but her fingers passed through it like thick, freezing smoke, finding no purchase. Spots danced at the edges of her vision. Her lungs burned.
BANG!
The sound was monstrous, a thunderclap that shattered the perfect silence of the night.
A kitchen window on the second floor of the house exploded outward in a shower of glass. Behind it, framed in the jagged hole, was Becca. She was braced in her wheelchair, one arm steadied on the window frame. In her hands was a compact, black pistol. Her face was a mask of terrifying calm.
The shot had been perfectly aimed. Not at the creature's center, but at the arm holding her daughter. The bullet, glowing with a faint, ethereal blue light in the darkness, tore through the shadowy limb.
The poltergeist didn't scream. It rippled. The entire form shuddered like a pond struck by a stone. The sticky-cold grip around Chloe's neck vanished.
She dropped two feet to the gravel, collapsing in a heap, choking and gagging, dragging in huge, ragged breaths of blessed, cold air.
The side door of the house burst open. Cedric didn't run out; he exploded into the yard. He didn't yell. He was silent, a predator in motion. He had his father's old revolver in one hand, its barrel also glowing with the soft blue of enchanted rounds.
He saw Chloe on the ground, gasping. He saw the poltergeist, its form still shimmering from the disruption of Becca's shot, already re-knitting its wounded limb from the surrounding darkness.
Cedric didn't hesitate. He didn't go for Chloe first. A hunter's rule: neutralize the threat. He dropped into a shooter's crouch, a solid, stable stance he'd practiced a thousand times in his backyard.
Bang! Bang!
Two more cracks of thunder. Two more streaks of blue light. He aimed for the center of mass, the swirling vortex where a heart might be.
The poltergeist moved.
It didn't duck or jump. One moment it was there, the next it simply wasn't. The blue rounds passed through empty air where its torso had been, impacting the metal siding of the storage cabin with two dull thwumps.
The creature reappeared three feet to the left. Its movements were all wrong. It wasn't fast; it was discontinuous. It flickered.
It turned its ruined, smiling face toward Cedric. It took a step. Not on the ground.
Its foot—a shapeless knot of shadow—landed on the vertical wooden wall of the cabin. It stuck there, defying gravity as easily as breathing. It took another step upward, then another, walking up the side of the building as if it were a flat sidewalk. It climbed until it was ten feet up, perched on the wall like a grotesque insect, looking down at him.
Cedric swung his revolver up, his arms steady, his breath held. He centered the glowing sights on that smiling void.
The poltergeist crouched against the wall. Then it pushed off.
It didn't leap. It uncoiled. It became a streak of pure, concentrated hatred—a silent, black arrow shot from the darkness, lunging straight for his throat.