The idea, like all the worst ones, had felt reasonable in the daylight, a desperate gambit born of a week of sleepless nights and frantic, fruitless searching, but now, huddled in the pitch-black of my living room with only the guttering flame of a single candle throwing monstrous, leaping shadows against the walls, it felt like the most profound and idiotic mistake of my life, a violation of some fundamental law of nature that we were now irrevocably bound to pay for. The air itself had grown thick and cold, a damp, cellar chill that seeped right through my sweater and clung to my skin, and the silence was no longer an absence of sound but a presence, a heavy, listening void that seemed to swallow the very crackle of the candle wick. There were five of us, the core of Sarah’s world, the people who were supposed to have her back, our fingertips resting with a grotesque, feigned lightness on the heart-shaped planchette: me, trying to steady my breathing; Leo, his usual sardonic smirk replaced by a pale, tense grimace; Chloe, whose quiet sobs had finally subsided into a shaky, terrified silence; Mark, his jaw set with a determined hope that was already starting to curdle into dread; and Ben, Sarah’s boyfriend, his eyes hollowed out from grief, his entire body trembling with a vibration that seemed to transmit directly from his soul into the cheap particle board of the Ouija board we’d bought from a toy store, of all godforsaken places. We’d chosen my house because it was neutral, because it wasn’t anywhere Sarah had lived or died—we assumed—and because the pervasive silence of my suburban neighborhood felt safer than the echoing emptiness of her apartment, but now that silence felt predatory, a held breath waiting to be exhaled in a scream. We’d started with the simple, stupid questions the internet told us to ask—“Is there anyone there?”—our voices thin and reedy in the oppressive dark, and for ten agonizing minutes, nothing, just the awkward shift of denim on carpet and the sound of our own hammering hearts, a collective failure that was almost a relief, and I was about to call it off, to suggest we just open a bottle of whiskey and drown our guilt the old-fashioned way, when the candle flame suddenly dipped and sputtered, casting the room into a frantic dance of darkness for a second before steadying again, and a current, like a weak jolt of electricity, seemed to pass through the planchette and into our fingers. It was Leo who felt it first, his head snapping up, his eyes wide, and then we all felt it, a subtle, undeniable tension, as if the plastic triangle was no longer an inert object but a living thing resting under our hands, and then it moved. It wasn’t a push from any one of us; it was a slow, deliberate, grinding slide, the sound of its little felt feet whispering across the board, a sound that was both ridiculously mundane and utterly, soul-chillingly obscene. It slid in a lazy circle once, twice, and then, with a sudden, shocking speed, it shot to the top right corner of the board, to ‘YES,’ and stopped with a definitive finality that made Chloe gasp and snatch her hand away like she’d been burned. “Don’t break the circle!” Mark hissed, his voice tight with a fear he was trying to mask with authority, and Chloe, weeping again, slowly returned her trembling fingers to the planchette, her knuckles white. Ben was the one who spoke, his voice cracked and broken, barely a whisper. “Sarah? Is that you? Are you there, baby?” The planchette didn’t hesitate. It dragged our collective hands back to ‘YES,’ this movement even faster, more sure, and a fresh wave of that unnatural cold washed over us, raising the hairs on my arms. Leo, ever the skeptic, even now, muttered, “This is bullshit, someone’s pushing,” but the tremor in his voice betrayed him, and as if in direct response to his doubt, the planchette violently jerked from the center of the board and began spelling, the movement so frantic we could barely keep our fingers on it, letters blurring together in a dizzying sprint. H-E-L-P. It spelled HELP. And then, M-E. A collective, sharp intake of breath. Chloe was openly crying now, a low, mournful sound. “Oh my god, Sarah,” I breathed, my own disbelief incinerated in that single, terrifying word. Ben leaned forward, his face a mask of anguish. “Where are you? Sarah, tell us where you are! Please!” The planchette went still for a moment, hovering in the center of the board as if gathering thought, and then it began moving again, not to the letters, but to the numbers. It glided to 4. Then 2. Then a decimal point. Then 7. 8. 1. 2. It was spelling numbers. It moved with a cold, digital precision, pausing for a fraction of a second between each digit. It went through a full sequence, a string of numbers that meant nothing to me in the moment, just a jumble of digits that felt alien and wrong emanating from this ancient-looking board with its sun and moon illustration. Mark, ever the practical one, the planner, had his phone out, his other hand still on the planchette, his eyes wide with a dawning, horrific comprehension. “It’s… it’s coordinates,” he stammered, his voice full of awe and terror. “Latitude and longitude. Holy shit. It’s giving us GPS coordinates. ” He read them back, his voice shaking, and the planchette, as if to confirm, slid back to ‘YES’ with a force that felt aggressive. My mind was reeling. This wasn’t happening. This was a party game, a piece of cardboard. It couldn’t be giving us a location to a… to a… I couldn’t even form the thought. Ben was sobbing, his head bowed, his tears spotting the board. “She’s… she’s not alive, is she?” he asked, though it wasn’t really a question, it was a surrender to a truth we were all desperately trying to outrun. The planchette moved, slow and heavy this time, as if weighted down by an immense sorrow. It went to ‘N’, then ‘O’. No. The finality of it was a physical blow. Chloe let out a wail that was quickly stifled by her own hand. Leo was pale, his skepticism utterly vaporized, replaced by a raw, primal fear. He looked like he was going to be sick. “Who did it?” The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it, a stupid, dangerous question asked in a hundred horror movies, a question you never, ever ask. The air in the room seemed to solidify, the cold intensifying until I could see my own breath pluming in the candlelight. The planchette remained dead still for a long, agonizing moment, and then it began to move, but this movement was different. It was no longer gliding; it was shuddering, vibrating under our fingers as if charged with a terrible, violent energy. It started to spell, but it was faster now, frantic, slamming into each letter with a force that made the entire board jump and skitter on the floor. H-E. It stopped. The candle flame guttered violently, nearly snuffing out, and for a heartbeat we were plunged into near-total darkness before it flared back up, burning an unnatural, sickly green for a second. My eyes were glued to the board. H-E. He. My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs. I looked up, my gaze flicking between the faces of my friends, their features distorted by the stark, dancing shadows. Leo, Mark, Ben. One of them? The planchette began to move again, still shaking, and it went to the ‘H’ again, then the ‘E’, as if stuck, and then it shot down to the bottom of the board, to ‘GOODBYE’, and then back to the center, moving in frantic, erratic circles. It was like watching a system crash, a mind break. A low sound began to fill the room, a sound that had no source, a dry, rustling whisper that seemed to come from every corner at once, like dead leaves skittering across pavement, and beneath it, something else, a wet, gurgling rasp that made my blood run cold. The whisper resolved itself, just on the edge of hearing, a chorus of faint, overlapping voices that seemed to say, “He’s here… he’s here… he’s here…” Ben whimpered, “Sarah? Is that you?” And then the planchette stopped its mad circling and spelled, with a terrible, cold clarity: Y-O-U K-N-O-W H-I-M. The rustling whisper grew louder, more insistent. I felt a pressure in my ears, a popping sensation, and a faint, coppery taste of blood filled my mouth. I saw Leo wipe his nose, and his hand came away smeared with red. Mark was breathing in short, sharp gasps, his eyes wide with terror. And then I looked at Ben. He was staring at his own hands, which were still on the planchette. Dark, thick blood was welling up from the center of his palms, dripping slowly onto the board, beading on the printed letters. He turned his hands over, his face a mask of confusion and horror. There were no cuts, no wounds. The blood was just… seeping out of his skin. “What the hell?” he whispered, his voice cracking. The whispering in the room seemed to coalesce, to focus, becoming a single, clear, agonized voice that I recognized, a voice that had laughed with me, cried with me, a voice that was now emanating from the very air around us, a spectral echo that bypassed the ears and spoke directly into the core of my brain. It was Sarah’s voice, but broken, filled with a pain that was unimaginable. “It hurts,” the voice whispered, and the candle flame dipped again. “My hands… they hurt so much. ” My eyes were locked on Ben’s bleeding palms, and a memory, sharp and terrible, lanced into my mind: Sarah talking about her passion for woodworking, how she’d just bought a new set of chisels, how sharp they were. Ben had joked that she should be careful, not to slip. A cold certainty began to dawn in me, a nightmare logic clicking into place. The planchette jerked under our fingers, pulling our attention back. It was moving with a new purpose, no longer frantic but deliberate, deadly calm. It went to ‘L’. Then ‘E’. Then ‘O’. Leo’s name. Leo’s eyes widened in terror and denial. “No! No, it wasn’t me! I loved her!” he screamed at the empty air, at the board, at us. The planchette paused, as if considering, and then it slowly, deliberately, slid away from the letters of his name and moved across the board, its path unwavering, until it came to rest directly under Ben’s blood-dripping fingers. It stopped. The whispering stopped. The room was plunged into a silence more deafening than any sound. Ben was shaking his head, back and forth, back and forth, his tears mixing with the blood on his hands. “No, no, no, no…” he chanted, a mantra of denial. The planchette began to move again, but Ben’s fingers weren’t moving with it. They were locked in place, white-knuckled, as the plastic heart dragged his rigid hands across the board. It spelled, letter by agonizing letter, each one a death knell: N-O-T H-I-M. It was talking to Leo. It was answering his plea. And then it moved again, turning, pointing like an accusing finger, dragging Ben’s resisting hands with it, stopping first at M, then at A, then at R, then at K. Mark’s face was a sheet of pure white. “Me?!” he cried out, his voice strangled. “I was in Denver! You know I was! There’s receipts, flight records!” The planchette held its position for a long, terrible second, and then, with what felt like a sigh in the very fabric of the air, it slid away from Mark’s name. The focus of the room, the oppressive, malignant attention, shifted. It left Mark and Leo. It left me. There was only one person left. All of us, our heads turned in perfect, horrifying unison. We looked at Ben. His face had changed. The grief, the anguish, the hollowed-out despair—it was all still there, but it was now layered over with something else, something cold and calculating and panicked that peered out from behind his eyes. His trembling had stopped. He was perfectly still, staring at the board, at his own blood, which was now flowing freely, dripping in a steady patter onto the floor, each drop a dark, accusing star in the candlelight. The Sarah-voice whispered again, this time with a venom that made my soul shrivel. “You said you loved me. You said you’d never hurt me. ” Ben’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. The planchette, seemingly of its own volition, its connection to us completely severed, began to move on its own. Our fingers were still on it, but we were no longer guiding it; we were just passengers, anchors for this thing that was now in full, terrifying control. It spelled out, slowly, so we could not possibly mistake it: Y-O-U D-I-D T-H-I-S. Ben screamed then, a raw, animal sound of pure terror, and tried to rip his hands away, but they were glued fast, as if fused to the plastic. The candle flame roared up, shooting a foot into the air, burning that same sickly, phosphorescent green, and in its hellish light, I saw it. For a fraction of a second, superimposed over Ben’s contorted features, was another face, a shifting, smoky mask of rage and agony and unbearable betrayal—Sarah’s face. And then it was gone. The planchette started moving faster and faster, spelling the same thing over and over again, a frantic, obsessive loop: M-U-R-D-E-R-E-R. M-U-R-D-E-R-E-R. M-U-R-D-E-R-E-R. The whispering became a roaring in my ears, a cyclone of anguish and fury. The windows in my living room began to rattle in their frames, a violent, shaking vibration. Pictures fell from the walls. The planchette was slamming into the board now, cracking the cardboard, the sound like gunshots in the small room. And then it stopped dead. The silence that followed was more violent than the noise. It was the silence of a grave. The candle flame shrank back to a tiny, steady blue pinprick. The planchette, cracked and smeared with Ben’s blood, slowly, agonizingly, dragged all of our limp, numb hands with it. It moved to the center of the board, and with a final, dreadful certainty, it spelled out four words that sucked all the air from the room, that sealed our fate, that confirmed the nightmare was not only real but was standing right beside us, his hands bleeding from wounds that weren’t his own. H-E-S I-N T-H-E R-O-O-M. We all looked up. We looked at Ben. And Ben looked back at us, and the last vestige of the man we knew vanished from his eyes, replaced by something utterly empty and cold, and he smiled, a thin, terrible smile that didn’t belong to him at all, and the voice that came out of his mouth was not his voice, but a dry, rasping parody that echoed from a shallow grave somewhere in the cold earth, a voice that said, “You shouldn’t have gone looking. ” The candle went out. And in the absolute, suffocating blackness, someone began to scream. The scream was my own, a raw, torn-from-the-throat sound that was immediately swallowed by the oppressive blackness, a darkness that wasn’t just an absence of light but a solid, smothering thing, thick with the smell of damp earth and something else, something metallic and coppery like old blood, and in that void, the only anchor was the feel of the cracked Ouija board under my knees and the cold, sticky wetness of Ben’s blood that had spattered onto my skin. Chaos erupted in the pitch black, a terrifying symphony of crashing furniture, panicked shouts, and guttural, choking sounds that I couldn’t place, and over it all, that other voice, that thing using Ben’s vocal cords, laughing a low, wet, rattling laugh that was utterly devoid of anything human. “You wanted to talk to her,” it gurgled, the sound moving, shifting in the dark, “so let’s all have a conversation. ” I scrambled backward on my hands and knees, my heart trying to batter its way out of my ribs, my breath coming in short, useless gasps, my shoulder slamming into the leg of my coffee table, a pain I barely registered. I could hear Chloe sobbing hysterically, a high-pitched, desperate keening, and Leo shouting, “The light! Someone get the goddamn light!” followed by a grunt and the sound of a body hitting the wall with a sickening thud. Mark was yelling, “Ben! Stop it! Jesus Christ, man, stop!” but his voice was tight with a terror that mirrored my own, the plea useless against whatever was wearing Ben’s skin. My fingers, numb and fumbling, scrambled across the carpet, searching for my phone, which I’d discarded earlier, praying it wasn’t under the couch or shattered in the melee, and my hand closed over cold, smooth glass—the candleholder, the candle long extinguished—and I flung it away, the sound of it shattering against the fireplace like a gunshot. The laughter stopped. The room fell into a sudden, breathless silence, broken only by Chloe’s ragged weeping and the frantic rustle of our movements. In that silence, a new sound emerged, a soft, shuffling drag, like something heavy being pulled across the Berber carpet, and it was close, too close, and I froze, my entire body tensed, every nerve screaming. Then, a whisper, right next to my ear, so close I could feel a faint, foul breath stir my hair, a whisper in that terrible, dual-toned voice, part Ben’s breaking baritone, part Sarah’s agonized rasp. “You’re the host. You should have better control of your guests. ” I screamed again, a short, sharp burst of pure instinct, and launched myself sideways, colliding with a bookshelf, sending a cascade of novels and knick-knacks crashing to the floor. Across the room, a screen suddenly glowed to life, casting a dim, blueish pallor over the nightmare—Mark had found his phone. The light was feeble, barely piercing the thick gloom, but it was enough to illuminate the scene in stark, horrifying fragments. Leo was on the floor by the entrance to the hallway, clutching his stomach, his face a mask of pain. Chloe was huddled in a ball behind an armchair, her hands pressed over her mouth, her eyes wide and unblinking. Mark stood near the shattered remains of the coffee table, phone held out like a weapon, his face ashen. And Ben… Ben was crouched in the center of the room, on his hands and knees like an animal, his head cocked at an unnatural angle. The blood from his palms had soaked into the cuffs of his shirt, creating dark, spreading stains. His eyes reflected the phone’s light like a cat’s, gleaming with a vacant, predatory malevolence. The Ouija board lay between us, the planchette resting squarely on ‘GOODBYE’. He was smiling, that same rictus grin that showed too many teeth. “Let’s play another game,” the thing inside him said, its voice a dry rustle. “Hide and seek. ” Before any of us could move, could react, could even process the words, Ben moved. It wasn’t a human movement; it was a burst of impossible, jerky speed, a marionette with its strings yanked. He didn’t run towards any of us; he scrambled sideways, up the wall, his body moving with a spider-like agility that made my mind recoil, and he vanished into the dark mouth of the hallway that led to my bedroom and the bathroom. The sound of his footsteps—a light, skittering tap that was completely wrong—echoed for a second and then was gone. For a heartbeat, there was silence again, and then Mark was moving, his practical nature clawing its way back through the terror. “The front door,” he hissed, lunging for it, his fingers fumbling for the deadbolt. Leo staggered to his feet, joining him, both of them working the locks. I crawled over to Chloe, pulling her from behind the chair. She was limp, shock setting in, her skin icy to the touch. “Come on, Chloe, we have to go, we have to get out,” I whispered, my voice trembling uncontrollably. The deadbolt clicked. Mark pulled the door open. And nothing. Not the familiar sight of my quiet cul-de-sac, the warm glow of streetlights, the neat rows of parked cars. Instead, a solid, impenetrable wall of fog pressed against the doorway, a swirling, oily mist that seemed to absorb the light from Mark’s phone, reflecting nothing back but a dull, gray emptiness. It was so thick it looked almost solid, and it carried with it a smell that made my stomach lurch—the smell of freshly turned soil, of rot, of that same coppery blood, and underneath it all, the faint, sweet scent of Sarah’s perfume, Chanel Mademoiselle, a ghostly ribbon woven through the stench. “What the hell?” Leo breathed, reaching a hand out tentatively into the fog. He jerked it back immediately with a sharp cry, shaking his fingers as if they’d been burned. “It’s cold,” he stammered, “like… dry ice. It hurts. ” From deep within the house, from the hallway, the laughter started again, echoing off the walls, seeming to come from everywhere at once. A door creaked open slowly. My bedroom door. Then a soft, rhythmic thump… thump… thump began, the sound of someone, or something, gently bouncing a ball. The sound was mundane, childish, and it was utterly, soul-destroyingly terrifying. “The back door,” Mark said, his voice tight with a desperation he was barely containing. “The kitchen. ” We moved as a single, terrified unit, a four-legged creature of pure fear, shuffling through the wreckage of my living room. I supported Chloe, who was barely walking, her feet dragging. Mark led with his phone, its light a pathetic beacon in the overwhelming dark. Leo brought up the rear, his head on a swivel, watching the black emptiness of the hallway behind us. The kitchen felt miles away. Every shadow seemed to writhe and twist. The thump… thump… thump from the back of the house continued, a taunting rhythm. As we passed the entrance to the dining room, a cold draft washed over us, and the whispering started again, not the chaotic rustle from before, but a single, clear voice, Sarah’s voice, filled with a desperate urgency. “He’s lying. Don’t listen. The hands… look at the hands…” The voice faded into a sob as we pushed into the kitchen. The back door was there, a simple pane of glass looking out onto my small, fenced yard. Or it should have been. Now, it was just another sheet of that same swirling, hungry fog, pressing against the glass, obscuring everything. Mark didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a cast-iron skillet from the stove and swung it at the window. The impact should have shattered the glass into a thousand pieces. Instead, it made a dull, muffled thud , as if he’d struck a sack of wet sand. The fog outside didn’t even ripple. He hit it again, harder, grunting with the effort. Same result. The window was unchanged. It was no longer an exit. It was a barrier. From the living room, the bouncing ball stopped. The silence that followed was worse. Then, a new sound. A drip. Slow. Deliberate. Drip… drip… drip… It was coming from the sink. I looked over. The faucet was off, but from its spout, a thick, dark liquid was welling up and falling in steady drops into the stainless steel basin. It wasn’t water. It was blood. It began to flow faster, a viscous stream that quickly began to fill the sink, the metallic smell flooding the small kitchen. Chloe moaned, her eyes rolling back in her head, and she sagged against me. Leo was hyperventilating, leaning against the refrigerator, his hands gripping his hair. “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening,” he chanted. Mark just stared at the overflowing sink, the blood now spilling over the edge and onto the tile floor, a spreading, dark pool. The laughter echoed from the hallway again, closer this time. The thing was coming back. “The phone,” I gasped, the thought finally piercing my panic. “Call the police! Call anyone!” Mark fumbled with his phone, his blood-smeared fingers slipping on the screen. He cursed, wiped his hand on his jeans, and tried again. He held it up, his face collapsing. “No service. No bars. Nothing. ” He dialed 911 anyway, putting it on speaker. Instead of a ringtone, a low, droning hum emanated from the speaker, a sound that slowly resolved into a multitude of whispered, overlapping voices, all saying the same thing, over and over: “Too late… too late… he’s here… he’s here…” Mark dropped the phone as if it had burned him. It clattered to the bloody floor, the whispers continuing to spill from it, fainter now. We were trapped. Completely and utterly trapped in my own house, which was no longer my house but a haunted, bleeding prison. The door to the kitchen, the one that led back to the living room, began to swing slowly shut with a long, drawn-out creak. We all watched it, paralyzed, as it closed with a soft, definitive click. The lock engaged by itself. We were sealed in. And then the lights in the kitchen flickered once, twice, and buzzed to life. The sudden, blinding fluorescence was almost as shocking as the darkness had been. We all flinched, shielding our eyes. The overhead light was harsh, unforgiving, illuminating the bloody sink, the pool on the floor, our own terrified, pale faces. The fog was still pressed against the window, a churning gray wall. And sitting at the kitchen table, which had been empty a moment before, was Ben. He was just sitting there, in his usual chair, his hands resting palms-up on the table. The bleeding had stopped. He looked… normal. Tired, sad, but normal. The malevolent light was gone from his eyes. He looked at us, his expression one of profound confusion and fear. “Guys?” he said, and his voice was his own, weak and shaky. “What… what’s happening? I blacked out. I had a… a nightmare. ” He looked down at his blood-crusted hands, his eyes widening in genuine horror. “What is this? What did I do?” For a second, a treacherous, desperate second, hope flared in my chest. It was Ben. Our Ben. He was back. The thing was gone. Leo took a hesitant step forward. “Ben? Is that you?” Ben looked up, tears welling in his eyes. “Leo? Man, I’m so scared. I don’t know what’s going on. I remember the board, and then… nothing. Just pain. ” He held up his hands. “What happened to me?” He sounded so lost, so broken. My grip on Chloe loosened slightly. Mark’s shoulders slumped in relief. The nightmare was receding. We had our friend back. We could figure this out together. And then Ben’s eyes, full of tears, locked with mine. And in their depths, for just a flicker, I saw it. A cold, sharp glint of amusement. A lie. It was a performance. A perfect, cruel mimicry. Before I could shout a warning, before I could even open my mouth, his expression shifted back to one of pitiable fear. “My head,” he moaned, lowering his face into his hands. “It hurts so much. Can someone… can someone get me some aspirin? It’s in the bathroom cabinet. Please. ” He sounded so pathetic, so in pain. Mark, ever the helper, the one who always fixed things, nodded, his own fear momentarily overridden by the need to aid his friend. “Yeah, man. Yeah, of course. I’ll get it. ” He turned toward the door that led to the interior hallway, the one we’d just come from, the one that was now locked. “Don’t,” I said, the word a dry croak. Mark paused, his hand on the lock. He looked back at me, then at Ben, who was now rocking gently, his face still hidden, a low moan coming from him. “He’s in pain,” Mark said, his voice pleading, wanting this to be over, wanting to believe the lie. “It’s just in the bathroom. I’ll be right back. ” He turned the lock. It clicked open easily. He pulled the door open, stepping into the dark hallway beyond. “Mark, no!” Leo shouted, lunging forward. It was too late. The moment Mark’s foot crossed the threshold, the door slammed shut with a force that shook the entire wall, the lock engaging again with a sound like a hammer falling. From the other side, there was a moment of utter silence, and then a scream—Mark’s scream—cut short by a wet, crunching tear, a sound that was horribly, nauseatingly final. Then, nothing. Ben stopped rocking. He slowly lifted his head from his hands. The pathetic, fearful expression was gone. In its place was that same empty, cold smile. He looked at the closed door, then back at us, and he winked. “One down,” the thing that was not Ben said. Leo’s reaction was instantaneous and pure, a raw explosion of grief and rage that overrode the paralyzing fear; he let out a roar that was half sob, half battle cry, and launched himself across the kitchen, not at Ben, but at the block of knives on the counter, his hand closing around the handle of the largest chef’s knife just as Ben—no, not Ben, the thing, the thing —rose from the chair with an unnatural, languid grace, the chair legs scraping against the bloody tile with a shriek that set my teeth on edge. Chloe, jolted from her catatonia by the sound of Mark’s death and Leo’s fury, scrambled backward on her hands and knees until she hit the cabinets under the sink, her breath coming in ragged, whistling gasps, her eyes wide and unblinking, fixed on the monstrosity that wore our friend’s face. The thing didn’t even look at Leo; it kept its hollow, gleaming eyes on me, its head tilting again, that awful, predatory curiosity back in its gaze, and it took a step toward me, its movement a fluid, boneless glide that was utterly wrong. “You’re the heart, aren’t you?” it rasped, Ben’s voice now completely subsumed by that other, graveyard tone. “The organizer. The one who brought them all here. You wanted answers. You’re so… noisy . ” Leo, with the knife held high, charged, a desperate, clumsy lunge driven by terror and a need for vengeance. The thing didn’t turn. It simply raised a hand, a casual, almost dismissive gesture, and Leo froze in mid-step, his body locking up as if he’d hit an invisible wall, his face contorted in a rictus of strain and shock, the knife trembling in his rigid grip. A thin trickle of blood began to seep from his nose again, then from his ears, tracing dark paths down his neck. The thing smiled, a slow, cruel stretching of lips. “The skeptic. So loud. So… doubt-filled. The noise hurts her. It hurts me. ” It made a slight flicking motion with its fingers, and Leo was thrown backward as if by a giant, unseen hand. He flew across the kitchen, crashing into the refrigerator with a sickening crunch of bone and metal, slumping to the floor in a heap, motionless, the knife clattering away into a corner. The thing didn’t even glance his way. It took another step toward me, and the smell of turned earth and old blood intensified, a physical wave of nausea that made my stomach clench. I was backing away, but there was nowhere to go, just the cold, bloody counter at my back, the pool of Mark’s blood soaking into my socks. Chloe was sobbing quietly, a hopeless, lost sound. The thing was close now, so close I could see the fine details of the blood dried in the lines of Ben’s palms, could see the faint, pulsing blackness that seemed to swim just behind his eyes. It reached out a hand, not to strike me, but to touch my face, its fingers hovering an inch from my cheek, and the air around them was frigid, burning with a cold that felt like frostbite. “She’s still in here, you know,” it whispered, its voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. “Pieces of her. Scraps. She fought. Oh, how she fought. It was the best part. ” Its eyes flicked down to my throat, and its smile widened. “She screamed your name. At the end. Did you know that? She thought you’d come. She thought her friends would save her. ” The words were a physical blow, each one a dagger of ice plunging into my heart. The guilt, the horror, the sheer, unbearable grief of that image—Sarah, in her final moments, calling for me, for us—unraveled the last shred of my composure. A dry, heaving sob escaped my lips. The thing’s eyes lit up with a vile pleasure. “Yes. That’s it. That’s the sound. That’s the music. ” Its fingers moved closer, about to make contact, and I knew with a cold, absolute certainty that its touch would be the end of everything, that it would freeze my soul solid. But then, from the living room, the Ouija board, forgotten on the floor, began to rattle. It was a violent, insistent vibration, a buzzing like a monstrous hornet trapped under cardboard. The thing’s head snapped around, its concentration broken, its expression shifting from cruel amusement to a flicker of what looked like annoyance, a crack in its monstrous facade. The whispering started again, but this time it wasn’t a chaotic chorus; it was a single, clear, determined voice, Sarah’s voice, strained with an immense effort, cutting through the oppressive atmosphere like a shard of glass. “Fight… him…” the voice whispered from the other room, the words punctuated by the frantic rattling of the planchette. “His… name… say… his… name…” The thing snarled, a low, animal sound of fury, and turned fully away from me, taking a step toward the kitchen door, its intention to silence this final, stubborn remnant of the woman it had destroyed clear in its posture. And in that moment, a memory, pristine and horrifying, slammed into my mind. Ben, weeks ago, drunk and maudlin after a party, confessing a childhood secret he’d sworn me to never repeat, a shame that had festered in him for years, a deep, irrational fear born of a superstitious grandmother and a lifetime of Catholic guilt. “She used to tell me,” he’d slurred, his head in his hands, “that my middle name, my real one, the one on my baptismal certificate that even my parents never use… she said it was a demon’s name. That if it was ever spoken aloud, it would give a thing power over me. Stupid, right? But I can’t shake it. It feels like a… a weakness. A key. ” He’d never told me the name itself, but he’d told me where to find it, a drunken, paranoid impulse to have someone else know his secret shame, just in case. “It’s in the family bible, at my mom’s house. On the family tree page. My full, stupid, cursed name. ” I didn’t have the bible. But I had something else. I had the ghost of the woman he’d murdered, screaming it at me from beyond the grave, using the only tool she had left. The rattling from the living room became frenzied, a desperate, pounding rhythm. The thing roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated hatred that shook the walls, and it lunged for the kitchen door, its form seeming to blur and stretch, no longer even pretending to be fully human. And I knew. I knew it was going to destroy that last echo of Sarah, that final, struggling spark of her, and then it would turn back to us, and it would take its time. My eyes darted around the bloody kitchen, landing on Leo’s still form, on Chloe’s terrified face, on the closed door behind which Mark’s broken body lay, and a cold, clear resolve settled over me, cutting through the terror like a scalpel. This thing had used our grief, our friendship, our love for Sarah as a weapon against us. It had worn Ben’s skin and used his secrets. But it had forgotten one thing. It had forgotten that we knew him, too. And we knew his weaknesses. As the thing’s hand closed on the doorknob, I sucked in a breath that burned my lungs, and I screamed it, screamed the name with every ounce of strength, every shred of hope, every bit of love I had left for my friend and for the woman he had killed, a name that felt alien and powerful on my tongue, a name that was not Ben’s, but was irrevocably his. “CASSIAN!” The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic. The thing froze, its back arching violently as if it had been shot. It let out a shriek that was not of anger, but of pure, unadulterated agony, a sound that was both Ben’s and the demon’s and something else entirely, a fusion of pain that was horrifying to witness. It clutched at its head, stumbling away from the door, its body convulsing, the air around it shimmering like a heat haze. The lights in the kitchen flickered wildly, strobing the nightmare scene. In the living room, the rattling of the Ouija board reached a deafening crescendo and then stopped dead. The thing that was Cassian, that was Ben, fell to its knees, writhing on the bloody floor, its form flickering, for a second I saw Ben’s face, terrified and confused, his eyes meeting mine, pleading, and then the black, empty eyes of the possessor, and then Ben’s again, a horrific tug-of-war happening right in front of me. “Again!” Sarah’s voice screamed from the living room, a final, triumphant, exhausted command. “SAY IT AGAIN!” I did. I lunged forward, standing over the convulsing form of my friend, my tears falling onto his contorted face, and I screamed it, over and over, each utterance a hammer blow. “CASSIAN! CASSIAN! CASSIAN!” With each name, the thing inside him shrieked, its hold weakening, its form becoming less substantial, a dark, smoky energy beginning to seep from Ben’s mouth, his nose, his eyes. The house itself seemed to be groaning, the pressure in the air building to an unbearable degree. The fog outside the window churned violently. And then, with a final, earsplitting roar of fury and defeat, a black, shapeless cloud of pure malice erupted from Ben’s body, hovering in the air for a second, a vortex of whispered hatred and broken promises, before it was sucked violently backward, through the kitchen door, down the hallway, toward the living room, and with a sound like a vacuum seal popping, it was gone. The silence that followed was absolute. The lights stabilized. The fog outside the window vanished, revealing the familiar, mundane sight of my moonlit backyard. The blood on the floor, on the sink, was still there, a horrific testament to the reality of it all. Ben lay unconscious on the floor, breathing shallowly, his face pale but his own, the terrible presence utterly vanished. Leo groaned from his corner, beginning to stir. Chloe uncurled from her ball, her sobs quieting into stunned silence. It was over. It was finally over. I sank to my knees, the adrenaline draining from me so completely I thought I might pass out, my body trembling with a violence that felt like it would shake me apart. I looked toward the living room, toward where the board lay, and I felt a gratitude so profound it was a physical ache. She had saved us. Sarah had saved us. And then Ben’s eyes fluttered open. He blinked, confused, in pain, his gaze focusing on me. He tried to speak, his voice a dry croak. “What… what happened?” he managed, his eyes filled with a genuine, dazed confusion. “My head… it feels like…” And that’s when I saw it. Just for a fraction of a second, a fleeting shadow deep in the pupil of his right eye. A tiny, sharp glint of cold, amused intelligence. It was there and then gone, so fast I could almost believe I’d imagined it, replaced by Ben’s familiar, pain-filled gaze. But I knew. I knew with a certainty that turned my blood to ice. It wasn’t gone. It had just gone deeper. It had retreated, hiding in the darkest, most broken part of him, biding its time. The name had hurt it, had forced it back, but it hadn’t destroyed it. It was still in there. Cassian was still in the room. And it was still smiling.
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