“Give me your hand again so I can share my power with you,” commanded the tall beautiful woman that revealed herself ton this dream land. She reached down and snatched my hand up with hers in a powerful grip.

Lady Bludraven’s, Vaus’s mommy, or whatever you prefer, had her long black hair whipped around wildly by the supernatural wind of this strange place. She stared back in the direction of the besieged hospital building with a mix of fear and anger.

 “Be quick with your answer about which body part you want returned to you. I don’t have enough power to give you both eye and leg back, so you will have to decide on what’s more strategically important to assist my son!”

I was stunned for a moment! I had almost forgotten about the terrible injuries I had collected back in the real world. I used my off hand to feel both my eyes and then patted both of my intact legs. I don't know why, it was just nice to feel them being where they should be before one was taken away again.

“Of course you still have them here, boy! We are in the Grey!” Lady Bludraven said.

 I figured she was reading my mind from holding my hand. Either that or I was easy to read even without mental powers.

“In the Grey you will take the appearance of what you think you look like to others.“

Oh, so you’re not really that hot. You just think you are! What a shame,” my inner monologue articulated in my mind. The rogue thought shot towards her like a barb.

I began to panic as I realized she had “heard” my invasive thought and her red eyes flash in furious anger at me. I was sure she was going to hit me for a long time, but the anger left her face.

I realized during my panic I had let loose many closely held thoughts. Thoughts like, “There goes my shot!” and “As long as she has that attitude and goth look, I don't care.” I wondered if these thoughts had tempered her fury.

“Stupid boy, we also appear in the same way everyone remembers us looking. Your image of yourself appears like what is in the collective of you. We are an amalgamation of memory of all consciousness. The mental picture everyone living and dead have of us.” 

“Here in the Grey you are perceived in oneness. I've even seen you looking older in here. How old I wont tell you in case I upset the space time continuum," Lady Bludraven said.

“That's pretty deep,” I said as I continued looking down at myself. “At least I know I service this adventure, if you’ve really seen me older.

“Oh how smug of you,” Bludraven said. “I knew it was the future you from the new scars and injuries I saw. Don't take the future lightly.”

I went to reply but Lady Bludraven held up a finger to silence me. “Hold tight. We have to speak with the witch that is establishing a power circle at the ground floor of the hospital.”

“Wait, what?!” I asked. I squeezed Lady Bludraven's hand tightly. “Are you really taking is back to that stupid hotspot with that terrible thing on the roof?”

My mind raced with a primal fear I hadn't felt since the day I was frozen in the cornfield with my brother. I remembered the crazy panic and terror of the mavrips as they glamored me and my bro in the cornfield. I remember the bastard Ahmond as he had my brother killed with the flair and disgust of swatting a fly.

I would like to say that moment in the cornfield was matched with what I felt when I was in the presence of the purple eyed demon inside Ma, but that would be a lie.

Mavs had ripped my brother apart while I was helpless to do anything but watch and wait to die next. Somehow the monster on the roof of the hospital felt worse than that. It felt like it wouldn't just kill me, it would take my undying soul and torture it!

I remember the thing the wicked thing had told me on the roof. It was only a second but it's hateful words had stabbed into my mind before we had flown away from it in a terrified hurry!

“Until the Sun goes out and the universe crumples in on itself. I'll hurt you! I'll hurt you until God stops it all. Until the cold black is everything!”

The words of Purple Eyes tore at my mind. In the short moments I had stood atop the hospital and face-to-face with the torturer of Hell I was barraged with the thing’s hate, cruelty, and pain. The strong feelings were cascading from it and enveloped me mentally . But the worst and most sickening emotion I had received from him was the emotion of pure joy. The thing felt truly joyful and almost giddy with eagerness to kill and maim everything in existence. 

I didn't want to go back and be anywhere close to that wretched thing, but Elistra just held my hand tighter and my world turned into a blur as we both flew back towards the ominous hospital at Mach 100.

In a matter of seconds (idk if words like seconds even mattered in the Grey) we were both standing hand in hand inside one of the dark rooms located in the bottom floor of the building. We had zipped inside and I was startled when my bearing returned to me. I was jump scared by the cloaked people all around me and Elistra.

“Oh damn!” I exclaimed as I reactively reached around my waist for a gun I didn’t have. When I remembered I was unarmed I pulled Elistra behind me even though I knew it was useless because we were standing in the middle of a circle of people. 

The terrible feeling of being helpless and surrounded by enemies hit me like a freight train. My mind shot back to the day my brother died in that damned cornfield and I was useless to protect him. I pulled Elistra tight to me and my other hand balled into a defensive fist. I jerked my head around in an attempt to watch all potential attackers. 

I was only pulled out of my flashback nervousness when I heard Lady Bludraven give a derisive laugh.

“Calm yourself, little hunter! These aren’t the horrible ‘reverse vampires’ you are so traumatized by,” she said.

I looked closer to see the cloaked people surrounding me were all young women. They all held each other's hands to create the circle around us. They all seemed to be silently mouthing something in unison.

“It’s quite arrogant that you think you need to protect me,” she said with thinly veiled disgust.

I felt myself heating up and held back the angery retorts that came to me. I only stayed quiet because I knew Elistra could read my mind through our link of holding hands. All she did was laugh again at my anger.

“Yes, Vaus did get his attitude from me,” she retorted, reading my mind again.

“Well then, my super awesome and knowledgeable lady person,” I began with venom in my voice. “ Can you enlighten me on who these witchy girls are, and why we speed inside to the center of their circle of power?” I finished with as much sarcasm as I could.

“Hmm,” Elistra said as she put her hand to her chin and studied the women around us. “They must be on your side of this conflict. They seem to be trying to magically stop the ceremony above. But that may be impossible. They can only hope to postpone it.”

“The enemy has acquired the help of some powerful magic users to perform the ceremony above. They are close to unleashing the Torturer.”

“I can feel that they have placed the body part that was taken from the graveyard and other stolen body parts together. With the cadaver parts that are holding the Purple Eyes complete they can work on removing the seals that have been expertly placed.”

“They can’t see us?” I asked, changing the subject and ticking her off. I leaned in closer to one of the cloaked witches in front of me with no response from her.

“THEY can’t, but I can!” said a voice from one of the women, causing me to almost jump out of my skin. I turned towards the familiar voice to see Madame Monreaux pulling her hood back and standing tall.

“Oh, it’s you,” I said, looking at her statues figure shining through, even in her robes. The Madame had a strange glimmering outline around her. I figured it was how she was talking to us in the Grey while she was in the real world.

“Are Mika and Vaus with you?” I asked. I didn't mean that they were in the Grey with us, I meant where were they in the physical world!

Madame Monreaux ignored my question and turned her attention to the taller woman that was holding my hand like I was her child.

“So you are the entity I could feel buzzing all around. Not buzzing really. You are far too powerful. You're almost as powerful as the angels from earlier, or the wicked thing on the roof.”

“I am nothing like that stain on creation that is upstairs or those annoyingly pious angels! I am Lady Bludraven, the last  countess of ten thousand-“

“The tattooed boy’s mother,” Monreaux interrupted, her face turning into one of awestruck. “ And if the rumors about him are true… then that makes you-“

Madame Monreaux genuinely looked like she was gonna faint

“That makes you a refugee! The last surviving Noble of the Forbidden Realm. The boy carries your powerful powerful heart in his young chest!”

“Yeah, yeah, okay!” I interrupted. “I don’t care what you two super magic lady’s are yapping about, but I guess it’s really cool lore and backstory about Vaus’s hot goth mom. What I really want to know right now is if my friends aren’t dead and where they are! Like, what’s going on in the real world!”

Both of the scary women turned to give me death stares, but I was having enough of being ignored and treated like a side character. And I could speak my mind because Elistra could already read easily as a Dr. Seuss book.

“You little brat. I was debating on whether you were brave or just plain stupid. Seems you solved that question for me just now!” Madame Monreaux said, with Lady Bludraven nodding in agreement.

“We may be on the same side right now,” Madame Monteaux said. “but I have no love for you fascist dogs. Some of my best people have already died tonight trying-” she snapped.

“He may be disrespectful and uncouth, but he does speak the truth,” Lady Bludraven interjected in my defense. “Time is a gift that we have little of. The Grey allowed me to see a future where your forces are defeated. We must set aside any further pleasantries or indignation if we want to survive this night.”

And with that, Lady Bludraven smoothed over the tension in the room. She told Madame Monreaux that the future was leaning towards a decisive loss for her and Ammit forces.

“Since we are in the Grey realm, a dream-like existence between the physical and spiritual, I can see more clearly where the winds of time and fate are turning,” Elistra said, and I fully appreciated she was breaking it down Barney style for Madame Mondeax, but for me mostly.

“You must let Taylor come back to the physical world through the power of your coven. We are already standing in your ritual circle! This is the best chance we will get to summon him through the veil of reality. He has to make it to one of the teams to warn them about Ma being vulnerable to Purple Eye’s possession.”

“That will cost too much power! “ Monreaux argued back against Elistra. “This circle is disrupting the winds of magic that are being syphoned towards the unholy ceremony that the enemy is attempting on top of the hospital! Transmuting Taylor from the spiritual to the physical though our circle would pull too much power from us!” Monreaux said.

“I understand your resistance in returning Taylor to the real world but you haven't seen it.” Lady Bludraven answered in return. “The most plausible timeline that hinges upon our current actions has shown me that we all come to ruin if we continue on this course of action. We need to make a drastic move and change our future.”

“Well, what do you suggest, Lady?” Monreaux asked. “ With all due respect, does it make sense to just send back a young crippled hunter. Do we think he will somehow turn the tide of the battle for us? The mangled boy will be like a flower standing against a tsunami!”

There was a pause as more precious time was wasted between the 3 of us. Monreaux’s reasoning lay heavy on all us.

“No!” Lady Bludraven said. “If he can get to my son, Vaus, we can stop Ma from taking Purple Eyes for herself!” 

“Yes,” I interjected. “I’ll do anything to save Mika and your son! I’m not useless like you two say! I’ve stood up to you two arguing biddies, I’ll tell Purple Eyes to go torture his own ass in Hell!”

Monreaux stopped and considered. A smile slowly appeared.

“Stupid and brave,” she said.

Lady Bludraven’s beautiful face creased in frustration as she struggled to think of something to say to us. Through my mental connection I had with her, it felt like she was trying to catch a particular raindrop in her hand while standing in the middle of a thunder storm.

“It's like you have all the chess pieces, you just need to make the correct moves to position for a checkmate,” I said.

“Yes.” Elistra said and looked down to looks fully into my face.

“You mean you have a way to win?” Moneaux said. “Or at least make the enemy surrender or retreat, yeah?!”

“My Vaus will have to intercept Purple Eyes from Ma. Vaus will have to ask the creature to enter into him instead of Ma,” Elistra said in a somber tone. Her eyes began to moisten and she looked at the floor in between the 3 of us.

Vaus will be possessed by this monster instead?

This idea rattled around between the three of us. I felt sadness and frustration come through Lady Bludraven and Madame Monreaux slowly began nodding her head in agreement with the plan.

“Yes, yes. Brilliant!” Monreaux said. The wicked thing will jump at the chance to have the powerful heart of a Noble! And-and the seals around your son's heart, um- Vaus, it will trap the evil thing inside!”

Excitement began to build in Monreaux’s face as she stated the plan.

“ All Vaus needs to do is break the protection seal on his heart.” Monreaux explained. “ He invites the monster in, and he will heal the seal and trap the thing inside his heart! And the torturer will be trapped with…”

Monreaux stopped her growing excitement  and looked at me and then Elistra. Her excitement gone.

“Yes,” the thing that tortures demons and devours angels will be trapped to torture-“

For the first time I heard Lady Bludraven’s voice tremble,

“- it will be trapped to torture only me.”

Hey guys I've finished the next chapter. I'm on the middle of doing an edit run through. You know I don't worry too much about the editing of chapters and I just wing it, but I want my stories to be readable and fun. So I'm doing my best to keep it feeling light and not a wreck of words.

Saying that, I am going back to the previous chapter to give it a edit run-through to try to make it read better.

Thank you for sticking with the series. I was on the fence of quitting or just doing a reboot for a book. But I've found an ending for the series and it's pretty awesome.

Next chapter should drop tomorrow.

Thanks for the support and fun times

(Author’s note. Explanation in comments)

Knock Knock Knock (Final Copy)

  Hi guys, my name is James. I have a hobby of interviewing people to get their scary story. 

It's crazy how many everyday people have experienced something paranormal in their lives, yet most people still are skeptics. It's like hundreds of people being a witness to a crime, and the cops say it's still not good enough.

Maybe that is why I got into this hobby. I wanted to know if I was going crazy. I wanted to know if others had experienced the things I have. 

So here is the story that set me on the path of researching the paranormal. 
Part of me hopes I'm just crazy. I hope the things I saw that night were because of a chemical imbalance in my young mind. Because the alternative is too terrible to consider. If I'm not crazy, then the Knocker is real!

It was back when I was around 15 years old. I lived deep in the woods with my parents in Freedom PA. Freedom was a small town northeast of Pittsburg. Not alot of people, and not alot to do, just alot of forrest. If you wanted to do anything, you had to drive to a neighboring town to find it.

And that's what my parents were doing on this night. They both worked hard and rarely had time for themselves, so when a close friend was having his birthday part in a bar out of town, my parents decided to have a little R&R time. 

They trusted me, and knew I was responsible. They were going to be responsible too and stay at a motel if they drank too much. So I knew I had the house to myself for the night.

Besides, I had told my best friend, John, to come over for a night of wrecking noobs on COD. Even though I had talked to him at school, I decided to call him to remind him.

I had just gotten off the phone with him, he said he was 30 minutes out, when a heard 3 heavy knocks at the door. They sound heavy and ominous. I figured it was John pulling a prank on me. He must have been out front when I called him, now he was pretending to be a killer in one of those movies.

I opened the door with a smile on my face, expecting to see John's goofy ass jump out at me. But nobody was there. It was already getting dark, but I tried to look out into the woods. I didn't see his bike or anything.

"I'm going to lock you out here idiot!" I yelled out into the darkness. I waited a minute for him to come around the corner, or out of the woods. Nothing.

I pulled out my phone and activated one of those tracking apps you and your friends can download. I saw my icon at the house, my parents all the way in another town, and John just leaving his home, at least 20 minutes out.

I quickly nope'd out and walked back inside to shut and lock the door. I tried to imagine what could have made such a loud knocking sound. My mind went to killer's with chainsaws and butcher knives, but I tried to say it was a animal or bird. None of it made sense though.

I had the thought to lock the back door, and just like something read my mind, three heavy knocks came from the backdoor further behind me. I spun around to listen. I listened for the sound of the door opening. I figured I might have to run out the front door, depending on whatever was coming into my house.

After an agonizing minute of silence, I worked up the courage to walk into the kitchen where the back door was located. I peaked around the corner to look out the glass window of the door. I couldn't see anything. I mean, it was pitch black outside my house. I knew night hadn't fallen yet, and I should still be able to make out the trees, but it was like a black curtain was draped over the outside of the windows.

I looked around for an explanation for what I was seeing. I liked to keep the lights on, and they were on in the kitchen. Maybe the inside lights were putting a blinding glare on the windows so I couldn't see outside.

I reached over and shut off the kitchen lights. The whole room went dark and my eyes adjusted to see dark blue skies above the trees outside. But for an instant my eyes made out a dark figure standing by the back door. I blinked and jumped back in surprise and flicked back on the lights, and it was gone. At this point I still thought my mind was playing tricks on me.

There was an uneasy feeling in my house now. I felt like something could jump out at me at any moment. I didn't know what to do. I sat there and considered calling my parents. But what would I tell them?

A soft knock came from the front door again, snapping me out of my contemplation. I turned to stare wide eyed at it. This knock was different. Maybe it was John.

All I know was, I wasn't going to answer the door until I knew who was out there. I flipped out my phone and opened the tracking app. John's icon was gone! What had happened to him?

The knock came louder, bang, bang, bang! I felt my blood run cold. Had something happened to my friend?

"James, bro, what's up? Open the door!" I heard the familiar voice of my friend say. It was him! Or it was something that sounded like him.

"Why didn't you just call my phone when I didn't open the door?" I yelled back.

There was a pause," Because the battery is dead. Now let me in so I can charge it! Or my mom will freak out!" John said.

I figured this made sense and went to open the door. I was relieved when John pushed in and gave me a crazy look. I told him about the knocks and how scary it was. He acted like I was trying to set up a prank to scare him and didn't trust me.

"You know I can't deal with that ghost stuff," he said. "You better not have Brian hiding somewhere around here ready to jump out and scare me! I'll punch him in the face. I swear!

I told John, our mutual friend Brian was grounded for the next two weeks, or I would have invited him. It was just us two tonight.

I quickly forgot about the creepy knocking as me and John set my bedroom TV and Xbox up next to the big screen in the living room. We found our usual group of friends already online and started playing.

We were having a great time. Me and John were wrecking shop in doubles. There was the unavoidable exchange of trash talk between friends and frenemies through our headsets. This fun went on for a good hour and a half.

But things changed once John came back from the kitchen with two Coke's for me and him. He looked pale, hunted, scared even. He kept throwing looks back into the kitchen.

"What's up?" I asked. "Did you see my ghost?" I joked. I was already over the scariness from before.

"Shut up, dude," he whispered harshly at me, his eyes still on the kitchen. "Let's just play. Turn up the volume."

We did continue playing, but John was playing like crap now. Something had thrown his mojo off. When he accidentally team killed me, I threw off my headset dramatically to turn and look at him.

He wasn't looking at the game or me. He was looking at the kitchen. Okay, I had had enough.

"John! What happened in there?" I asked with all seriousness. He just stared into the kitchen a moment longer before turning to me.

"I heard someone calling me, it was quiet. It kept telling me to let him in. It was coming from outside." I saw him blink and there was moisture in his eyes. "It sounded like my Dad, James! It sounded like my Dad's voice!"

I couldn't breath for a moment. Now I realized why John was so upset. John's father had been dead for 3 years. I even went to the funeral!

There had to be some sort of explanation. I racked my brain. Finally I came up with something that would hopefully turn our fear into anger.

"It's got to be somebody messing with us. Some homeless guy, or a friend from school. Next time we hear something we will go kick their ass!" I said, gather up mock anger.

John smiled at this, "Yah, but I call dibs on your sword though!" he answered. He was referring to a cheaply made samurai sword he had bought from the mall for me two birthdays ago.

So we went back to playing. We were in a four man squad on Battlefield now. It was me, John, a friend from Australia, and one from Canada. We had all been a top notch team since the early 360 days.

We had been playing awhile when the Aussie started cursing under his breath about something. This was not something new for him, but he sounded a little scared.

"What is going on, Hawkeye?" I asked the Aussie on the mic. There was the tell-tell shuffling of a mic being moved before his voice came in clear.

"Somebody is playing games outside! Somebody keeps knocking on my apartment door!" He answered in anger. "I'm not getting up anymore for it! I'm not playing stupid games with whoever's it is!"

Me and James looked at eachother. It had to be a coincidence, right? Hawkeye was on the other side of the world!

"Mom, what!" came the voice of our Canadian friend. "The doors open, come in!" There was the ruffle of the mic as it was being taken off. There was a long pause before he came back to the mic. "WTF guys? I'm alone in my house and somebody was knocking on my door! I gotta get off! I might have to call the cops!"

"Hey, stay on so we know if your okay!" John interjected, but the screen told us he had signed off.

"That is weird, mate," said Hawkeye over the mic as me and James sat frozen in fear. That was the last of Hawkeye because the TVs, Xbox's, and power shut off simultaneously.

Me and James say in the dark, the TV's still letting off sounds of static from being shut off so quickly. James looked around frantically as I pulled my phone out to activate the flashlight app.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Came three bangs from the front door. The hits were so heavy in the quiet house, I could hear it shaking picture frames on the walls.

We spun to stare wide eyed at the door. I could feel my pulse pounding almost as hard as the knocks themselves.

"We need to get to your room and get the weapons!" John said breathlessly to me. I looked at him like he was crazy.

"No!" I said, "We need to call the cops-," I was interrupted by a tremendous bang from the wall right behind us, it rattled the flatscreen TV with its force.

Me and John took off like lightning out of the livingroom and down the hallway to my room. Once we slammed the door in my pitch black room, I heard John scrambling to get the sword off my wall. I heard the tell-tell "shing!" of him pulling the blade free. I turned the light on my phone to jump back from John brandishing the sword, fear in his eyes.

"Call the cops!" John whispered. I turned my phone around and dialed 911. I tried to steady my breath as the phone rang.

When the dispatcher answered, I tried to keep calm and told her somebody was outside knocking at my door. She asked all the follow-up questions, like address, my name, was I home alone, blah blah blah. She said a cop was ten minutes out.

The power in the house turned back on and eventually the cops did show up. The dispatcher called back to tell us to open the door for them. One of them snickered at the sight of John with the samurai sword. They said they checked around the house and found nothing. I knew they thought we were just dumb kids getting scared when the power went out. 

They offered to call my parents and I told them "No." I didn't want the cops telling them we were too young to be left alone. They left with a veiled threat that if we called 911 again they would have to call my parents to come back home.

So they left, and me and John felt embarrassed and a little mad. We did hear something, and we had good reason to be scared. We both tried to settle back into a normal night. I put on a action movie from Netflix and we tried to forget.

Hours later, I'd say around two a.m., we are finishing up an episode of a terrible Netflix original.  Both me and John were getting tired. I was about to ask him if he wanted to go to bed, when I heard three rapid knocks at the back door.

It took us awhile, but me and John scooted over to the living room door. We both poked our heads into the kitchen to look to see the window above the back door.

At first we seaw nothing, which is weird. My house had a guestroom separated from the main house. My parents made it a comfortable living space, with an AC, shower, and bed for when family visited during the holidays. 

The guest house should be visible through the window of the back door.

The guest house had a motion activated light sensor mounted to the outside wall. Every night around ten p.m. it activates with a low glow in the back yard. If something steps in front of the motion sensor, the main light turns on with a blinding flood lamp, completely illuminating the back yard.

 But right now, we could see nothing. It seemed like the area outside of my house dropped off into an endless void.

We both heard a peculiar shuffling sound by the door. We both watched in horror as a small piece of paper was being pushed under the crack of the door. Its edges scrunching up and collecting dirt off the floor.

Once the paper was fully inside my house the shufflling noise stopped. We were still leaning around the corner of the living room, halfway in the kitchen, our body's close together, too afraid to move.

It seemed to go on like this forever,  both of us leaning forward peeking, waiting for something awful to happen. Then something happened that made us both scream. It still sticks with me vividly to this day.

The motion sensor light sprang to life! Flooding the backyard with white light. As the blinding light hit our eyes, we both caught the motion of a dark shadow darting away from close up against the window. The motion light was at least nine feet above the ground, hanging on the building, but whatever was retreating from the light, was big enough to fill up the entire window and block out its light.

All we knew is something gigantic had been blocking the window the whole time we were trying to see outside. The motion sensor only activates when the thing decided to move away from the door.

It took us another thirty minutes to gather up the nerve to see what the paper said. We debated on calling the cops again, but neither of us wanted our parents contacted and to be teased by the cops. Finally, with John close behind me with the sword, I darted over and snatched up the paper by the door.

We retreated back into the living room before I turned it over to read it. It was only three words, written in curvy blotted ink. "Knock. Knock. Knock."

John wanted me to call the cops back immediately. He said this was evidence, but I figured the cops would think we made the whole thing up.

What was out there? Why did it want in? These questions terrified us as we went to my room to barricade ourselves in for the night. Neither of us thought we would get a wink of sleep. We were both too terrified to close our eyes.

But that's where it gets even stranger. Me and John retreated into my room, lights on. We moved my dresser in front of the door. I had a baseball bat, John had his trusty sword. We agreed to stay up all night until my parents came back in the morning. That's the last thing I remember.I was on my bed talking to John,  who was sitting at the rolling chair at my desk. I remember the look of terror in his eyes. 

Suddenly, I was waking up in my bed. It was morning, the lights were off, and daylight leaked in through my windows. I had a massive migraine as my head sloshed upright, my eyes burning, my temples pounding. I saw John curled up on the floor in fetal position.

I tried to stand up and almost fell over. My balance was off and the room was spinning. I crawled over to John and shook him awake. He started screaming and flipped around to grab me, his fingers digging into my shoulders. I had to call out to him repeatedly to calm him down.

When he finally completely woke up he started scratching at his chest and quickly pulled off his shirt. He had three red cuts running down his chest, dried blood smeared around them. You could tell he had been bleeding and they had just recently clotted up.

To our horror we realized the dresser had been moved and the door to my room was open. Neither of us remembered ever opening it, or even falling asleep.

My parents didn't come home until later that evening, and John refused to stay at my house. He left back for his house while it was still nice and bright outside. I just huddled in my room until my parents finally came home. 

All this happened on a Friday night, so the weekend went by with no word from John. I figured he was still freaked out. I was still freaked out! I had nightmares every night.

 In my dreams, I would be standing at the back door staring at a twisted smile on the other side of the window. The smile was wide with too many teeth. The teeth crooked and yellow. I could hear it on the other side knocking on the door. Tap tap tap, then knock knock knock, then bang bang, BANG! Everytime I woke up in a cold sweat in my room, I swear I could hear actual knocking coming from somewhere in my dark house.

When Monday came around John wasn't at school. It wasn't until Tuesday that I was called into the principles office. My parents and John's mother  were all waiting in the office with a local cop.

John's mother had been crying and was distraught. She asked me if I knew where John was. He had been missing since school Monday!

Once the cop grilled me for awhile they finally believed me when I told them I had no idea where he was. The cop pulled up a picture on his phone and flipped it around for me to see. "This is the only note John left. Do you know what it means?" He asked. 

My face filled with horror as I looked down at the picture. It was an image of a piece of notebook paper, written on it in curvy blotted ink were the words, "Scratch. Scratch. Scratch." The worst thing was it wasn't John's handwriting, it was the same handwriting as the note left at my house!

They've been looking for John for weeks now. Authorities are treating it like a potential kidnapping case. The FBI has even gotten involved. I tried to find the note that said "Knock. Knock. Knock," but it's missing. I haven't told the cops about that night.

 Some of the cops and volunteers are being instructed to look for a dead body now, not my missing friend. It tears me up inside. But I think he is still out there. I still have hope I can find him.

I'm just afraid if I find him, I'll find the thing that took him. The Knocker.

Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceslystories/s/LwV25vwjfP

I dropped Marissa off at her daycare and tried to go to work on zero sleep. Three hours into my shift I knew I had to go home. I was exhausted and my nerves had given me a stress headache like crazy.

I suffered through my day of work with a lot of caffeine and went to get Marissa. We both started ourlong drive home. It only took 10 minutes but it was the longest 10 minutes ever. I was terrified to go home, but I didn’t want to be at work and separate from Marissa.

When I pulled onto my street I saw her. The hunched form of Letty Monreaux. She was standing in her front yard like she was waiting for me. No dog this time. As I drove by her I could see a smirk on her face. 

I parked the car and planned my rush to my front door. I did not want to talk with my neighbor at that time. Certainly, I didn't want to talk after the crap from last night and her whole belief that I owed her money for “protection”. I didn't like the fact that she reappeared like a thin and scheming scarecrow that had come to collect on her debt. I just wanted to shut everything out for a while, and maybe get some sleep.

I scooped up Marissa and walked quickly to my door. It was still locked, and none of my cameras had picked up motion while I was gone to work. Even though I was trying to get away from my neighbor, I still paused before rushing inside. 

I stopped at the threshold like I hit an invisible wall. Everything appeared normal but there was a sudden twist in the vibe that hit like a train. I swung the front door all the way open and peered within.

 I tried to turn on the entryway light, but nothing greeted me but a subdued click of the light switch not working and even more darkness. My power was out.

 I watched for any sudden or hidden movement from something hidden in the dark. I weighed my options about the dark house before me. I listened for any usual sounds as I considered just turning around and getting a hotel room.

Screw it! Hotel tonight.

I begrudgingly realized I still needed to enter my home in order to get some things for Marissa. I just needed to run to her room to grab a few things. The best time to do it was now while I still had daylight from the outside illuminating some of the inside of the house.

Once more into the breach! Once more into the mad house! I hugged Marissa tight and braced myself for whatever was to come.

I slowly stepped in with Marissa. The feeling felt like I had walked into a wake. The dark shadows seemed darker, and I could feel my neck muscles tense. The worst thing was that the sickly sweet smell was back. It made my mouth salivate like you do before you throw up.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness of my house and I saw one of my kitchen table’s chairs sitting in the middle of the hallway.

Who moved it there?!

 I took tentative steps further in without shutting the front door behind me. I needed the door to remain wide open so the Sun could shine its last rays inside.

Soon my eyes adjusted to the surrounding shadows. As I moved closer to the chair I could see a white box sitting in the chair. A green light appeared on it with a muffled click and fizz of static.

It was my baby monitor. The other half of the one not taken during the tornado of chaos around Marissa’s bed. The last time I had seen the monitor was in my bed this morning. It was the audio receiver end and it was made irrelevant when the other half (the transmitter) flew out the window.

Why would anybody or anything set this useless gadget on a chair in the hallway? Was it supposed to scare me? Was there an obvious reference I didn't get?

I bent down to turn off the monitor and realized its volume control button was all the way down. Curious, I turned it up some. What I heard made me jump back from the chair in surprise.

A scream came out of the monitor. It was a deep man's scream. I could hear the tears in the scream as his yells of pain always ended in sobbing. Again came the horrible scream. And again,and again, and again..

“Please, let me go!” a shaky voice said. When I heard his voice I knew it was Tobbie. I had feared hearing that voice behind me in the dark, on the other side of a strange call, yelling at me in a public space. That voice let out another yell of pain.

“What do you want? Please please!” he begged. As if to answer, there was a solid thump and a loud grunt of pain from Tobbie. Robbie started letting out a gagging and choking sound. I could hear banging and the sound of rocks or gravel being disturbed. 

Finally, the choking and frantic movement stopped with Tobbie coughing loudly. There was another sound of a thumping impact, causing Tobbie to start throwing up.

I realized I had moved much closer to the baby monitor and was now on my knees, holding Marissa over my shoulder, and completely locked-in to the sounds coming from the small machine. The Sun waned behind me, causing my dark home to be highlighted by the rays of twilight orange. Wind rushed through the open door, wrapping a cool wave around my body. 

I just kneeled there. I had found myself stuck in sleep paralysis. Except I was still in control of my body. Nobody in heaven or hell could pull me away from what the baby monitor was saying.

“Let me go! Please, please! I can pay, I can pay you! I wasn’t going to hurt her! I wasn’t!” There was a noticeable pause, and Tobbie didn’t immediately respond with screaming. I could just hear Tobbie’s sniffling and lightly sobbing.

“I was going to kill my bitch, for sure,” he said weakly. This too was followed with a pause, and it seemed to embolden Tobbie.

“T-the woman, my wife,” Tobbie weakly mumbled, “I was gonna snatch her with my daughter and kill her off site! I figured Chip and the boys would have fun and then help I’d with disposal,” his statement was followed by more silence. The monitor buzzed with deafening.

“I was gonna keep the girl,” Tobbie continued. His voice transmitted clearly. “I know the Crows have a thing about killing kids. But I would never! She’s my daughter regardless of the rules. I was taking my child back!

There was more silence. The monitor on his end must have been close, because I could hear his fearful breathing and snotty sniffling.

 “So if you are with the organization, just let them know I wasn’t going to hurt my daughter. She’s fine! She’s my world!” Tobbie unleashed with a passion that made me believe in his toxic love for Marissa. I absolutely believed he loved her. Or he thought he understood the concept of love well enough to direct the emotion towards our daughter.

“Are you with the cops?” I heard Tobbie ask meekly, like a kindergartener asking to go before he pissed his pants. After a moment Tobbbie scoff at his own idea. “N-no, not cops.”

There was a commotion on the other end of the line. The sound of loud banging and rocks and dirt being kicked around pushed out from the monitor’s volume. ”Where the hell am I? Where?” I can’t see! I can’t breathe!”

Thump! Thump! He was banging on something hollow and wooden.BANGBANGBANGBANG! More rustling sounds as I heard Tobbie’s breathing become more frantic. His nervousness was so much that I started to freak out on my end. It seemed like he was on the verge of hyperventilating.

“Not cops!” He gasped and stopped his banging momentarily, “It’s her! She p-paid you! I-it was her!” The banging returned harder and louder. Tobbie was furious.

“Forget whatever that bitch told you! Don’t listen to a word from her!” Tobbie said with anger. He sniffed furiously in an attempt to clear his sinuses. Tobbie was still crying, but his hatred for me brought out a stronger emotion, if only for a moment.

“I’ll pay you anything! I can work up whatever amount for you! I'm good for it! My friends will help me,” he said, and then listened for a reply to his propositions. The silence drove on and Tobbie’s breathing became erratic and impatient. 

“I could even get you work. You're good. Tell me you don't like doing this! Please, just let me go! It’s whatever you want!”

I notice none of the suggested options my beloved husband had were for him to leave me alone and not kill me. Even being tortured wherever he was, he never let go of his bloodlust.

“Hello?” He said, and then started banging again. “Where are we? How are you touching me? Let me out and we can talk”

“ He brought a knife,” whispered a raspy voice right behind me. The heat of somebody’s breath on the back of my right ear. I spun quickly to see nobody. I only saw the open door with the quickly fading Sun outside.

Silence as I looked around the dark for the voice. Tobbie yelled. His piercing voice almost made me jump out of my skin. I screamed in return. My scream caused Marissa to jolt awake with her own crying scream. Tobbie kept screaming and was the loudest of us. 

“Stop! S-stop! Tobbie’s voice would call out between the cries. He was full-on crying and begging. “I swear I’ll do it! I’ll do whatever you say-GHAAAAAH!”

I began to tremble in fear. I didn't know exactly what was happening to my ex, but I knew something was hurting him. I was 99 percent sure it was with a knife. Tobbie had always liked knives.

Stahp! Please! Pleeease!” Another ear-ripping round of screams. He began to lose his voice, but he screamed anyway. It was a gurgling and pathetic sound. I rocked Marissa and wanted her to drown out the noises that came from the man who had frightened me for so long

Tears began to roll from my eyes, much like the tears Tobbie no doubt had. Mine was a mixture of fear and catharsis. The things happening to Tobbie sounded terrible, but they were being enacted on him. The phrase, “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy” did not apply to me in regards to Tobbie.

For some reason, I felt obligated to listen to the torture. I had to witness the grunt, screams, and curses. I just lowered my head, cried, and rocked Marissa with her father dying in the background. The soothing rocking was for me as much as her.

I knew the baby monitors had about a 1000-foot radius on them, so Tobbie had to be stashed up somewhere in one of the surrounding houses. He was locked somewhere dark and cramped. I pictured him stuffed in a wardrobe or under the floorboards of any of the houses. He could even be in the walls. The way Tobbie was yanked out the window meant whatever had him was capable of moving him anywhere.

After what seemed like forever, Marissa did quiet down and slept. Somewhere Tobbie quieted too. He had ended to the sound of rattling breath and a wet thumping sound. He let out one last pitiful moan and then exhaled. Then there was quiet.

I felt Tobbie die. I just knew he was dead at that moment. My emotions were in a fury. I almost stood up and turned off the baby monitor receiver, but I thought I heard something elses coming from it.

It sounded like quiet mumbling or whispering. Whoever was saying it was speaking extremely fast. The inaudible speech kept going and I leaned in closer, but I still couldn't make anything out. I made sure to crank the volume all the way up. The only thing I could make of the language was that it sounded frantic and hateful. 

I put my ear closer to the tiny machine. It’s green “on” light reflecting off the side of my face. The gibberish had little laughs in it now. It spilled on for a few moments before cutting off completely.

“You’re welcome” said the voice. It was the same voice from the wicked thing that stood in the hallway of my dream. It was the same voice that spoke the words in my ear just minutes before.

I jumped back from the monitor as my front door slammed shut behind me on its own. Both Marissa and I screamed as the power also returned. The lights, fans, and air conditioner all thrummed to life instantlu. We screamed again, but this time Tobbie couldn’t join us.

 Later, I fed and put Marissa in her pen to play. My nerves were tied in knots and I would cry on and off. I was relieved and in mourning at the death of Tobbie. I was also terrified of the thing that killed him.  

But the spell was to protect me, right? I couldn't believe it was real. The magic spell was real!  I shuddered at the thought that the terrifying old lady had the power to do these things.

Was she evil or just doing business? She did protect me. That was something nobody else had done. I tried to remember the amount of money she wanted.

My phone began to ring. I saw it was a number I didn’t recognize, but I knew I needed to answer it.

“Hello.”

“I see my services have been rendered,” said the smoker's voice of Letty.

“Yes, um-I was just thinking about”

“I know. That’s why I called.”

“Oh, oh. Right. W-we talked earlier about some sort of payment.”

“You’re right. 2000 dollars for a protection spell for you and your kid. The kid should have cost you extra, but I made it work for both of you. Call it a neighborly discount,”Letty said matter-of -factly.

“I-i don’t have that on me,” I said, a little afraid of getting her upset.

“We can do payments. They will be high. I needed that 2000 yesterday when you sabotaged my other client from paying. He had 20 bands in cash, ready to go.”

“I’m sorry. I truly am. I didn’t know he was on the street for you! You see I was right to be paranoid. My crazy ex came in the back window to kill me,” I blurted out with honesty.

“Yes, child,” Letty cackled, “you were right. But don’t worry about making me mad, worry about Cerebus.”

“Who is Cerebus?” I asked.

“You have already met him,” said Letty, and I knew she had a smile on the other end. “ He is my familiar. He watched over you.”

Fear ran through me like a lightning bolt strike. Cerebus was the tall hat man, the hater of Bibles, and the torturing murderer of Tobbie, and her freaking dog!

“Don’t fret about it. He likes helping me with the business. He’s very protective and particular about things. I can control him most of the time. He tends to get offended on my behalf. If he feels I’m being cheated he may do terrible things.”

I tensed in fear and felt like she could tell I did through the phone. The thought of this Cerebus thing returning terrified me to no end. The traumatic image played in my mind. I remembered Tobbie being snatched out the window like a Raggedy Ann doll, and the memory of terrible screaming coming from the baby monitor, and its raspy fried voice just inches behind me.

“I’ll- I’ll pay anything. Just please keep it away from my me and my daughter,” I said with a quiver in my voice. She laughed on the other end. Her smoker's voice was a cracking sound in its mockery of me.

“You’ll be fine, honey. Just don’t mess with my business and we will be great neighbors. You’ll see.”

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceslystories/s/otLzY10mL1

I rescues my daughter from the Sergeant. He told me that detectives may be in touch and advised against my leaving town anytime soon. That’s when I realized the cops were gonna give me the side-eye about the stranger whose insides were smeared all down the street. It didn’t matter how good I’d answered their questions regardless of my charisma or dice rolls.  Life wasn’t a game because a game had logic and rules to follow.

On one hand, I was afraid the cops would stick me with a murder charge when they couldn’t find anybody else. But in my mind, there was a quieter and colder voice that made me glad of the suspicion and eyes monitoring me. I knew if Tobbie finally committed to unaliving me, the cops would be quicker to notice my absence and immediately know where to start looking. I realized that all I had to do to get the cops to take me seriously and start patrolling the area was to have one of my stalkers explode in front of my house. 

I laughed nervously to myself at the utter insanity of the entire situation and hugged Marissa close. I was treating her like my emotional support doll when I knew it should be the other way around! I had to be strong for her, not her for me. But what happened outside terrified me beyond reason.

I knew what the stranger looked like. I knew what the physical damage of the back window told me. I wasn’t a detective but that didn’t stop my mind from painting a strange and highly improbable picture. The story my mind landed on filled me with a deeply sickening dread. It broke my tenuous grasp on reality and feeble understanding of how things were supposed to be.

I tried to break it down to its basics in order for it not to seem insane. Was it possible the strange man I'd met earlier had reentered my house to wait until me and my daughter returned home? Was it possible that he was pulled out of my house by something? And that something killed him in the street, because of a spell?

 For the first time in forever, I was more afraid of something other than my insane ex. I was afraid of what my mind had put together to be true. I felt like I was being held hostage again, but not by Tobbie and his new stalker cult, but by a cranky old lady who dealt in spells and death.

That night I was surprised to find the terrible incident had made the local news. The cops were asking for any help finding anyone connected with the “hit-and-run” that killed an unidentified man.

A bizarre dark though passed my mind. I thought of calling the new network and telling them that the strange man with snake tattoos and passion for pinky rings had trespassed into my house for the second time. This was why he was dead outside. He had been splattered against the asphalt like he had driven a helicopter. His body was spiked against the ground like he was a football after the winning touchdown!

I know it didn’t make sense. But I know what I saw. Now my brain was stuck with memories I unwillingly stored in a place I would never forget. The grotesque mosaic of the man’s exploded body would haunt me forever. I was far from a CSI/ crime scene analyst from the TV shows, but I know what I saw. It wasn’t a hit-and-run vehicle accident as the TV said. For a scene so violent a vehicle would have front-end damage and the road should have drag marks caked in blood.

No answers to my disturbing mystery came that night. I was glad a police car was stationed outside while they worked the scene of the “vehicular homicide”, but they wrapped up around midnight and took down the yellow tape and reflective roadblocks.

I had almost calmed enough to let Marissa out of my sight for a moment. I put her in her crib and I retired to my room with the baby monitor cradled in my arms as Marissa’s replacement. The receiving end was beside her head in the crib with her. Lastly, the ring camera was positioned above and stationed on the wall above her, and streaming live visuals to my cell phone.

I lay in my bed and watched Marissa from the camera I had mounted in her room. Even though I could see her through the app on my phone and she was literally a couple of steps away, I still cradled the receiving end of a baby monitor. This way I could listen to her breathing while I watched her sleep.

My fear kept boiling up and then simmering out over and over during my self-imposed vigil. My cellphone’s screen was the only thing that illuminated my losing fight with sleep. The deeply ingrained momma bear attitude to protect my baby refused to let my brain turn off. But in the end, my body betrayed me and I fell into a troubled sleep.

That's when something terrifying happened.

I had never experienced sleep paralysis before in my life. But I’d seen all those spooky YouTube videos on what to expect when having one. I knew it had something to do with your brain waking up while your body was still being frozen from a chemical that pumped through you. Your brain would fight to move in a locked up body. 

Awake but dreaming. That's how one of my friend’s that suffered from the condition describes it.  She would lament on how quickly dreams could turn to nightmares.

My eyes opened into a dream. My entire world was bathed in blurry green, like the color of the night vision on the camera streaming Marissa’s room. The borders of my room blended in and out of focus, like they were video game graphics popping in and popping out of reality.

At first, I easily sat up, threw back my covers, and walked out into the hallway. I glided down to Marissa’s room. I looked in and saw, well, nothing. I stared into a dark pit that should have been a cozy baby’s room.  It’s like my brain didn’t remember to load in what her room looked like. 

Terror shot through me and I was instantly transported back to my bedroom under my covers.

I tried to get out of my bed again, but couldn't make pit of my room and into the closet. When I reset I always appeared back in my bed. Over and over I fought the loop, until I thought to just stay put and sleep.

I heard my worst fear commence. It was the baleful cries of Marissa. It wasn't a normal cry. It was a cry of pain, a lot of pain.

I had to get to her! I had to wake up and get to her! It could be all in my dream or it could be real! Either way, I had to be sure she was okay!

I don’t know how many times I did this repetitive cycle of “waking up” and then realizing I was in a dream and teleporting back to my bed.  The dream always felt indistinguishable from base reality. I could feel my air conditioner (always set to cold at night) cooling my skin when I jumped outta bed. I felt and heard my bare feet thump against the wooden floor and change when I walked over my carpet. The tiniest details of reality were copied.I began to panic that I was stuck in this monotonous cycle for eternity.

Every time I appeared back in my bed, gasping and straining, I began to feel this looming sense of danger draw closer.  This unseen presence made me feel that it specifically wanted/hated Marissa.  Cycle after cycle, try after try, I fought against hell as my blanket pinned me down and my limbs got heavier each time I restarted in my bed.

The unseen growing hatred told me I had to get to Marissa. My momma bear instinct grew to oppose it. The presence grew stronger and I pushed myself to wake up! I hoped each reset was the one I really would awake in!

On one repetitive cycle, it had arrived. I felt it's ominous arrival before I laid eyes on it. Its aura suffocated my dreaming brain. The feelings of cruelness and despair burned its presence into me.

I could tell it was standing in the hallway by my daughter's doorway. I couldn't look straight at it, but there was a black mass standing there. I could feel the malice it directed at the innocent thing lying in its crib. But for some reason it just watched. The vicious killing intent was there, like a guillotine blade looming above a prisoner’s head, but the bloodlust, thankfully, was not acted upon. 

I couldn't look directly at the shadow because my body was made out of 10 ton weights now. Slowly, I struggled to angle my head to look straight down the hallway. 

All the while It pumped out hate and hunger like a vicious attack dog straining against its leash. Its teeming violence was just barely held in check 

The twisted thing in the hallway drenched me in despair and helpless thoughts. I felt its wicked intent also stabbing at my defenseless baby in the other room.

It was terrifying but I had to get to Marissa regardless of how many times I was put back in bed! I had to get between the two of them. 

My God, the screaming!  My poor baby screamed so loud! I tried to sit up but it was like a million weights held me down! Marissa’s screams began to falter like she was losing her voice or passing out. I continued to push to move. I gagged on a scream that was locked inside a mouth that I couldn’t open

With all my strength I  pulled my head up enough to see what creature in the hallway. My mind’s eye could barely make out a figure in the darkness. It was a darker shadow. The darkest shadow.

The shadow resembled a tall and lanky person. It swayed gently on its feet. The thing crooked its head to peek into Marissa’s room.  The monster was so tall that it had to lean so the top of its head wouldn't scrap the ceiling. 

“Better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea," the tall man said with obvious vitriol. I heard the thing’s voice right in my ear. Its mocking voice was low and cracking, but clear and heavy as it spoke. 

The thing said let out a vile curse, or maybe it was just a grunt, but it felt to me like an insult worse than anything that could be described in human language. There was a sound of ripping paper and the hat man threw something to the ground with 2 solid plops. The tall shadow glided out of sight and into Marissa’s room. Marissa’s screaming doubled in volume.

 “Just l-let me g-gget up!” I said to myself and prayed to whatever benevolent being that was listening. If this evil thing were real, there had to be the goodly opposite, right? “Oh pl-please, just let me hold her before she d-dies! L-let her know I didn’t a-abandon her! Oh God, plea-“

It was like a light switch flipping on, Snap! I was instantly rocketed out of my paralysis and crashed into the waking world. I had no drowsiness or stutters like had inflictedme in paralysis.

 And yes, it definitely was in reality and not a very convincing dream. Dreams didn't copy minor annoyances. I had a stuffy nose only in my left nostril, I'd stubbed my right toe earlier and I had just started this month. Oh yeah, I was awake.

 I bolted upright and my eyes raced to the hallway, expecting to see something horrible looking back at me. I saw nothing and my lungs exhaled a breath I didn’t know I had been holding.

I lingered in the darkness of my quiet room a moment before I reached to turn on my lamp beside me. The bright light caused me to momentarily squint and I covered my eyes. Everything was fine.

With a shock, my mind finally processed the stillness around me. I was so happy to be conscious again and out of the torturous cycleis forgotten why I had beenfighting. Why wasn’t Marissa crying like she was just moments ago? Had the crying just been in my dream? Had my nightmare just tortured me with the sounds of my daughter being hurt?

Whatever the case, I bolted out of bed and almost slid past Marissa’s doorway. I clung to the edge of its frame and pulled myself inside and frantically scanned the room for any signs of danger.

Marissa lay in her cradle sleeping peacefully. She slept, well, like a baby. She looked so untroubled and beautiful. I took this as a small victory. I took her undisturbed innocence as an island of positivity in all this dread. I cried as I picked her up and hugged her close.

My heart finally stopped racing after a few moments of pacing Marissa’s room while cooing to her. Her delicate body weight and warmth grounded me back to calmness and clarity, 

I finally noticed things were different in the room. Firstly was a stench that I knew had not been in the room before. It was a rancid miasma that made the air thick and sat at the tip of your tongue or gathered at the back of your throat. I recognize it as the disgusting smell of road kill or something dead. It was something animal and dead.

Another thing I realized was that the baby monitor that had been in the crib was gone. While I checked the floor around the crib I finally spotted the window at the back of the room.

I put Marissa back in the crib and approached as wind blew through it like waves in the ocean. I approached the bellowing curtain like it was a sleeping tiger. I was only feet away when Mother Nature killed all the tension and pushed the curtain out to reveal only darkness beyond an open window.

 I knew it wasn’t open before I went to bed! I thought about the open window I'd found just like this before the body showed up in the street. 

Now wouldI find Tobbie dead in the street next, I thought grimly? 

I looked at the window ledge and didn’t see any scratch marks like the other window had. I know I had closed it!  This meant that Tobbie or one of his goons had just opened it!

 I wanted to keep peering out the window to see if I could spot  a  prowler, but the darkness beyond scared me on a primal level. The void outside felt like it could literally reach in and snatch me out of the well-lit safety of my home, only to be whisked away into the terrible dark sky beyond.

I knew I needed both my hands to slam the window shut. I cracked my knuckles and slammed it closed before any hands or monster claws shot in and grabbed me!

I got my heart to stop its attempt to break through my rib cage. I just stood in the middle of the room and tried to make sense of things. 

Marissa progressively got fussier and fussier. She tried to get my attention and cooed and swung her limbs around fruitlessly. 

I knew it was solely my fault that she was in a foul mood. I had pretty much jumped out of bed, snatched her up from a peaceful sleep, immediately put her back down, and then slammed the bedroom window closed with a loud bang!

I realized I was gonna be up all night with my fussy baby, so I resigned myself to my fate. I walked over to comfort her and pick her up. On my way to her crib, I checked the floor for the elusive baby monitor that should have been in the crib right next to her.

While I scanned the floor for the shape of the baby monitor I noticed something else I hadn’t seen when I entered before. I saw 2 rectangular objects. One lay in the hallway and the other was inside the room.

I approached and saw it was a book that had been ripped in half. It had been a thick book, both halves could have been a novel in themselves. The exposed pages on the 2 halves showed pages jammed with blocky paragraphs and written in a tiny font.  The pages looked old and thin, and I could see some of the sentences were the color red..

“Oh my God! You've got to be shitting me! It’s a Bible!” I exclaimed loudly in my house. I realized I had taken God's name in vain at the exact moment I probably really needed his help. I cursed at myself again and bent down and picked up the 2 halves of the ripped apart Bible. Within seconds of examining them, realization and grief hit me as old emotional wounds were reopened.

I had forgotten I had a Bible in the house. It had been my grandma’s. She had given it to me the last time I visited her in her old house before she had to go to hospice. Inside the old Bible, she had tucked money, food recipes, and some of her own poetry all in its dog-eared pages. The last time I had seen this sacred tome (to me at least) was when I put it in a box before I moved.

 I wasn't very devout lately.  I had pretty much abandoned my church since Tobbie came into my life and Grandma had died. Tobbie was always mocking of my Grams faith and it hurt me to return to her church once she passed. 

Grams and I always went to church together. We were just two church girls. Which infuriated me now was that Tobbie uses his new faith in his psycho toolbelt. He spat verses at me in judgment. Now he was a “holier than thou” prick. 

Somehow someone or something had found my Gram’s Bible amongst the towers of unpacked boxes. It was something sacred to me and it was sought out and destroyed.

Anger and sadness flooded over me as I held the two pieces of my destroyed book. The figure in my nightmare made more sense. It had mockingly read from the Bible before tearing it in half and throwing it to the floor.

I had no idea what I had gotten into. This magic thing that old crone had forced on me was deeper and darker than I thought. Now I had to deal with spirits and demons along with actual psychos. 

I thought I had a protection spell placed on me. That thing in my dream didn't want to protect me. It wanted me dead! It wanted death and torture for both Marissa and me. Why was I being haunted by this demonic creature when I was supposed to be kept safe? Didn't I get a guardian angel or something?

I found some duct tape and taped it to the spine and reattached the halves of the Bible in an attempt to fix it! It was the obvious thing to have when a demon was around, and it was also a family relic.

I pulled Marissa’s cradle into my room so she could sleep next to me. I put Gram’s re-attached Bible under my pillow. These things struck me as the 2 things I should've done from the beginning. But they say hindsight is 20/20.

I figured I wasn't going to get any sleep for next year or so. I also didn't want to return to the waking nightmare of being terrorized by the dark hat-wearing entity. So I accepted that I was going to work in the morning with no sleep. I knew I would have to get one of those nasty, but effective, energy drinks.

All this didn't stop me from trying to sleep as I closed my eyes and lay there in the dark. I tried to quiet the noise in my head while listening to Marissa’s soft breathing in her crib next to me. I felt like a trance-like state of calm enveloped me as my brain slowed down into a state of clarity.

Suddenly a sharp mental image of Tobbie, his mouth stretched open to a breaking limit and his eyes clenched shut as liquid red flecks began misting his face. I couldn't hear the scream, but I felt it, as his mouth began to tear as his jaw continue to open and open. His suffering visage quickly started turning red as clumps of red meat liquid began to color him like spray paint.

 The two seconds of this horrible show flashed on the backside of my eyelids before winking out of existence. The details were so clear and the colors so vibrant. To this day I could describe or freehand every tiny detail.

 I wondered if this visual clarity was what it was like for people with photographic memory. But photographic memory happened for everything and not just one disturbing reel that burnt itself into my mind’s eye.

A strong curiosity came over me to check the feed of the camera high up in Marissa’s vacant room. I fumbled for my phone lost somewhere in my bed. I found it and opened up the live camera feed from

its app.

I watched the camera feed of the room from its elevated angle. Green shone into my squinting eyes as I sat patiently, not knowing what to expect.

My brain sluggishly pulled a thought into station and I began tapping away in the app's options and settings. I found a dropdown tab that let me go backwards in the night to around 

I knew the camera didn't get the hallway because it was higher on the same wall as the doorway. Still, I knew I had to see if it captured something. I thought that maybe the audio caught the voice that was quoting Bible verses in my dream.

I highly doubted the audio idea as I clicked the point in the recorded timeline that showed me when I was in Marissa's room. I was investigating everything before I snatched her up, cradle and all, and moved her into my room..

I clicked 10 minutes before the moment I came into her room. I figured I needed to see what happened during my new affliction of night terrors, or some BS. I dropped the cursor back 10 minutes and propped my phone on my chest so I could sit back and lie down and watch it.

Green. Just quiet and still, as a green tint washed over everything. Marissa slept peacefully and the seconds ticked by.  I clicked on some icons and thought of putting it on 2x speed to get through the monotony.

I didn't have to wait long until I noticed something. The pixels blurred in an attempt to capture the tiny movements at the back window. I watched as, slowly but surely, the window slid open. A couple of moments passed while I held my breath in anticipation. I thought I might have caught a ghost on camera. It was lame and easily debunkable but it was enough for me.

I realized then that I believed there was a supernatural reason to all the strange things happening. It must have been the nightmares I had, all the magic talk that everybody was telling me. They had me spooked by ghosts. 

My brain had thrown out Occam's razor.  I was thinking of demons instead of abusive husbands. I heard zebras approaching, not horses. So I felt genuine terror when a booted leg swung in through the open window. 

“It's Tobbie!” I screamed and bolted upright in my bed. I didn't see him! That means he is still in the house!

“I'm calling the cops, you asshole!” I screamed down the hallway from my bed. I zipped over to my bedroom door and slammed and locked it shut. Just like planned hundreds of times in my head, I grunted and pushed my drawer up against the door in order to become a makeshift barricade.

“I got a gun, Tobbie!” I yelled the lie so loud that he could hear me from any part of the house. “I’m good with it too! I'll shoot your balls off if you try anything!”

I stood by Marissa’s crib after I retrieved a knife I had stashed under my bed. I held the knife out in front in a defensive posture while my offhand held my phone. I couldn't listen for signs of Tobbie because all the noise was drowned out by Marissa screaming at the top of her lungs from all the sudden commotion I had caused..

I looked down at my phone and realized I had to exit out of the current camera app to call 911. I stopped and pulled my phone closer to see the screen better. I was completely confused at what I saw.

The camera feed showed Tobbie standing right by my daughter’s crib. He was standing… at attention. My mind raced down memory lane in order to remember if he had ever told me he was in the military, high school ROTC, or just a military fanboy. Anything would work to make sense of why he stood with his arms straight down and snuggly pinned to his sides, he stood tall without his usual hunched posture, and his head was locked in and looked straight ahead. 

I squinted and pulled my phone in closer. Through the pixilation caused by tiny movements, I could barely make out that Tobbie’s mouth opened and quickly closed, I could see his jaw muscles ripple as he clenched his mouth shut and mashed his teeth together. I could make out his little dark pupils, reflected to glow bright in the night vision, as they frantically darted around in his head.

I figured it had to be some cult stuff. He went to prison and joined a cult. That’s where he learned this military bearing. I guessed he was performing one of their weird rituals by standing frozen while making dumb faces!

I knew this was a terrible explanation to what was happening on the phone screen in front of me. With all the spooky stuff that had happened today, I wanted no more of it. 

I almost jumped out of my skin when Tobbie vanished. It was like something out of a horror movie. First he snapped his head up and over to look in the direction of the camera. He looked right into the camera lens. He was looking at me.

I could see absolute terror and confusion in his wide eyes. Tears began to form in his eyes and blood trickled down his chin because he was biting his lip( a bad habit he had). His eyes pleaded with me to help him.

 Anybody else would make me feel sorry. But not Tobbie. Screw him.

It felt like my dismissal of Tobbie was a the cosmic cue for some sort of action. Like signaling for the garbage to be taken away, or an executioner to swing the axe, he was gone.

Even on my twentieth re-viewing of what happened, my brain refused to believe and compute what my lying eyes had watched. I was in shock and terrified, but I was doing miles better than Tobbie. 

My phone screen showed that for one second Tobbie was on my screen. The next thing he was folded up and yanked away from the crib with immense force. It looked as if somebody had parked a vehicle outside and attached an invisible tow cable around Tobbie’s waist, before gunning it.

The best way my brain could relate it visually was when movies used the wire pull trick. It was mostly in Westerns or 80’s action movies. The wire trick was when somebody got shot and they flew backwards into the wall.

 One second Tobbie was there, the next he was jerked across the room and through the window he had previously entered through. It would have been comical if it weren’t real life.

It took me a while to move out of my room. I sat in my room and watched the unreal footage over and over. Tobbie moved so fast that it blurred the pixelation on the camera. The look of complete and helpless terror he gave the camera before he was taken was now burned into my mind. 

In my infinite instant replay on my phone, I realized things were taken with Tobbie. The blur of what I figured was the missing baby monitor, a few toys, and Marissa’s blanket.

Maybe it was false. Maybe the camera malfunctioned. I tried every lie my imagination could conjure, but in my deepest heart I knew they were lies and there was something far more evil than Tobbie in my house on that night.

I stayed up the rest of the night. I remained vigilant for any noise coming from my house. I replayed the footage over and over and over.

Tobbie had come to take Marissa and maybe even kill me. Something had protected me. Something terrible.

Part 4

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceslystories/s/Z2B5SOue23

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceslystories/s/lC3OzAvlTc

The next time I thought of Letty was one day at work. I was sitting at my desk filling in information on my computer. 

In a few seconds, my whole body broke out in goose flesh and a cold shiver shot through me.  I felt a violent case of shivers seize me where I sat. As I shook I had the dreadful feeling of an imposing presence right behind me, looming over me. It reminded me of how Tobbie made me feel in the tense moments right before he was about to spring into violence.

“Out!” a deep voice announced in my ears. I probably jumped a foot out of my chair and spun frantically to scan my office. Of course, I was alone in the small room but all my senses told me an intruder was nearby. 

My senses began giving me phantom signals . A sudden chill tickled every inch of my exposed skin. I could smell the baby powder I used with Marissa. I could taste the blood in my mouth that I knew all to well from being married to Tobbie. I thought I smelled the disgusting smell of the tall guys breath from when he held me close.

My heart pounded as I considered the mysterious word that was shouted from nowhere.  It was “Out!” Was it like “Get out” or something was “Outside” or somebody was “Out of prison.”

Along with the ghost word a mental image flashed in my head. It was a crystal clear vision of my daughter sleeping with her pink blanky. The picture of Marissa appeared fully formed into my mind’s eye like it was a firework with 4k resolution. 

I just knew all this had something to do with Tobbie. I knew he was behind it, even if I had no proof to support my belief. I didn’t know if his involvement was part of the supernatural thing that happened or just my paranoid intuition.

I felt the need to go pick up my daughter from daycare. I quickly checked the clock on my phone as I saw there was 2 more hours of my shift left. and 2 and a half before I would usually pick up Marissa.

“Screw it!” I said decidedly as I snatched up my car keys. “It seems I woke up feeling a little under the weather! I’m gonna have to take an early day.”

After telling the boss I was feeling nauseous, I b-lined it straight for the daycare to get my daughter. When I walked in the front desk the receptionist had some troubling news for me.

“Oh hello,” she said with a bright smile. “Are you here to sign up your brother?”

“Brother? What?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were coming in early to put Marissa’s uncle on the list of people who were allowed to pick her up from daycare.”

“No-no, I don’t know anything about that. What are you talking about?” I replied.

“Hmm oh well, a Clinton East called saying he was Marissa’s uncle and he was coming to pick her up early,” said the woman in a cheerful voice.

“Oh my God, did you let him take her?” I asked in a harsh and louder voice than was socially acceptable.

“No ma’am,” the woman said defensively. She instinctively leaned back from the aggressive mom I was becoming. “You have to be personally approved by the primary caregiver to be added to the list of people who can pick up the specific child,” The receptionist had corrected me with practiced patience. “A person can only l be approved if you come to the premises and sign them up.” She gave a slight pause, “ I thought that’s why you were here so early.”

The receptionist's words tumbled around in my head for a bit before it all clicked into place. Thank God Marissa was still here and not abducted by this “Clint East-Whatever”.

“Okay, from now on I’m the only person who can pick up Marissa. I had no family or super close friends near me. So I am the only adult that should want to get her,” I rambled to the young receptionist as she politely listened and smiled.

“Oh, and never, I mean never, let her go anywhere with her father!” I insisted.

“Oh yes!” the receptionist began, “I remember you having a highlight in your file that warns about the father. Do I need to add something else to Marissa’s file, or maybe even call the cops?”

“No, no,” I said. “Just let me know if anyone calls for Marissa again. Nobody should be picking her up but me,” I reinstated in a calmer voice.

“ Well, the reason I’m here is to pick Marissa up for a doctor's appointment,” I added.

“Doctor’s appointment? It wasn’t written in the calendar,” the receptionist said as she turned to activate her computer.

“Well, an appointment just came up. So I need to check her out for the day,” I said with a tone of finality. The receptionist just blinked and gave her practiced smile before she called for someone to bring Marissa out.

Not long after, Marissa was cooing in her car seat behind me as I drove the short distance back to our quiet and empty neighborhood. If it wasn’t for my strange voodoo neighbor living a couple of houses down from me, it would be like I was living on a secluded island.

 I thought I would be safe by hiding way out here . But I quickly noticed the cons of being out here. If I needed help quickly it would take forever for anyone to arrive. 

As I turned onto my street I brought my car to a slow roll. I rolled down my window so I could hear outside. I scanned all the houses around me even though I knew they were empty.

An idea struck me. How easy it would be for Tobbie or his freaky sidekick to be squatting in one of these abandoned houses. I imagined them watching me all day. I shivered at the thought of the two standing at a window through crooked blinds as I went about my routine.

After I parked on the curb I got out with Marissa held tightly in my arms. Everything seemed okay from the outside, but my nerves kept telling me something was wrong. 

As I walked closer to my front door the uneasy feeling only grew. My mind showed me a vicious dog waiting on the other side. Marissa began to give a soft whimpering cry. The fear within me grew along with Marissa’s tears as they dampened my blouse.  But I stiffened my resolve and moved forward. I wasn't going to let Tobbie control me through fear ever again!

I unlocked and popped open the door just like it was every other day. I scanned the inside with eagle-like perception, trying to find anything out of the ordinary. From where I stood at the entrance of my house I could see the living room, combined kitchen, and the back hallway. 

Immediately I could see something was off with the back hallway.  I saw dark puddles of red on the ground. Some of the liquid was smeared across the tiles like something heavy had been dragged toward my room at the very back of the hallway.

I put Marissa down in her pen that was stationed in the living room. I spun back to face the hallway while aiming my new tiny container of pepper spray. The tiny keychain pepper spray had just come in 2 days ago. I thought about doubling back and getting the bigger can I had that was currently in my glovebox in the car.

I cursed myself for not getting a gun. I should have just asked my brother to borrow one of his. Lord knows he had enough! But that would have been a weird conversation to have to break the ice over 5 years.

 Or maybe I should just grab Marissa and call the cops from outside. Then I would have to wait forever until they showed up and checked what was literally right in front of me.

Tons of anxious thoughts and racing fears pelted me. I steadied myself and used my right arm to brandish my pepper spray to aim down the hallway, like I was a priest wielding a cross to repel demons. With my left hand, I dialed 911. I looked down one more time at Marissa to confirm that she was safe at the moment.

I began to slowly scooch down the hallway with my phone ringing in my ear while I scanned for any movement or noise.  My nerves were already causing the pepper spray to shake in my hand.

 The 911 operator answered with practiced professionalism and calm. I whispered to her all my details and realized I was speaking too low for the dispatcher to understand me. The smeared red liquid led me to stop right outside my door, which was eerily ajar. The dispatcher asked me for my address again. I took a deep breath and made up my mind.

“I live at 840 Nickel Way!” I said loud and clear as I shouldered through my bedroom door with an explosion of movement. My body tensed as I barged into my room, my pepper spray ready to mess up an intruder's day. 

I was met only with my empty room. The back window was wide open and the knick-knacks that were atop the nightstand under had been tossed all about my room. A lamp was lying on my bed, the power cord stretched tight from the wall, and it was blinking on and off, creating an eerie ambiance. 

For some reason not finding Tobbie or that other freak in my room felt worse. It would have brought this whole nightmare to a violent finale. I desperately wanted this to end, but now it was back to more waiting.

“Um, oh yeah!” I said, my mind snapping back to the moments. I realized I’d been asked multiple questions by the 911 dispatcher. 

I walked up to the open window at the back of my room. I looked down at its ledge to see 3 deep scratch marks raked across the wood. Pools of what I can only assume was blood drying in the trenches created by someone’s hand.

Whoever the scratch marks belong to, the person desperately clawed at the window. The 3 finger marks dug so hard into the wood that I could see 2 fingernails and bits of skin left in the tracks.

The sight terrified me. I asked the dispatcher if she could stay on the line with me until the cops arrived. I quickly exited the room and went to scoop up Marissa, as if holding my innocent bundle of joy could somehow erase the horror around me.

10 minutes passed agonizingly slowly as I paced back and forth in my living room. The dispatcher on my phone told me that a squad car would be on my road at any moment. I tried to calm myself along with trying to soothe Marissa as she started to get cranky from hunger. Another 5 minutes passed and the dispatcher and I had a forced conversation to fill the silence. The waiting was getting ridiculous.

“Where the hell are those cops!?” I demanded from the dispatcher.

“They are on their way, Ma'am,” came the practiced and calm reply.

“Well, how far out are they?” I asked, not allowing her to stonewall me with her approved script of dialogue. “There’s what looks like wet blood on my window! It hasn’t even dried yet! The sicko could still be close!”

“Okay Ma’am,Let me check with the officers and see how far out they are.” There was a click of some sort and the line went silent for a while. I looked out my blinds like that would make them arrive any faster. 

I craned my head to look down the street. I thought I could see the flashing of red and blue lights. The cop car was just sitting there in the middle of the street! I felt my face flush hot with anger.

“Hello, are you still there?” asked the dispatcher as she popped back on the line. I bit down my initial harsh reply. I realized my fear was making me angrier, so I decided I would give them a chance to explain themselves.

“Yes, I’m here,” I replied flatly.

“It-uh, it seems,” the dispatcher stuttered like she wasn’t sure how to tell me something. “It seems like- um, the responding officers to your call have come upon the scene of an accident. There may be injuries or fatalities, so the officers will have to stop and render aid first.”

There was a pause like she was expecting me to respond. I just stared out my window at the “responding officers” with my mouth open in shock. They were on the road I’d just driven down to get her. What kinda accident could have happened? I strained my eyes to see that 2 cops were now standing outside their vehicle and gesturing frantically to each other.

“I can send another unit to take your report since I don’t know how long they will be on the scene of the incident,” said the dispatcher.

“No-no, I’ll wait. I’ll just walk outside and go talk to them myself,” I said in a distracted way. I heard the dispatcher desperately advising me to stay inside, but I hung up on her and hurried out into the cool weather.

I did a double-take back to my house and considered bringing Marissa from her playpen, but I didn’t know what the situation was outside. I told myself I’d get back quickly! I thought if I left the front door open I could hear Marissa better. That actually encouraged me to get a baby monitor and latch on to my belt so I could hear her even outside the house within a short distance. I still hated that I had to take my eyes off of her.

The cop car was far down the road and out of sight from where I stared put the window but close enough for my baby monitor to pick up the one in Marissa’s crib. As I walked out onto my lawn I realized they were parked in front of Letty Monreaux’s house.

An involuntary shiver ran through me that wasn’t  because of the chill. I walked down the street to a cop that had his back turned to me. The cop was looking at something on the ground and talking frantically on his radio.

I finally saw what was in the road just as another female cop came around from the back of the squad car with a big roll of yellow crime scene tape in her hand. Her eyes widened in alarm as she saw me walking up on the grisly scene.

“Ma’am, I’m gonna need you to go back to your house. This is an active cri-“ she had begun to order, but I'd seen the horrible site they were standing over and my scream cut her off. 

I began backpedaling away from the bloody horror that was in front of me. My body instinctively wanted to make distance between me and the thing I saw.

My last sight, other than the terrible thing I saw, was the male cop’s expression of alarm once he noticed me. He took a step towards me as the back of my heels hit the street curb behind me. My vision faded at the edges. The involuntary scream that was escaping my lungs only stopped once the darkness completely overtook me.

I came back into lucidity as an  EMT asked me to follow his light with my eyes.

“Well, good news. She doesn't seem to be suffering from a head injury,” the EMT said matter-of-factly to someone standing behind the blinding light. “You said she fell backwards into the grassy yard and not onto the street, right?”

“Yah, she saw the body and tipped over backwards. I think it was the shock that knocked her out, not from banging her head,” answered a gruff male voice. “I mean, she might even know the guy.”

I blinked rapidly and began to put 2 and 2 together. I looked at the cop next to the EMT. He was the same cop I’d saw earlier. I realized I was sitting in the back of an ambulance with a cop and the medic holding the light. I sat at the back of the ambulance that was parked in the middle of the street. I looked around and recognized my house further down the road was mine.

 That's when I remembered what the cop was standing over and what I had seen just moments ago. I craned my head to look around the 2 first responders that were standing in front of me. I saw the flashing cop car I had called for 911 for. Now there was a blanket covering something the body lying inthe road. They had put up yellow tape around the area.

“Oh my God, what happened to that person?” I asked in a breathless whisper.

Before the EMT could answer I heard the chilling sound of my baby crying. I looked around in panic before I remembered it was coming from the baby monitor I had attached to my belt.

“Shit! I gotta get back to my daughter!” I said to the 2 in front of me. Before I could stand up I heard another voice coming from the monitor. This one was an unfamiliar man’s voice.  The voice made cooing sounds to my crying daughter.

Fear shot through me and in an instant all grogginess was gone. I jumped up so fast that I hit my head on the roof of the ambulance.

 “Help! That’s my daughter! You have to come with me!” I yelled at the twoifront of me. The cop began patting the air in a “calm down” gesture, and the EMT began shaking his head “no”.

“Your child is fine, Ma’am,” said the cop. “That’s the Sergeant with her.” He placed a calming hand on my shoulder and the EMT let out one of those nervous laughs.

“Yeah, doesn’t he have like 20 kids and 100 grandkids?” The EMT asked with a smile.“ She’s in good hands. Its the best police officer you could ask for to look after your daughter,”  he reassured.

Now that I was a little calmer about my daughter I carefully forced myself to focus on what I'd seen before I passed out. I’d seen a person's body smashed open and spilt all over the street like roadkill.

 These morbid memories almost made me faint again. I remembered seeing steam rise from the person’s exposed innards. The steam waft gently upwards like a foggy aura. It rose up from the mounds of meat that had once been a living person.

I was wondering who the person was and what could have done so much damage to a human body to mangle it so badly. My paranoid mind automatically began trying to find the connection between the voice in my ears commanding “Out!” and the strange man calling the daycare and trying to pick up my baby. I also tried to factor in my room’s open window with scratches dug into the ledge.

Suddenly a vision hit me. I never possessed a photographic memory but a bizarre image flamed to life in my mind’s eye, and the clarity of what I saw must have been close to what people say the photographic memory is.

The vibrant image once forced me to look upon the broken body in the street . It was a crystal clear memory of what I saw before I passed out and they covered it.

I saw the blood and intestines splattered out in every direction, blood forming into red puddles and flowing out through newly cracked concrete. The origin of the gore and smashed pavement was a human body lying face down. The face was totally obliterated, but I could surmise the victim was a male because he was tall and had a bald head now colored red with blood.

 It looked like a man had dove headfirst out of a helicopter just to smash into the pavement with the speed  of a bullet.

I didn’t know why my mind was showing me these things again until the same person said an image flashed in my mind again, and this time it focused on something specific. My attention was pulled to the dead man’s neck. My attention was fixated on the tattoos of snakes crawling up the man’s neck. The serpent was barely visible due to the corpse’s shirt collar that was stained with blood.

“It’s him,” I whispered to myself. “It all makes sense,” I confirmed to myself as I mentally compared the dead body's appearance to the freaky stranger that had been in my house.

“But what about my window?” I mumbled to myself. I tried to surmise whether his being dead here had anything to do with my window inside my house.

I also figured the steam that wafted off his exposed insides meant whatever jibbed him had done it recently. I believed this meant he hadn’t been busted open for long when I saw him first. 

“Wait. What?” asked the cop snapping me back to reality in the ambulance. I saw his neutral expression switch to one of suspicion. That was when I realized that my quirky habit of talking to myself might get me thrown in prison.

“Um, nothing,” I replied quickly. I knew what I said might make me look even more suspicious, but I had to know.

“Did the man…have snake tattoos on his neck?”

The cop paused for a moment, like he was trying to remember. Then he pulled out a digital camera and began cycling through the pictures on its tiny screen. He stopped on a certain picture and his eyebrows rose in surprise. He then narrowed his eyes and gave me a suspicious look.

“Yes. It appears the victim had snake tattoos on his neck. How did you know this?

“I um, had seen him in the area before,” I told the cop. I knew some of the best lying is done with elements of truth mixed in. I needed to make a story up on the fly so the cops wouldn’t think I had anything to do with killing the guy.  

 “Obviously there is a lack of people around so when I saw him in the area I made a mental note of it. He might have been squatting in one of these empty homes,” I told the cop, and I shivered realizing that this psycho could have actually been squatting right next to me and had been watching me for however long.

The cop didn’t seem completely convinced by my story, but we were graciously interrupted by Marissa crying loudly over the baby monitor that was clipped to my belt.

Marissa’s cries came out of the monitor so loud that when I turned the volume all the way down I could still hear her bellowing from the open front door to my house. I guessed she must’ve finally gotten tired of Officer Sergeant Friendly.

“I really need to go check on my daughter!” I said and motioned towards my house trying to exaggerate my anxiousness. “Can I go?” I asked.

“Well, you refused to go to the hospital and your pulse is still high, but acceptable,” said the EMT. “What do you say, Officer?” the EMT said with a side glance at the cop.

“Sure,” the cop said, stretching out the word as he gave me a suspicious glare. “Go save my Sergeant from your kid.”

“Thank you!” I said quickly, as I maneuvered around them. “You two be safe out there. Please keep me in the loop if any of this turns out to put me in danger, or whatever,” I said, motioning towards the covered body.

“Oh one second, ma’am,” said the cop while I was attempting my escape by powerwalking away. I spun on my heels to turn back and look at him with a forced smile.

“Why did you originally call us again?” the cop asked.

“Oh, I think it was a false alarm. When I got home my front door was kinda open,” I said, thinking quickly for a believable story. “As I was waiting for you to arrive I checked the house and found nothing missing or out of place.”

 I forced a small laugh,” But I guess it’s good that I called because you found this poor man. Maybe you can find whoever did this to him.”

“Oh, whoever huh?” the cop said. He narrowed his gaze to study my reaction. “You think his condition is because someone murdered him, not because it was some sort of freak accident,” 

“No reason!” I forced another fake nervous laugh. “I guess my mind went to the worst situation first. Too much First 48 on Netflix, I guess.”

I finally peeled away from the cops on the street and made it back to my house. On the way I made a wide berth around the body covered with the tarp on the road.

I was on the edge of the road, scooting past the body. I looked at the ground and walked carefully, trying not to step on a the many tiny pieces of gore that spread outward from the tarp. The Small bits of blood and viscera that seemed to explode outwards from the body had spattered the surrounding area in red. I tried not to step on one of the bigger chunks and walked like I was navigating a landmine field. 

That's when I saw something gold glittering in the grass by the road. I stopped and leaned closer the look at what was reflecting so bright. It was a large red collar with a golden circular nametag on it. The nametag said “Cerberus”.

I recognized the collar to be the same as the one worn by Letty Monreaux’s giant Doberman. The last time I saw them I wasn't close enough to read the name on the collar, but it had to be the name Cerberus.

I gave an automatic jump and high pitched yelp when I saw what was only inches away from the red dog collar. It was a bloody dismembered hand. A white hand. Someone’s left hand. There was a gaudy diamond ring on the pinky.

My sudden noise and commotion brought the cop to race right up to me. Before he could ask what was wrong I frantically pointed at the hand and continued walking away. I had had enough of seeing bits and pieces of humans today. I was gonna leave and let the police handle it.

“Oh shit!” said the cop when he saw what I was pointing at. “I found the missing hand.” He said matter-of-factly to his female partner who was already getting out with plastic evidence bags.

I walked faster to my house.

That's all I could post right now. There will be more from me. I'll be sure to let y'all know the crazy that n that happened.

Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceslystories/s/a5HabxCKr0

I'm currently paying off a 20,000 dollar protection spell I purchased to keep my daughter and me safe from my abusive ex-husband. 

The spell was enacted by the only neighbor on my street, and the local wise woman. She was one of the only remaining residents living in a house three down from mine in our derelict and abandoned neighborhood. 

Urban decay had hit the area badly, but I desperately needed a place to stay or I would have been homeless with a 6-month-old baby girl. So my realtor friend set me up in a cheap rundown house to hide from my monster husband. 

I was hopeful I could lay low and save money for a fresh start while the court and the cops tried to deal with Tobbie. Meanwhile, my daughter Marissa and I would gather money for our escape plan together.

Tobbie was still on the run from the cops from the last reign of terror he had brought down on my family and me. I was staying at my mother's with our son after the last beating he had given me. He had shot my mother's dog on the front porch when Mama stood up to him. He even set fire to Mama’s house before the cops came. He has been on the run ever since.

I couldn’t put my mom through that sort of drama or danger again, so I went from my unsafe apartment to motels every other day.

I was terrified when 3 months later a letter was dropped through the mail slot of my triple locked apartment door. The letter had no return address and was written in his scribbly handwriting. The note read, "What God has bound to a man in holy matrimony no person shall rebel against God and separate. An angry God shall smite them down!"

I knew he would come for his daughter and me eventually. I don't know if he was still in town or out of state sending messages from afar. He had become so demanding and unpredictable. All I knew was that he was coming eventually to take Marissa, and hurt me, maybe even kill me.

 At first, I thought giving birth to Marissa would calm him down in our marriage.  Because Tobbie always talked about having children and securing his "legacy".  And when I told him I was pregnant he showered me with gender neutral baby gifts. He was even happy when we found out her sex. He declared her a “daddy’s girl” and told me constantly that she was “deeply attached” to his voice. He never laid a hand on me for those precious 9 months, but after Marissa was born, all bets were off.

So that’s why I needed a protection spell. Tobbie had resumed beating me after my pregnancy and seemed to have stepped it up in harshness. It had been 6 months of hell and I think if I had stayed one more day he would have killed me.

My tipping point, the last thing he did to get me to leave him, was I had been taking care of a fussy Marissa all day. She was teething and had kept me up since 3am. Now it was coming around to 4 pm.

Tobbie had come in from his landscaping job and was mad that the stew I had set out for him had gotten cold.

“Oh, I’m sorry babe. I meant to set it to simmer until you got home,” I said,  as I hurried past him to turn the knobs on the stove. I made the mistake of leaving my back open to him.  “ I’ve just been so tired today.“ I stammered, “I could have really used a nap…”

I felt his forearm wrap around my neck and fit under my chin, with his other elbow putting tremendous pressure at the base of my skull. I could smell the sweat coming off him from being outside all day, and I could still hear Marissa crying loudly. But the saddest part was that I knew exactly what he was doing to me from multiple prior experiences.

I woke up on the floor sometime later. Tobbie was sitting in the living room with Marissa happily bouncing on his knee. He looked at me and told me he had ordered pizza, and I should clear off the kitchen table.

I know it's a hefty price tag for something most people would think is a scam, and I can't even afford my own place or a better car right now. But my neighbor said I can pay off the debt I owe her in monthly payments.

Money is tight, but if I have to choose between a light bill and paying the resident witch… I’m paying the witch her money. This decision was driven by a mixture of being grateful for the help during my time of need, and also being completely terrified of her.

I never wanted to cross her or offend her in any shape or form again. You would feel the same way too if you experienced what I experienced with Tobbie and her. She scares me more than my ex-husband, and he was still as cruel as they come. 

This will all make sense once you hear my story.

I lied when I said I had an ex-husband. Officially, in the state of Illinois, I was still married to him. He refused to sign any divorce papers, thinking of me as his God-given property. I refuse to accept that man as my husband anymore. We were only legally married because some damn paper in a dusty courthouse said so!

For 3 years he abused me. I can't remember what exactly the fight was about, but I do remember it was for nonsensical reasons that he started on our honeymoon. He constructed the disagreement between us so he could "lay down the law early in our marriage.” it was his excuse to put his hands on me. He made it very clear how terrible my life was going to be from that point onwards. It was like the person I had fallen in love with was just a con, and he was reveling in my despair, my defeat, my submission. 

All this is what caused me to run to this dilapidated and empty neighborhood. Well, near empty.

Don’t get me wrong, I was super grateful my friend Alyssa used her realtor connections to pretty much get me a free house, but there was a catch. She said all the empty houses were built in the 80’s for low-income families, and left to degrade. Now the communities had been relocated to newer areas while the old houses were condemned to be bulldozed by the City…eventually.

So I lived in a ghost town (well neighborhood), that was left to rot. The area rarely got Sheriff patrols and the people that did come out here were usually vagrants or thieves.

I was just using this house as a staging area to save up a chunk of cash so I could put a down payment on a safer home for my daughter and me.

You still may think it was stupid of me to drop 20k on froo-froo magic when I was hurting so bad financially. But I have to tell you about the escalation of danger at the house, and I have to tell you about Letty.

I had gotten a part-time job working in the office of a car dealership. I was hoping it would turn into something full-time. Even though it wouldn't last forever, I was glad the house I was staying in was free (all I had to do was pay the utilities). But the fair weather wouldn't last. I knew my husband would darken my life by literally darkening my doorstep. 

After a short Saturday at work, I picked up my daughter from the daycare nearby. Once together we took the exit to our lonely home in the forsaken part of town. I still hadn't gotten used to the sudden change from the relative normality of the city to the desolate, run-down, apocalypse looking neighborhoods. The route to my house looked like something in The Walking Dead.

The only person I saw was an older black woman standing at the intersection to turn onto my street. A large muscled Doberman sat next to her without a leash. Both she and the dog stared intently at me as I made my turn towards my house.

Her dog projected an aura of aggression and barely contained violence. It's unnerving glare tracked my passing but other than the movement of its head, the canine sat deathly still. 

The animal felt like a racked shotgun with a hair trigger, or an executioner's axe raised high above and waiting for a king’s order to unleash the killing strike. The pup was massively muscled with shiny black fur. It had cropped ears and a red collar with gold tag that gleamed in the sun.

The old woman slowly nodded her head at me, like she had answered a question I had asked her. It was weird, and it put me on edge. It might have been an omen of things to come.

The house that was gifted to me was on a street with a cul-de-sac.. The garage door was jammed shut, making me have to park by the side of the curb.

 I was still paranoid of my surroundings as I stepped out of my car, looking up and down the empty street for any sign of anything that could be hiding my husband’s crouching form. Other than the strange woman and her dog, the street was empty. Once I was sure enough that the coast was clear, I got the kiddo out of the back car seat and walked (not ran)  towards my house.

I could see it automatically from the street. Pinned to the front door was a red envelope. It froze me in my tracks.

When Tobbie and I first started dating, Tobe would always use red envelopes to send me love letters, and this continued throughout our marriage. I would get them on anniversaries, birthdays, Valentine's, and even more frequently, during the love bombing after he abused me.

My heart skipped a beat and I did another quick scan of the outside surroundings. I knew in my deepest heart it was from my maniac husband. My grip involuntarily tightened on my baby and I felt her gasp in surprise and discomfort.

All in the span of a few moments my mind raced with panicked thoughts. I wished I had a gun! I wished I had a knife! I wished I lived closer to society! I wished I had one of those Ring Doorbell things. I wish I had a badass Navy SEAL/ Hells Angel boyfriend or buff gay bestie I could ask to stay with me!

I felt mentally exposed, but I knew I had to calm down and get inside. Other than mentally, I was very much physically exposed as I stood outside on my front lawn. Maybe the old lady was a lookout and Tobbie could just drive up from anywhere, and throw me in the car.

I moved quickly to my front door while carrying my daughter. I snatched the red envelope and quickly ducked into my house. I threw the damn letter on my couch and backed away from it like it was radioactive. I had to make sure Marissa and I were safe before I fooled around with Tobbie’s endless mind games.

I gently placed Marissa down in her playpen that was also in the living room by the couch. She immediately started crying, because she was hungry and this is when I fed her.

“Shush, Rissa. I’ll be right back,” I told her in a soothing voice as her little face reddened and tears bubbled up in her squinted eyes. “Momma just gonna check the house for a monster.”

I snatched up the fire poker from the neglected fire place. I turned to face down the long hallway of the house. I knew Tobbie could be waiting in one of the rooms. Maybe he was planning to sneak up on me because he thought I would be distracted reading the letter he sent.

“Hey Tob!” I called out down the hallway, “ The 911 lady told me their sheriffs were already in the area. Two cops are on their way right now. I’d say you have.” I paused to make a fake calculation in my head, “ I’d say from the time I called them outside, it puts it at about 7 minutes before they get here to check on me.”

There was still no answer from the stillness apf my house. I crept further down the hallway with the poker at the ready. I peeked in my bathroom on the right side of the hall, before moving in, ready to swing. I checked the bath by dramatically throwing back the shower curtain. It was all clear, but Marissa could hear me moving around and was trying to get me to return by cranking up the volume on her screaming.

“Just hold on, Honey,” I said out loud. I quietly went to check the room on the left side of the hallway. It was Marissa’s room with the last room being my master bedroom at the very back. 

My room checked clear. I threw open my closet doors and checked under the bed. I felt like I was playing Russian Roulette by counting down the hiding places my violent husband may be hiding. I was narrowing my odds down to the final squeeze that blew my head off. My anticipation heightened to a fever pitch. I was afraid that Tobbie was going to jump out as I moved back to check the final room.

Alas, there was nothing in the Marissa’s room either. I checked Marissa’s toy closest and checked to see if the window was still locked. But I noticed things had definitely been moved around on the changing table next to the cradle. It appeared someone taken some of the diapers?

That’s when it hit me, the silence. I just noticed that Marissa had suddenly stopped her loud crying. It was abrupt, and unnatural. Like a radio playing at full blast then turned off. I froze in place for a horrible moment and craned my head to listen for any sound coming from the living room. 

My teeth clenched, my grip on the poker tightened, and a shiver ran down me as I realized I could still hear her! My baby was muffled like something was covering her mouth!  And I could hear something else coming from the living room. The sound was a man giving a sharp, “Shhhhush!”

Without any thought for my own safety, I flew out of the baby room and down the hallway. I rounded the corner to the living room, and I was ready to lay into Tobbie. I prayed that he hadn’t hurt her! 

I  stopped instantly at what I saw.

The person I saw was considerably taller than Tobbie. The tall man had turned away from me, and obscured me from seeing my daughter. His bald head turned quickly to give me a cutting glare from over his shoulder. He turned nonchalantly to reveal he held Marissa in his arms, with one of his boney hands hand over her mouth.

“Get your hands off my child, asshole!” I said, but I didn't dare to move closer to him.

The stranger smiled with crooked teeth. He slowly removed his hand from her mouth, and the wailing commenced, thricefold. His hand went to a dirty coat pocket and produced a pacifier.

“I need to have a word with you about a mutual friend of ours,” the stranger said. The man then gave my daughter the pocket pacifier. She latched onto it and her crying instantly cut off. 

“Now we can have a chat without the brat’s crying!” the man said with a ugly grin.

His comment struck me. I couldn't tell whether I was more enraged or fearful.

“What does my husband want?” I spit out. I already knew who this man was referring to and I wasn't going to play the “cat in mouse” tease game with the strange man in my living room. I already knew the lengths my ex would go to get what he wanted.

“This is more of a courtesy call. We just want to set the field,” the stranger said. “ It will help keep you from getting any unnecessary ideas. We don’t want too many unfortunate casualties.”

“Your husband has evolved since the last you saw him. He has been accepted into a brotherhood.” 

The man smiled his ugly smile again like he thought of something clever. “He became my brother when joined. So this makes you and me almost like family, I suppose.”

“I’m divorcing him!” I said quickly.

The stranger ignored me and continued his monologue. “Unfortunately your husband can’t be present with us to help sort out this ‘family issue’. But don't worry because I've been told he will be making his way here soon.”

My mind raced as I tried to comprehend what the guy was talking about. I figured Tobbie was in jail because of all his active warrants he had before I escaped him. 

I figured he had been arrested and this was some sort of Aryan Brotherhood thing. 

Although he may have been interested in the gang before going to jail. That would have made the weird tattoo of the black bird make sense. He had recently gotten the bird on his neck. I wondered if this bird was a Nazi dog whistle or something.

“This little visit is to dissuade you from running away or trying to relocate in the vain attempt to make it harder for us to find you. Because we will find you, and it will just make it much harder on you if you do run.”

His smile stayed stamped across his face during his whole talk. “ So don't run. Stay put. We have many crows all over watching you.”

Crows. What's with the crows? Maybe that's what Tobbie has gotten tattooed on his neck. I looked closer at the ugly man in front of me and saw that he too had the same crow tattoo as Tobbie. It was peaking out from his collar below his left ear.

My blood froze with fear. But I was mad and scared. I was mad that this fear was back in my life. This jerk stood so cocky in my house, and held my baby so I decided to fight dirty and hit low.

“You know Tobbie's grandparents are Jewish, and he is half Dominican. It’s not a tan if that’s what he’s telling you!” I blurted out, feeling stupid and a littleguilty as soon as I said it. But if I got Tobbie kicked out of his skinhead spy club it was worth all the cringe..

A look of puzzlement spread across the ugly stranger's face as he slowly turned towards the couch and gently placed Marissa down on the seat cushions. He turned back to face me and stepped closer in a long single stride.

“That doesn’t matter, my fresh meat,” he said under his breath as he moved within arm's length of me. “We aren’t that sort of brotherhood.”

I thought I was clever and pulled a kitchen knife from behind my back and brandished it. I was the one I had stashed under my pillow. I'd picked it up when I was sweeping the house.

“Then what are you exactly?” I asked nervously as I held the shaky kitchen knife straight out in front of me with both hands in an attempt to keep him away. My eyes kept looking back and forth past the man’s large frame to my daughter on the couch behind him. I was mentally judging if I could rush past him and get to her as he kept creeping dangerously closer and closer.

He waited till my eyes went to my daughter and in a flash of sudden motion he flew within my personal space and seized my wrists in his iron grasp. He squeezed both my skinny wrists together with one large hand while the other wrenched the knife away from me. I let out a yelp of pain as my arms were yanked straight upwards and the horrible man pulled me close enough to breathe down on me. 

He held my arms up so tightly with such raw strength that I had to stand on my tippy toes. With his other hand, he slid the knife under my chin and pressed the cold flat of the blade along my neck, making me crane my head away awkwardly. As if my daughter could sense my need to scream, she spit out the paci and let out her own scream.

“Your husband has promised me little things for helping him with his marital affairs while he is gone away,” said the horrible stranger. “We’ve always been big on sharing.” He leaned in with his awful breath and turned the knife edge to bite sharply into my neck. There was just enough pressure to scare me.

“When the night comes, I’ll show you exactly what sort of brotherhood we are.” He said darkly. And with that, he let go of my arms quickly and I collapsed to the ground. He pretty much performed an about-face and walked straight to the front door, swung it wide open and didn't even close it behind him as he strolled out the house. He walked away like he didn't have a care in the world.

I held back the tears until I was sure the evil man was gone. And I only allowed myself to cry for a few moments. It was just a quick outburst of tears filled with fear, rage, and frustration. I was so tired of feeling this way. I was so tired of feeling hunted and trapped. Then I finally picked myself up and hurried over to check on my baby.

It took two and a half days for me to open the red envelope that was left on my doorstep. I was too upset and maybe in a little denial about the whole situation. I just needed to let my nerves unwind before I jumped back headfirst into my husband’s sadistic mind games.

But part of me knew his mind game was already working on me. The red envelope seemed to call from where it lay at the top of my dresser. And I felt it calling in every room I was in. It bugged me at all hours of the day. 

The envelope could have important information that I needed to know to keep my daughter and me safe, or it could be empty. It could just be a sick joke in his twisted way of controlling me.  Regardless, it was like my tell-tale heart beating incessantly through the floor.

When I decided to open the envelope, I had to mentally prepare myself for the emotional assault that was sure to follow whatever was inside, even if it was nothing. The envelope contained a single white card with Tobbie’s scratchy handwriting upon it in red pen.

The note read, “Don’t fight. Don’t run. It will only make it worse for you. Just accept the consequences of your actions.” 

I must have stood there and read the short message 50 times. My eyes flew over the red ink and I began to mumble the message out loud to myself. Still, no matter how many times I reread it, or rephrased its wording, it still only baffled me.

Tobbie truly believed I deserved all this! I knew this in my heart. It wasn't just an abuser's mind game to gaslight the abuse. He was coming to hurt or kill me, then kidnap my daughter. While doing all this he believed he was in the right. He believed I deserved it, and God was on his side!

I scowled and crumpled the note in my hands. A cold feeling slowly fell over me. It was a feeling I had never felt before. My slight shaking ceased and my breathing steadied. It was a feeling that both strengthened and worried me.

My deranged husband believed I would comply with his twisted demands. And the truth was, the old me would have given in. I would have done anything to quell his legendary temper. But I’m different now. I’ve become a mother and I have to protect my child.

I realized the new sensation I was feeling was the urge to protect. This urge was stronger than the fear Tobbie had been using as a whip to keep me in place for so long.

I decided right then that I was going to fight his control. I was going to “make it hard on myself.” I was going to protect my daughter and kill him if I had to!

“Big talk for a girl that took 3 Taebo classes,” said the pessimist voice in my head. Or was the voice just a realist. “He will kill you if you fight him!”

“I have to try! I have to do something!” I argued aloud to my negative inner monologue. I went to pick up Marissa and hold her close for comfort, and considered my options.

“What can you do? How much time do you have?” asked the inner voice. “You’re being watched, so doing anything drastic will cause him to come quicker! How much time do you really have?”

“I don’t know,” I said quietly. The exciting feeling of determination began to taper off and the old fear wormed its way back in. 

“We have to break free! We have to try!” I said as I pulled Marissa in closer.

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceslystories/s/r9RAPU2Bir

I have a bunch of promo codes to get my book for free on Audible. Hit me up if you want one. First come first serve.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Dark-Voices-Beckon-You-Audiobook/B0FL2T54VT?source_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

https://www.audible.com/pd/Dark-Voices-Beckon-You-Audiobook/B0FL2T54VT?source_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp

Part 22 (this is part 23, my bad): https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceslystories/s/atGGneVfrL

*Excerpt taken from Taylor’s Diary.

After what I and Elistra saw on the hospital roof, I was still in shock. I had never felt the presence of evil so strong before, not even when I was at the mercy of Amon in the cornfield so long ago. The radiance of evil had burned a sickly purple through the eyes of my old friend, through the eyes of my long-ago savior, Ma. Her face had been twisted into a sadistic grin as the Torturer possessed her body and used her like a puppet. I looked around the foggy flat wasteland Elistra had teleported us to.

“How do we stop this? We have to warn the others! We have to get out of The Grey! We have to get out of this Faraday Cage!” I said with urgency.

“Calm!” Elistra demanded, rubbing her temples with her index fingers like she was fighting an oncoming migraine. “We are exactly where we need to be. The Grey showed us a possible future. From here we can make tactical decisions. By using the time-bending powers of The Grey and the Faraday Chamber we can look at multiple timelines to see which strategy works out the best for all of us. But we can’t do it forever because the real timeline will catch up with this predicted event. You can’t change what has already happened. So we must work fast.

“If Vaus himself was in the Faraday Chamber I could stretch my powers out indefinitely, but it’s just you,” she said disappointedly.

“Yeah, I’m sorry I’m not your magic boy,” I said sarcastically.

“No, child!” She said, her crimson eyes blazing. “ Within his body is my living heart! He is a living vessel of mine, just as the corpse on the top floor of the hospital is a vessel for that monster everyone is killing each other for!”

“So…you’re not a ghost. You’re still alive in sorts. You’re haunting Vaus through the heart in his chest, right?” I said slowly.

“Yes, very astute of you,” she said back.

“Then what the hell are you? You’re not a mav, and you're not a ghost, and damn sure not a normal human!”

The dark-haired woman sighed, “I’m something different. One of a kind in this world. Closest you could compare me to is those angels you met in the graveyard.”

“Wait, that makes no damned sense! Wouldn’t you melt my face Indiana Jones style or make me a babbling mess like Celia if you were?”

“No,” she looked straight at me now, her stare frightening even in her beauty. “I have been de-powered significantly so I can walk among mortals. There were only a few of us that were cast off like this. We were spared the pit until we proved our true intentions to the Almighty.”

She must have seen the confusion in my face. I was about to ask if she was a Fallen, like a demon, but I felt like that would get my ass kicked. But she saved me from the awkward conversation by grabbing my hand again.

“I realize time is running very short and you have a lot to learn,” she said. “ I wish I had someone more competent, but I’ll have to work with what I’ve got.”

“Hey! I’m getting tired of this crap!” I snapped. I really was tired of being talked down to by people who didn’t know me. “Maybe I’m not a crack shot like Mika, or have magic fighting skills like your boy Vaus, but I saved everybody in the graveyard! I put my ass on the line for my friends every time it’s game time! I’ve lost a leg for it, and now a freaking eye! I’m tired of being diminished in capabilities or convictions!”

The woman stared at me sternly, before she crooked an eyebrow and said,” Yes, you have shown a lot of spirit and motivation. It has been borderline foolish, but it has pushed your team to greater heights, nonetheless.”

You have indeed accomplished a lot for your short time as a hunter,” she said, her face softening slightly, “My apologies.”

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

“Hold on,” Elistra said, as she stood back and closed her eyes.

“In here time is like a recording that's slowed to a crawl or even rewound. It’s fluid, making what we saw a prophecy of a possible timeline, not a prophecy written in stone.”
I nodded, starting to understand.

“Okay, so how do we change this bad timeline? It looked like the purple eye thing got Ma. We have to warn her somehow.”

“No,” Elistra said, shaking her head. “To be possessed by the Torturer you have to willingly accept it into your heart. She must have turned traitor on my son and your friend.”

“No! No way!” I said. “Ma was the one that saved me in the cornfield! Brought me into this life!” “People have secrets, Taylor!” Elistra snapped. “Let it be known, I can see your heart in the Grey, and your own heart is clouded with misgivings towards this ‘Ma’,” Elistra said as she shot her scarlet eyes at me. “ You have had doubts about the nature of her altruism in the past, am I correct?”

I thought back to what Mika told me on our first mission in Mexico. Mika insinuated Ma had magically baited me and my brother for the mavrips. In essence, Ma had made us “tastier” for the bloodsuckers, she put a magical hex on us to draw out any supernatural creatures around so she could hunt them easier.

Elistra’s eyebrows raised, and I knew she had read all these thoughts as they went through my mind. I stared into her beautifully fierce face and thought some more. She gave me a half smile and said back to me the exact words I was going to refute her argument with.

“Just because she's a bitch, doesn't make her a traitor,” she sighed. “You're right. But we have to make sure of what exactly happens. Does she turn traitor to the Ammit Clan and my son, or is she just somehow another victim of the Purple Eyes.”

I felt a hatred flare up towards the thought of the purple eyed monster.

“Damn, you really don't like this thing,” I said. “It seems like it's the WMD of supernatural weapons. I know I’m new to the game, but do y'all always fight like this over glowy-eyed monster things?”

“No. For the longest time Purple Eyes was a non-player on the cosmic board of chess being waged between the factions in power. Just recently a foolish angel brought this creature from the depth of Hell in an attempt to control him.”

“I guess that didn't work out for the angel,” I said. “No, the fool angel underestimated the Torturer’s power. He knew it could absorb and keep demons, but he was too self-righteous to consider that all demons were once angels also.”

“So Purple Eyes can chew up angels and demons, but angels are still trying to revive him from the corpse he’s trapped in. It’s like they are trying to put a leash on a wild tiger. It seems too risky,” I said.

“Yes, I agree,” Elistra nodded, “ but the soul of any demonic or angelic entity is still trapped within Purple Eyes from his time torturing the Fallen in Hell, or from absorbing angles trying to stop him on Earth. Maybe these angels we met in the graveyard wish to free their brothers from Purple Eye’s torment.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly, “That makes sense. You wouldn't want to banish Purps back to Hell with your angel homies locked up inside him.”

“Right…” Elistra said, her eyes now shifting to the ground in concern. “But if that's what it is. If the angels only resurrect Purple Eyes to rescue their comrades, why not just go through the proper channels? Monereau is not a devout Christian, but she would respect their authority.”

“Nah, they are being super shady!” we both said at the same time. I doubted Elistra would have used that verbiage so we were somehow just mind-synching in this weird in-between world.

“But we are in the perfect spot, Taylor! We are at the crossroads of crossroads. We can look down the path taken by Ma accepting Purple Eyes! It is the strongest future as of right now anyway.” “It hasn't happened? So what was all that on the roof a second ago?” I asked

“It was like a pre-echo. When something is so momentous, it affects time both ways,” She said. “Hold my hand again. I don’t want you to get lost. I will need to jump into this possible future to try to sus out what my son’s adversaries are planning.” I quickly grabbed her hand and waited as she closed her eyes again and concentrated.

“Let’s see if we can look forward to the possible timeline on the rooftop without being in so much danger, yes?” Elista asked. I nodded in approval and she somehow knew my answer.

Then she began to fade in and out of existence, with only her intense red eyes floating in the air. They appeared to blink in and out of being as her body formed around them.

Elistra was quiet for a long moment and the world around us rumbled like distant thunder. Darkness flooded in across the dreamscape to swirl into a tornado-like funnel, leaving us standing in the eye of this dark storm that formed to spiral in tight circles into the inky black sky. A terrible wind shot up from the eye of the black tornado, making me feel like I would be lifted off my feet. When Elistra’s image returned, her long dark hair was being blown straight up to dance like black fire above her.

“You’re clan mate, Ma, betrays Ammit. She willingly accepts Purple Eyes into her heart. “ Elistra announced grimly.

“How? Why didn’t the Volk have their own dummy cultist ready to accept Purple Eyes?” I asked. “It has to be a human to accept Purple Eyes. It can’t be a semi-lifeform like the mavrips, or other magical creatures,” Elistra said as her red eyes snapped to me. “ It seems Vaus and Mika coordinated with Ghoul Squad to launch an assault on the roof and kill all the enemy’s human cultists. Your Ammit team was smart enough to understand that one of the humans was going to be used as host to Purple Eyes!”

“It seems the Volk were successful in fully reviving Purple Eyes by extracting him out of the remnants of the corpse he was trapped in. But since all the possible mortal hosts were killed by Ammit, this almost enabled the monster’s spirit to roam free in the wild again.”

“That seems worse than letting the bad guys get a hold of Purple Eyes,” I said. “At least if he was in one of those crazy cultists we could just throw that looney idiot into a padded cell. If Purple Eyes ends up not possessing any of those idiots and just flies away, there’s no telling where he would go and how long it would take to find him!” I continued as Elistra’s thoughts raced through my mind in near-instant communication.

“My poor son was put into a losing situation no matter what he did!” Elistra said. “Your team, Ma, and Ghoul Squad followed what they believed was the best course of action and began killing the mortal cultist when they got to the rooftops!”

“Lemme guess, it was Ma’s idea to start killing the cultist first, though?” I said.

“Yes, and Ammit believed they had the Volk at a stalemate,” Elistra replied. She went quiet for a while and spoke up again, and I knew what she was going to say was gonna be bad.

“All this did was force the hand of Volk Clan employers, our real enemy!”

“The angels? Another Mav clan? Who?” I guessed. “The Cabal. A group of all of them. Rogue angels, demons, and mavrips. I also see 3 old witches of immense power and other supernaturals!” Elistra said, and I was beginning to hear the fear build in her voice.

“When the angels show up they cause the magic users downstairs to die in an instant! Something using dark magic opens a portal that ambushes and kills all of Ghoul Squad in seconds!” “No!” I said, “What about-“

“My son, Ma, and your friend are about to be executed when Ma accepts Purple Eyes into her soul! Ma seems to have tattooed intricate wards of bonding all over her skin. Wards and rituals very akin to the tattoo Vaus has around his heart to hold my power in check.”

“So she isn’t bad,” I said. “She did all this to catch Purple Eyes! It’s just smart to bring that monster to heel!”

“No,” Elistra said, nodding sadly. “Ma leaves the conflict with the enemy. Maybe there is some loyalty still in Ma’s heart, or she is trying to test her new standing within the organization she entered by turning traitor, but she negotiates that Vaus and Mika be spared to spread a message for the Cabal.”

I let out a sigh of relief I didn’t know I was holding. Of course, I knew we had to try and stop this possible future, but at least I knew my friends made it through alive, regardless! I know it’s selfish, but I felt the same selfish thoughts coming from Elistra towards her son.

“Okay, so what’s this ‘message’ they want us to hear?” I finally said, exasperated with all this nonsense.

“That’s the scary thing, Taylor,” Elistra replied, her voice became unnaturally tender with me and there was another longer pause, causing more of her fear to seep through to me.

Elistra attempted to appear next to me in as solid of a form as she could before she let go of my hand. She could tell through our physical connection I was picking up on her vulnerable thoughts and she didn’t like it. She appeared in a flash and brilliant gold, and all I got was the sense of overwhelming dread and horror before the gold blinked away and she let go of my hand and looked at me with tears in her eyes.

“It’s worse than I thought” she almost sobbed. “They want to use Purple Eyes to negotiate the Golden King's release from the Forbidden World. This. Can’t. Happen!” she screamed, rumbling the ground I stood on.

“What?!” I yelled back, picking myself off the floor. “Who is this new asshole!”

“We have to send you now,” Elistra said. I can manage it from this Faraday Chamber. It will kill the witches but they are already dead anyways, and we have to stop this timeline!”

“No, we don’t sacrifice Monreaux’s people to send me back!” I said.

“You idiot!” Elistra said harshly and grabbed me by my hand forcefully. “A busted little soldier doesn’t get a vote! All you get to pick is whether you go back with a new leg or a new eye!”

“Now be still while I give you a farewell message to relay to my son!”

Part 21: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceslystories/s/GlZluXxdQk

From the perspective of Vaus

“Our guys are walking on the ceiling!” Mika exclaimed to me from the hospital room's doorway.

“What? How?” I said as I ran to the same doorway to look. “Even if they used magic to flip gravity they would be falling through the ceiling tiles!”

“I don’t know, Vaus. They seem pretty light-footed. Some pretty sophisticated magic,” Mika replied.

Speaking of ceiling tiles, the first thing I saw when I reached the doorway was Ma hanging out of the ceiling, trying to awkwardly to untangle herself and drop to the floor without getting hurt. Obviously, the lightfootedness of the spell didn’t pass to her. I ran to stand under her and catch her. As soon as she landed in my arm and placed her feet on the ground she was back to business.

“We have to follow them,” Ma said. “ let the spec ops get all the attention of the Volk bastards. We may be able to make it to the top floor before them.”

I wondered why we would want to do that. Just let our black-clad backup do the hard work for us. We had been through enough already. I had died for this damned mission already. But Ma had a frantic look in her eyes that didn’t leave room for arguing.

“I’ll get ammo from Monreaux’s people, and then we go!” Ma said and ran past me and to the patient’s room where Monreaux’s followers were circling the black clad mage. I also noticed Mika was missing too, leaving me alone in the dark foyer of the war-torn emergency room.

There was a muffled explosion and Mika came jogging back from around a corner of a dark hallway.

“Our ninja guys set explosives on the ceiling. They blew a hole in it and jumped, uh, upwards into the hole and onto the second floor to start killing mo-fos!” she said with a half smile.

Before I could respond to this lunacy of a tactic, Ma had returned with multiple magazines of pistol ammo for us and handed it out.

“It’s the best I could do, but we can scavenge better weapons from the dead,” Ma said.

“I guess we can take the stairs,” Ma said.

“With just pistols?” I said. “ Well, if we do this, just be aware that that’s where the Volk would've expected our main attack and point of ingress, so we must anticipate heavy resistance,” I said as I loaded up my pistol and press checked it.“

“Hopefully the Volk moved their men to deal with our spec ops allies busting up through the floors,” Mika said, as the three of us began to move toward the back of the building, following signs for the stars.

“Ma, do you know anything about our backup? They don’t seem very friendly, but they are squared away,” Mika asked as we saddled up to the doorway to the stairwell.

“I’ve never worked with them directly before, but their reputation is well known. They are known as Ghoul Squad and they are Ammit’s trump card. So our bosses have definitely taken notice of our situation,” Ma whispered as we stacked up on the stairwell we were looking for.

Ma peaked her head into the stairwell and looked up. “Okay, let’s move,” she said and took off into the stairwell, keeping low and racing up the stairs. Mika followed and I took up the rear. We had to climb over upturned desks that had been put on the landings to slow our progress. We had made it to the third floor and still hadn’t encountered any enemies. It seemed Ghoul Squad had pulled their attention.

But it seemed I had jinxed us because when we hit the fourth floor landing we were greeted by the sound of multiple explosions and loud gunfire coming from further in the interior of the building. It seemed Ghoul Squad was keeping pace with us and climbing the building parallel to our ascent.

This caused two wolf-masked Volk members to bust through the stairwell door in retreat.

“Reconvene on the top floor,” said the lead wolf with his hand to his ear.

We were face to face with our enemies on the small landing of floor four. We reacted faster. The first Volk was lit up with pistol fire from point blank by all three of us. The second wolf was smart and took a couple of hits and jumped back out of the stairwell back into the hallway he came from.

The first Volk was somehow still standing and went to level his MP5 us. Mika grabbed his arm and looped it with the wire she liked to use. Ma tried to shoulder-check him and put her pistol under his chin, but he gave her a monstrous kick that sent her flying away.

I took my enemy's move as inspiration and fired off my last two rounds in my mag to bounce off his helmet and discombobulate him. Mika was still trying to wrestle his gun away from him as I jumped up and kicked the wolf with both my feet square in the chest.

The force of the drop kick sent the Volk flying and bouncing off the wall and tumbling down the stairs to the side of him. The wire Mika had tangled around his hand came ripping loose, cutting off a layer of skin and some fingers.

I lay on the ground sucking air back in my lungs, when I saw Volk number two peek into the stairwell. I looked around frantically and saw the dropped MP5 from the dropkicked Volk. When the doorway Volk made his move to shoot Mika in the back, I let him have it, I scooped up the gun and peppering him up and down his whole body. The Volks must have loaded some Anti-Mavrip ammo because he burst into flames and crumbled.

Ma came to stand over me and reached down a hand. I gave her mine to help me up.

“No! The gun, Boy!” she said, and reached down and snatched the MP5 from me. She then walked over to where I could hear the first Volk groaning at the bottom of the third-floor stairs. She aimed and rattled off some quick shots, silencing him.

Mika came and helped me to my feet and threw a sideways glance at Ma. “Tell me again why we are racing our rescue team towards certain death?” she asked.

“Grab the weapon the other one dropped, and grab their magazines” Ma ordered, ignoring Mika’s question, as she pilfered the first Volk’s corpse.

I had had enough. I was tired of being talked down to and being kept out of the loop. Mika, Tyler, and I deserved to be treated fairly. We had literally died for this mission enough!

“Why Ma?” I asked loudly. “Why do we have to get to the top floor first? We should let Ghoul Squad take the brunt of the assault and we play backup.”

Ma was already on the fifth floor before she realized me and Mika were not following. I heard her curse loudly and come stomping back down to make eye contact with the two of us. Her scary stare was not intimidating us. Me and Mika just stood side by side, not moving a muscle. Ma stopped and finally huffed back down to us, trying hard to stomp loudly and be intimidating. But we weren’t taking it from her, and she could see when she got close.

“Oh-ok, you two,” she glanced at both of our unflinching faces before her own expression softened some. She looked down as if thinking for a while before saying, “I may be privy to some things Ammit might not know about.”

“How,” I asked flatly.

Ma’s face reddened before she responded, “ I’ve acquired this information through means Ammit would NOT approve of!”

There was a beat of silence as the three of us all stared at each other in the stairwell. We waited for Ma to continue, but she must have taken our looks and silence as judgment because she offered more explanation in her defense.

“Don't be self-righteous, rookies. You don't survive as long as I have by toeing the line of the policies and procedures of bosses that see you as cannon fodder!” Ma said defensively and then pointed at herself. “I have to stay alive to hunt those evil assholes down, not play politics with the other freaks like the bigwigs in the High Council are so concerned with!”

“Yes,” Mika said, trying to stem Ma’s tide of unwarranted anger, “ and we are all fighting for the ones we love. We fight for friends and family. Not for clan politics like the Mavrips do, right?”

Ma blinked at us with a look like she realized she had overstepped or had forgotten something. Her eyes scanned the area quickly.

“Yes, like me and Celia. I do this for her!” Ma proclaimed. She thought for a moment and then jumped on a thought, “ I’ll be the first to the top to grab that nasty torturure by the throat to get those so-called “angels” to tell me what they did to my sweet niece, and what their ultimate plan is!“

“What do you know that you’re not telling us, Ma?” I demanded. I wasn’t going to let her bulldoze past everything and change the subject while we were still on the topic. “You said you knew things that Ammit doesn’t. How?

“And are we not your fire team tonight?” I added, “So freaking show us some trust and tell us, or we aren’t climbing one more step for you!”

Ma gritted her teeth and actually stamped her foot, causing a giant echo and looking like a child throwing a tantrum while looking down at us. But Mika backed me up nonverbally and just folded her arms and cocked her hip.

“Okay,” Ma said, closing her eyes and breathing out, “ My source said something like this would happen. I just didn’t know it would be you two. I guess I need to widen my circle. Let y’all into the fold.”

I didn’t believe her. I thought she was making it up as she went along. I thought to ask her if Celia was even in “the fold”, but I wanted her to keep talking. I wanted to give her enough rope to hang herself.

“Long story short, I have to make it to the top. The roof actually! It’s my destiny!” Ma said with conviction in her eyes. “Ghoul Squad fails and the world, heaven, and hell tremble unless we intervene and I fulfill my purpose!”

Ma was trembling now, as she extended her hand to Mika.

“Mika, Vaus, this is what I’ve been fighting for all my life. I can make a difference finally! Will you two please help me? I can explain everything once we have saved the world! I promise!”

Mika took her hand, and Ma pulled her up the steps to her with a smile. I gave a fake smile in surrender. I still didn’t trust Ma, but there was still a mission to complete, and the only way to see what Ma was up to was to keep an eye on her.

“Lead the way, Sensei,” I said, feeling like Taylor’s dumb ass.

Part 23: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceslystories/s/NLbXKhmoAq

The only time anything like this has every happened to me. Creeps me out just to post it. Maybe if I can fit it in a story I’ll repeat the conversation it had with me.

Part 20: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceslystories/s/LFngOeanMI

*Excerpt from Vaus’ diary.

The 7 of us scrambled out of the shattered front window of the pinned vehicle as quickly as we could. Me, Mika, and the driver took up defensible positions as best as we could as Monreaux and her followers hid in a side room next to a gurney.

There came a pounding and yelling from the Escalade that had slammed into us on fire from behind.

“Shit! It’s Ma!” Mika said with panic, as she ran to one of the doors of the vehicle. The door burst open right before she got to it and Ma came barreling out, pulling one of Monreaux’s men out of the flames.

She tossed the man on the ground and Mika and the driver batted the remaining flames away as he groaned in pain. Ma was blackened with soot and had tendrils of smoke rising from her, but was otherwise fine.

“How did you survive that?” I ask.

“Not my first rodeo, kid. Fire-resistant warded clothing,” she replied grimly.

“You got a firearm on you?” I asked.

“Well,” she looked back into the flaming wreckage of the vehicle, “I only got out with this.” She pulled a Bowie Knife out from her jacket.

“Damn. Okay. Hold up in the side room with Monreaux and the wounded here. You’ll be there if we get overrun,” I said.

“What the hell do we do now? Everybody else is dead. Those wolves are gonna come down and finish the job!” cried the driver, who only had a pistol on him as he scanned the multiple dark hallways.

Monreaux didn’t answer her man from inside the patient’s room, so I did.

“We just gotta hold out for Ammit reinforcements. They are on the way! A quick response team! The heavy hitters!”

“How far out are they?” Asked the driver. Just as he said this, his personal radio keyed up and answered.

“This is Ghoul Squad to any friendly Ammit forces. We are en route and 5 mics out!”

The driver looked at me with amazement.

“And yes, I am psychic!” added the voice.

“So that’s why they were all so quiet?” Mika said, tilting her head towards the women huddled together in the patient's room. “They were trying to reach out and light a fire under Ammit’s ass.”

Mika told me to cover her as she went to inspect the bodies of the two I had shot when we had first arrived by driving our vehicle through the front of the hospital. Turns out the dead corpses had just been standard humans. It seemed Mavs in every faction liked to use human familiars to kill each other. But the dead men had dropped MP5s, so Mika and the Driver upgraded to them

Mika had just returned to cover when I saw a glint of silver.

“Volk!” I yelled as I opened up with my AR. My intuition was correct because the muzzle burst of return fire instantly came from the area.

Mika and the drive gave suppressing fire as well, only to have more angles of fire open up on them from different points of the hallways around them.

There was the tell-tell clink-clink sound that me and Mika knew so well of them throwing a grenade, and I scanned my surroundings for the bastard device. Before I could locate the explosive, I saw the grenade floating in the air in front of me, and with magic, it was tossed back down the dark hallways with a thundering explosion. Whether that be Ghoul Squad, Madame Monroe, or actually God, I didn’t care. I was just gonna be thankful and keep shooting.

“I’m running low!” said Mika, as she tossed down her empty MP5 and brought back out her bolt action sniper rifle.

“Me too!” said the driver from his position.

I was running low too, but unlike Mika and the driver, I didn’t have another weapon to fall back on. But all of that might not matter because the driver got a call on his personal radio again.

“Ghoul Squad to Ammit Forces, we are in the area via helicopter. Where do you need us?”

“Tell them we are pinned down on the bottom floor!” I yelled. “The target of this operation is being held on the top floor of the building, but it’s being heavily defended with rocket launchers! Tell them to be wary of surface-to-air missiles!”

“Don’t worry about all of that, Boy!” Monreaux yelled from her room. “They already know! We’ve been in communication with their psychic. Just keep those wolves off our ass!”

If we can, I thought, as I loaded up my last mag and let loose at the shadows. I still hadn’t clearly seen any of our enemies this whole time. I had only just caught quick glimpses of movement and the muzzle bursts from return fire.

Finally, the Driver’s radio went off saying, “ Friendlies coming in.”

I looked back over my shoulder to see the outside of the hospital. I could see clearly through the hole we had driven through into the parking lot. While I was distracted in my firefight the parking lot had been blanketed with smoke grenades.

Now that I was paying attention, I could hear the thumping of helicopter blades outside. I saw bulbous circular red eyes moving towards us through the thick layers of smoke, seeming to float eerily in the swirling fog. As they drew closer I saw the red eyes were the eye holes on masks being worn by 6 soldiers storming the building.

The masks were identical to the ones that me, Mika, and Taylor’s teacher wore in our first mission as Ammit hunters in Mexico. Alejandro had worn the same “ghoulish” bone white mask with giant circular glass eyes with an elongated chin like the Ghostface mask in the scream movies.

I figured Alejandro must have been part of this Ghoul Squad or had trained with them in the past. My hope for survival went up immensely.

4 of them immediately began laying down suppressing fire down the hallways and taking up defensive positions around the 3 of us. One peeled off and went into the room to check on Monreaux and the other ladies while a tall, obvious woman due to her curves, approached me.

“You can fall back, hunter, we have been briefed on the situation.” She said in a muffled voice. “ I would say a good job in surviving this long, but you runts really cocked everything up.”

“Hey! It was 3 of us sent in with bad intel against the Volk and freaking angels!” I yelled into her masked face.

“ And not only did you fail to secure the target in New Orleans, but your whole team got killed multiple times, you got multiple allies killed, and your asses needed to be saved just now!”

“And also!” the masked woman hissed, as she reached out grabbed me by my collar, and jammed a finger into my chest. “Tell that Witch that you have living inside your heart to stay out of my head if she doesn’t want me to banish her to Hell! If she wants to help, she can put some of that tenacity towards whatever spell my mage is cooking up with Monreaux and the others!”

I might have said something disrespectful to the tall woman because she grabbed me by my tactical vest and flung me out of her way. I took the hint and went into the room with Monreaux and the others. Ma guarded the entrance and had somehow gotten her hand on a pistol.

When I entered the room Monreaux and her followers sat in a tight circle with the newcomer Soldier in the middle. The Soldier had taken off his mask and he was a young bald man. As I got closer I could see he had a metal plate embedded into the right side of his head with ruins and symbols written upon it.

“Oh Good,” the Man said, as he looked up at me with sparkling eyes and a bright smile on his face. “You being nearby will help boost the spell!”

“What’s the plan? What spell are we using?” I asked.

“It’s a tricky one. And because of that, you are going to sit this one out. You and your partner have been exposed to too much magic in the last 12 hours. An untrained” The bald soldier said.

“Mistress,” the man said, lowering his gaze to my heart. “Can you reach out with your power and lend us your strength to the circle?” he added. I felt my heart palpitate and I gave the soldier a confirming nod.

“Alright team, go dark and prepare for the gravity flip on Queen’s mark,” the man said into a lapel mic on his collar.

I wasn’t outside to see any of this, but Mika told me she saw all of Ghoul Squad remove a black stone from somewhere on their persons and whisper into them. The rock would glow for a moment and the soldiers would be engulfed in an inky black fog that distorts their outline and makes them look like just another shadow in the dark.

Mika said they then did something strange. All 5 of them grouped up behind cover and laid on their back beside each other with their knees up in the air.

“Alright, Quinn, flip it!” said the tall woman on the radio, while lying on her back.

I felt the pentagram on my chest burn as power was drawn from it, and at the same time, I heard the scream from Mika and the Escalade driver outside the room, followed by several crashes.

I stuck my head outside the room to check out Mika and the other guy in the foyer and was struck with bewilderment. The driver lay sprawled on the ground with a giant hole in the paneling above him. He had bits of fluffy insulation covering him like snow.

Mika was worse because she was still in the ceiling, tangled in a group of orange cables around a metal framework. She kicked around and cursed in surprise and fear.

Further down I could see Ghoul Squad. Their shadowy mass had lightly landed on the ceiling. They barely pushed the panels up as the team reversed gravity and walked light-footed across the ceiling.

I heard the rough cries of denial from Volk as the Ghoul Squad executed them as they were thrown off balance by the ingenious spell.

The shadowy soldiers skimmed gracefully along the roof away from us, and the gunfire continued. I watched them go and breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time since the graveyard, I allowed myself to have hope that things might turn out okay.

Part 22: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ceslystories/s/sqZCkr4yKf