The road to the house was quiet. Too quiet.
Kevin gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror every few seconds, expecting headlights that never came. The woods flanked both sides of the dirt road like the pages of a closed book—filled with stories that begged to stay forgotten.
Missy sat in the passenger seat, hands in her lap, lips tight. She hadn't said a word since they'd passed the old gas station. Something about the air felt different now. Too thin. Too still. As if the world itself had stopped breathing.
"This is where they said they'd be," Kevin said, as the car turned a slow corner and the Harrington cabin came into view.
Or what was left of it.
The roof sagged. The front windows were blown out. Smoke clung to the siding like dried blood. The surrounding trees were blackened, stripped bare, like they had witnessed something too holy—or too damned.
Kevin killed the engine. Neither of them moved.
Missy whispered, "This place is dead."
"No," Kevin said. "Something still lives here."
They stepped out of the car.
The air buzzed—not with insects, but with a tension that made their teeth itch. Every footstep on the gravel sounded like a scream buried under a pillow.
The front door was ajar. Scratches adorned the frame. Not animal scratches. Human fingernails, dragged in panic. There was something wet on the handle, but neither of them looked too long at it.
Inside, the house groaned. And it spoke. Not in words. Not yet. But with feelings.
The living room was charred black, as though fire had licked it clean but spared the bones. Burned photographs still clung to the walls, faces half-melted. A child's drawing had fused to the plaster, stick figures surrounded by towering shadows. One of the shadows had eyes drawn in red crayon. Only red.
Missy took a step forward, and the floor creaked—no, breathed—beneath her.
Kevin knelt by a half-destroyed couch. Something glistened beneath it. He reached out.
A bracelet. Bee's. Snapped in two, with a small smear of blood still clinging to the broken charm. He stood up fast. "They were here."
Missy turned toward the staircase. That's when she saw the first one.
A figure, small and still, slumped near the hallway—back twisted in a way bones weren't meant to twist, mouth agape, eyes blackened into pits. Bee. Or what was left of her.
Missy screamed.
Kevin rushed to her side, saw the body—and then the message on the wall behind it, scrawled in something that was not paint. "THE ONES WHO LAUGHED FIRST WILL CRY LAST."
They didn't speak after that. They couldn't.
Words were too fragile here. They would shatter in the wrong places.
Instead, they moved deeper into the house. Each hallway seemed longer than the last. Each corner more impossible than the one before it. Doors stood where they hadn't been before. The ceiling sagged like flesh. Whispers came from under the floorboards.
Missy's ears were ringing. Or were they screaming?
She turned.
A mirror stared back at her.
Not her reflection—no.
It was Lukas.
But not the boy she remembered. Not the boy she had loved in some strange, clumsy way.
This one was pale. His mouth sewn shut. His eyes filled with tears that burned trails down his cheeks. He stared directly at her through the mirror, unmoving.
Her hand lifted on its own.
She reached out.
Kevin grabbed her wrist. "Don't," he said sharply. "That's not him."
"But he—" her voice cracked. "He was trying to speak."
"No," Kevin said. "That thing wants to wear him. It's not him."
The mirror cracked suddenly—spiderwebs of silver slicing Lukas's image into fragments.
From upstairs, something shifted.
A sound like crawling. Bone on wood. Nails on teeth. Kevin raised his flashlight and began climbing the stairs. Missy hesitate, then followed.
Upstairs was colder. Wrong-cold. The kind of cold you feel in dreams, when you realize you've woken up in a coffin. The hallway was lined with doors, all closed. Except one. It was slightly ajar. And from within it spilled singing.
A lullaby. One Lukas's mother used to sing, long before the crash. Long before the curse. Before the machine. Missy stepped forward. The door opened on its own.
Inside was a bedroom—but not Lukas's. A child's, yes. But filled with strange things. Rusted toys. Stuffed animals with mouths stitched shut. A crib that rocked even though nothing touched it. On the bed lay Enzo. Or a version of him.
His chest was open. Not cut. Unfolded. Like pages of a book turned inside out. His eyes stared at the ceiling, wide and unblinking.
Written across the wall in his blood: "SAY HIS NAME AND REMEMBER."
Missy screamed.
Kevin pulled her back—but not before she saw something in the corner.
Her.
Marque.
She stood motionless.
Not attacking.
Watching.
Like a mother at the foot of her child's bed. Her head tilted. Her eyes white and glowing. "I remember you," she said.
Her voice was a hush of wind through a mausoleum.
"You told him he was too much. You said he should just disappear."
Missy's knees buckled. Kevin raised the flashlight and shined it directly at her—but Marque vanished into black moths that scattered through the air like ash.
They were alone again. But the house was no longer just a house. It moved. The walls sighed. From somewhere deeper inside, a door opened itself with a low groan. As if inviting them.
"We can't stay," Kevin said.
But Missy was already walking toward the sound.
She was crying now, not out of fear—but out of shame.
Because she did say those things. Not out of cruelty—but out of fear. Fear of the others. Of being next. Of not fitting in.
And Lukas had smiled at her afterward, like it hadn't hurt.
But it did.
It killed him, long before Wrath ever touched his body.
They found the basement door.
It was open.
Stairs descended into shadow.
Kevin looked at her. "Are you sure?"
Missy nodded.
"I have to see."
Down they went.
One step.Then another.The air got thicker, heavier—like honey made of sorrow.
And at the bottom...
The machine waited.
The thing Michael built. It pulsed with a dull red glow. Still alive. Still hungry.
And next to it…
A hospital bed.
And in it…
Slick.
Strapped down. Gagged. His eyes wild with panic. Missy moved to help him—but then she saw what was beside him.
Lukas's body. Wrapped in wires and tubes, covered in machinery and scars. Still. But not dead. Never dead.
A heartbeat monitor beeped softly. Too slow. Too steady. Not human anymore. And above him, on the ceiling, written in dozens of hands, in blood and ink and soot: "HE IS BECOMING."
They thought they were going to the safe house where Enzo, Dina, Bee, and Marco were hiding. But instead, they ended up back at Harrington's house—the true heart of the horror. Whether they were lured by Marque's influence or simply made a mistake, they've now walked into the lion's den.