Chapter One: The Van and the Voice
The rain hadn’t stopped in hours.
Thick sheets blurred the highway, the wipers barely keeping pace. Headlights cast long streaks on the wet asphalt as the battered gray Sprinter van barreled westward, a glowing decal on its side reading:
PARASPECTRE: TRUTH. UNCENSORED. UNAFRAID.
Inside the vehicle, six very different people sat in practiced silence. They’d just wrapped a job in a haunted warehouse outside Detroit—an angry poltergeist tied to a string of workplace deaths—and had barely caught four hours of sleep in a roadside motel. But sleep never lasted long for them. Not with the inbox full again.
“New case came in,” said Mason Briggs from the driver’s seat. His voice was gravel and grit, the kind that told people to shut up and listen without raising the volume. “Farmhouse. Indiana. Client claims she’s hearing voices in the pipes and seeing her dead daughter in the bathtub. Called it ‘The Drown House.’”
That got their attention.
“Didn’t we just get out of water-haunt territory?” asked Dylan, one of the identical twin cameramen slumped in the back. “I still smell like algae from the last one.”
“It followed you,” Wyatt joked from across him, editing footage on his laptop. “You’re probably cursed now.”
“Shut up,” Dylan muttered, but he smiled.
Mason continued, “They say a tenant disappeared last month. Cops won’t investigate. And the woman wants to pay after we remove it. Says she saw our last livestream.”
“Always great when clients are more impressed with views than survival,” muttered Theo Shin from his station by the tech rack. He didn’t look up from the mass of tangled wires and blinking screens he called his “spirit net.” The youngest on the team, Theo had designed half their equipment himself—modified EMF readers, thermal arrays, and an experimental frequency disruptor that even the psychic wouldn’t touch.
Speaking of which—
“Elena?” Mason glanced sideways at the front seat. “You awake?”
Elena Ruiz didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t have to.
“Yes,” she said softly, her voice like smoke. “And whatever’s there… it knows we’re coming.”
The van fell quiet.
Elena had been born with the gift—or the curse, depending on the day. She saw through the veil, felt residual pain like static beneath her skin. Spirits spoke to her when no one else could hear. Sometimes they whispered. Sometimes they screamed. She’d once spent two days in a coma after touching an object possessed by a Civil War soldier who’d refused to move on.
The others had seen what she could do. She was the reason Paraspectre existed in the first place.
“Can you tell us anything else?” Mason asked.
Elena finally opened her eyes. They were dark and sunken, like someone who never quite woke up. “No name yet. But it’s… cold. Wet. Female. Angry.” Her eyes flicked to Mason. “And it’s expecting a fight.”
Theo let out a breath. “Perfect.”
The van reached the outskirts of Bloomington, Indiana by sunset the next day. Cornfields rolled out endlessly on either side like a sea of gold. The air was heavy with coming storm. No GPS signal. No power lines. Just an old wooden sign:
WEST OAK FARM – PRIVATE PROPERTY – TRESPASSERS WILL DROWN
“That’s comforting,” Dylan muttered, adjusting the camera strapped to his shoulder.
The house came into view as they rounded the final bend—a peeling white farmhouse, two stories, with broken shutters and a roof that sagged like it was tired of standing. What should’ve been charming and rustic felt… wrong. The light bent strangely around it. The air grew colder as they approached. Even the birds had stopped singing.
Mason parked the van a good thirty yards away. “Nobody goes in alone.”
Theo was already scanning. “EMF spike at the perimeter. Higher than usual. Almost pulsing.”
“Residual energy?” asked Wyatt, flipping open his night vision rig.
“No,” Theo said. “It’s alive.”
Mason opened the back doors. “Get your gear. This one’s going to be bad.”
Inside the house, the floor groaned under their boots. The interior had been gutted by neglect—water damage on the ceiling, broken glass in the hallway, wallpaper peeled like scorched skin. But the worst part was the smell. Not rot. Not mold.
It smelled like stagnant water.
“There’s something under the floorboards,” Elena said quietly, running her hand along the hallway wall. “A well, maybe. A source.”
Dylan turned on the camera. “Rolling.”
They began setup: cameras mounted in corners, static sensors on the windows, salt circles and iron nails hammered discreetly at each exit. Mason kept his eyes moving. You never trusted a house this quiet.
Then came the voice.
Faint. Garbled.
Coming through the pipes.
“Mommy… it’s cold…”
The hair on Dylan’s arms stood straight up. “Tell me that’s one of your effects.”
Theo shook his head, wide-eyed. “Nope. That’s real-time EVP.”
And then the screaming started.
From the walls. From the pipes. From the house itself.
Chapter Two: The Drown House
The first scream rattled the pipes like a pressure surge, echoing through the walls until every copper line seemed to groan. Mason lifted a hand—signal for silence. The team froze in place, breaths held, cameras rolling. The scream shifted, thinned, became a child’s voice crying out.
“Help me… Mommy, I’m drowning…”
Elena closed her eyes, her fingers flexing like she was reaching through invisible currents. “It’s not just residual. That’s an imprint… and something’s forcing it on repeat.”
Theo adjusted the mic gain on his EVP recorder. The needle spiked off the charts, the static nearly deafening through his headset. “That’s no playback. It’s pushing power into the pipes themselves. It wants us to hear.”
Mason signaled the twins. “Get the upstairs locked down. No dead spots. Theo, cover the entry points. Elena, you stay with me.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.” Elena’s voice was calm, but her jaw tightened.
“You nearly dropped to the floor last time you said that,” Mason shot back. His military edge wasn’t arrogance—he’d lost people before. He wasn’t about to lose another.
The twins hustled upstairs, cameras clicking into place. The house moaned again, louder this time. Wyatt’s voice came through the comms: “Uh, Mason? You’ll want to see this.”
Mason and Elena jogged up the narrow staircase. The twins stood in a child’s bedroom, plaster walls peeling in wet chunks. On the far wall, water streamed down from nowhere—writing itself into words.
GET OUT.
SHE’S OURS.
“Holy hell,” Dylan whispered, filming close. “That’s not condensation, is it?”
Elena stepped forward, raising her hand. She didn’t touch the wall, but her eyes glazed white, pupils swimming. “No. That’s projection. The spirit wants to scare us. And… it knows my name.”
The dripping letters shifted. Letters bent, curves reshaped. Slowly, the wall spelled:
HELLO, ELENA.
The room’s temperature plunged. Wyatt’s camera feed crackled. Then—SLAM. The bedroom door swung shut, hard enough to splinter the frame. The salt line Theo had laid outside fizzled like acid.
“Elena, don’t engage,” Mason warned.
But Elena tilted her head as though listening to something deeper. “It’s not the child. It’s using her.”
They regrouped downstairs, setting up camp in the living room. Cameras whirred, red dots blinking in every corner. Theo unfolded his “spirit net”—a coil of copper tubing and quartz crystals strung together with high-frequency emitters, buzzing faintly like a hornet’s nest.
“If something crosses the EM barrier,” Theo explained for the recording, “it’ll disrupt the field and we’ll get both thermal and electrostatic signatures. No way it hides.”
“Unless it’s strong enough to fry your toys,” Dylan muttered.
“Then we’re screwed anyway.”
Elena knelt by the basement door, her hands trembling slightly. “The source is down there. She’s tied to water. The well, maybe. Something pulled her under, but it wasn’t… human.”
Mason tightened his grip on his flashlight. “You’re saying possession?”
“No,” Elena whispered. “Consumption.”
They descended into the basement. The air grew thick and damp, tasting of rust and stagnant rainwater. Their lights swept across rotting beams and cracked stone walls. Pools of water reflected their beams, rippling though there was no draft.
And then they saw her.
A girl, maybe twelve. White dress clinging to her body as though soaked, hair plastered to her face. She stood in the far corner, her back heaving with quiet sobs.
“Elena…” Mason hissed, but she was already stepping forward.
“It’s okay,” Elena said gently, extending a hand. “We’re here to help you.”
The girl lifted her head.
Her eyes were milky white. Her mouth stretched open—and the scream that erupted shook the basement like an earthquake.
Elena flew backward, slamming into the wall hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. The cameras glitched, feeds breaking into static. Water poured from the ceiling, drenching them in an instant.
“Grab her!” Mason bellowed, rushing to Elena’s side. She was convulsing, her lips murmuring words in a language no one recognized.
Theo scrambled for his disruptor, flipping every switch. A high-pitched frequency filled the air, sharp enough to make their teeth ache. The apparition shrieked, its form distorting like a broken projection.
“Almost got it—!” Theo shouted.
The girl’s form exploded into shadow, stretching impossibly tall. Arms lengthened into claws, face splitting into something void of features. The thing lunged.
Wyatt hurled a salt canister, bursting against its chest. The figure recoiled, hissing, but it didn’t vanish. Instead, it slammed its force against Elena, pinning her to the floorboards. Her body writhed, skin blanching as water streamed from her nose and mouth.
“She’s drowning!” Dylan screamed.
Mason dragged her up, pounding her back. “Theo, shut it down!”
Theo killed the frequency just as the house went silent again. The shadow dissolved, leaving only dripping water and the psychic gasping in Mason’s arms.
Elena’s pulse was weak. Her eyes rolled back.
“Hospital. Now,” Mason snapped, scooping her up.
They tore out of the house, cameras abandoned, equipment left behind. The farmhouse loomed in the rearview mirror as they sped down the gravel road, sirens already echoing in the distance.
Elena’s hand twitched against Mason’s jacket. Her voice was barely audible, a rasp in his ear.
“It’s not done. She’s still trapped. And… it knows all of us now.”
Her head fell back, and for a chilling moment, Mason couldn’t tell if she was breathing.
The van roared on through the storm.
Chapter Three: Aftermath
The emergency room was washed in the cold blue of fluorescent light. Mason paced the length of the waiting area, boots squeaking faintly on the tile. His hands shook, though he kept them balled into fists to hide it. He’d been through firefights, roadside bombs, close calls in deserts halfway across the world—but nothing shook him like watching Elena’s body go limp in his arms.
Dylan and Wyatt slumped in two plastic chairs, cameras still strapped across their shoulders though the batteries had long died. They hadn’t spoken much since the drive. Not to Mason. Not even to each other. Just sat there, pale and restless, staring at the double doors that led deeper into the hospital.
Theo had disappeared into his laptop in the corner, earbuds jammed in, pulling data from the house cameras they managed to recover. His hands moved fast, but his lips were tight, his face pinched with something close to fear. Tech didn’t scare easy—numbers were always safe. But tonight the numbers weren’t right. He hadn’t said a word since they brought Elena in.
The automatic doors swished open. A doctor approached, clipboard tucked against her chest. Mason intercepted her before she even looked up.
“Tell me she’s alive,” he said, too sharp.
“She’s stable,” the doctor replied, calm but firm. “Your friend suffered oxygen deprivation. We’ve pumped her lungs and stabilized her vitals. We’ll need to keep her under observation for a few days. She’s conscious, but weak.”
Relief loosened Mason’s chest just enough for air to move. He nodded once. “Can we see her?”
The doctor hesitated. “One at a time.”
Elena lay pale against hospital sheets, her curls damp with sweat. An oxygen tube rested under her nose, and bruises bloomed purple along her arms where she’d thrashed. But her eyes opened when Mason stepped in, and though her voice was weak, it was steady.
“You dragged me out, didn’t you?”
Mason pulled a chair to her bedside, sitting forward with elbows on his knees. “You stopped breathing. We didn’t have a choice.”
Her lips curved into the faintest smile. “I told you it was feeding. You don’t get scratches and screams like that unless something big is using the place.”
“Stop talking like this is just another day at the office,” Mason snapped, harsher than he meant. His voice cracked at the edges. “You almost died, Elena.”
Her smile faded. “And I will, someday. You knew that when you brought me in. We don’t play with shadows. We fight them.”
Mason looked away, jaw tight. He had no argument.
The rest of the team took turns after Mason. Dylan went in, trying jokes until Elena chuckled weakly. Wyatt brought her tea from the vending machine, even though she couldn’t drink much of it. Theo didn’t say much at all—just sat by her bed and muttered about frequency interference, promising he’d “fix the net so this never happens again.” Elena reached out, touched his wrist, and whispered, “It wasn’t your fault.”
But her voice shook.
Two days passed. By the third night, Elena insisted on sitting up, wires and tubes be damned. The team gathered around her bed like a grim council.
“It’s still in that house,” she said. “Stronger now, because we woke it up. The girl isn’t the threat—she’s the bait. The thing behind her is old, angry, and it knows us now. If we don’t go back, it’ll keep growing.”
“Growing into what?” Dylan asked nervously.
“Into something that doesn’t just stay in that farmhouse,” Elena said flatly. “It’ll move. Latch onto the land. Spread.”
Wyatt rubbed his face with both hands. “So we have to go back into the place that nearly killed you?”
“Yes,” Elena said, without hesitation.
“No,” Mason countered. His tone left no room for debate. “Not until you’re cleared. Not until we’re ready.”
“We don’t have time to wait,” Elena pressed. “That thing is feeding off the well. Every day, it gets hungrier.”
“Then we take it down hard,” Theo said suddenly, breaking his silence. Everyone turned. His eyes were bloodshot, but his voice was steady. “I’ve been running the data nonstop. That thing’s tied to water as a conduit. The well is its anchor. I can build a resonance disruptor strong enough to shatter the tether, but… it’ll take all our gear and maybe fry the van’s generator.”
“You’re talking about blowing up a well,” Wyatt said.
“I’m talking about exorcising something bigger than an EVP,” Theo shot back. “You want to film shadows for YouTube views, fine. But if we don’t deal with this, it’s not just one farmhouse on the hook. It’ll spread down the whole damn water table.”
The room went quiet. Even Mason didn’t have a comeback.
Finally, Elena said: “Then we go back.”
Mason’s jaw worked. He hated it. Every instinct told him to pull the plug, pack up, move on. But the way Elena looked at him—tired, pale, but utterly certain—left no room.
“Fine,” he growled. “But this time we do it on my terms. No splitting up. No heroics. We hit hard and we hit fast. And if anyone so much as blinks wrong, we pull out.”
Elena smirked faintly. “That’s the military in you talking.”
“Damn right,” Mason said.
When they left the hospital, dawn was just breaking. The sky was the color of bruised peach and ash. The van waited in the lot, loaded with gear. The farmhouse loomed in their minds, heavier than the storm clouds on the horizon.
They knew what came next.
Round two.
The Drown House wasn’t finished with them.
Chapter Four: The Reckoning
The farmhouse waited for them.
A week had passed since Elena nearly drowned on its basement floor. The memory still clung to all of them like smoke: her body limp in Mason’s arms, water bubbling from her lips, the shriek of something inhuman echoing through the pipes.
Now, as the van rolled down the gravel drive once more, the place looked even worse than before. Sagging roof. Dark windows like empty sockets. The air was colder here, unnaturally so, despite the warm July night.
None of them spoke. They unloaded their gear in silence, each step crunching the dirt, each breath clouding in the unnatural chill.
It wasn’t just a job anymore.
It was personal.
Mason checked the salt lines at the perimeter, hammering down iron stakes. He moved with rigid precision, his soldier’s training etched into every motion. He’d sworn to never let anything happen to his team again. Not on his watch.
Theo knelt on the hood of the van, calibrating the resonance disruptor—his “Frankenstein machine,” as Dylan liked to call it. A boxy mess of copper coils, quartz shards, and jury-rigged amplifiers, it buzzed faintly with static electricity. Theo hadn’t slept in days, tweaking circuits, muttering equations. Now his hands shook as he tightened the last bolt.
“This thing pulls energy like a starved generator,” he warned. “If it works, it severs the tether to the well. If it doesn’t…” He didn’t finish.
“We make it work,” Mason said flatly.
Wyatt adjusted his night-vision rig, forcing a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “Y’know, our audience is gonna love this. ‘Paraspectre vs. The Drown Demon.’ I’m thinking ten million views, easy.”
“Shut up,” Dylan muttered, pale and stiff. His twin’s nervous humor grated on him when death felt this close.
Elena stood a few paces away from them all, staring at the house. Her dark curls framed a face still drawn and weary from the hospital, but her eyes burned steady. She carried no camera, no gear, just herself. That was enough.
“She’s waiting,” Elena said softly. “And she’s angry we left her.”
They entered at dusk.
Inside, the house groaned as though it recognized them. Floorboards moaned under their boots. Water stains spidered wider across the walls. A sour smell filled the air—copper and mildew, the stench of old water.
The team fanned out. Mason took point, shotgun loaded with rock salt. Theo set the disruptor in the living room, wires snaking out into every corner of the house like veins. The twins positioned cameras at every angle, lenses glinting in the dim light.
“Cameras rolling,” Wyatt said into his headset. “Let’s make history.”
As the last word left his lips, the first bang echoed through the house.
The basement door slammed shut.
Then the kitchen cabinets began to open and close, one after another, slamming in sequence like a heartbeat.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Theo swore, tightening the disruptor’s output. The machine whined, screens flickering. “We’ve got activity—full-spectrum interference. It’s… it’s already fighting me.”
The walls dripped. Water seeped down in rivulets, pooling on the warped floorboards. Dylan’s camera caught it—faces in the water, twisted and screaming, rising and fading in an instant.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
Then came the voice.
High, broken, trembling.
“Help me… Mommy… I’m still in the well…”
Elena stepped forward. Her breath shook, but her chin lifted. “Show yourself.”
The girl appeared at the end of the hallway. Soaked dress, pale skin, hair hanging in wet ropes. Her eyes were pits of white.
“Don’t,” Mason barked, raising his shotgun.
“She’s just a vessel,” Elena said. “If we attack her, we strengthen it.”
The girl’s head tilted. Her lips stretched into a too-wide smile.
When she opened her mouth, the scream that poured out was not human. It was layered—dozens of voices, shrieking, sobbing, roaring—all at once.
The lights exploded.
The cameras died.
The house shook like something alive.
Theo slammed his palm against the disruptor. The coils sparked, glowing faint blue. The air vibrated with pressure, rattling teeth, shaking bones.
“Now!” Theo shouted. “I’ve got the tether—Elena, do it!”
Elena’s eyes rolled white. Her body went rigid, arms outstretched. She spoke in a language none of them knew, syllables guttural and waterlogged, like something dredged up from the bottom of a lake. Her voice wasn’t just hers anymore—it layered, deeper, distorted.
The girl’s form shrieked, distorting, stretching tall, her shadow unfurling along the walls. From that shadow stepped something else.
Tall. Eyeless. Mouth too wide, splitting its face. Black robes dripping water that hissed when it hit the floor.
The true entity.
Mason fired. Salt rounds tore through its chest, but the thing kept coming, its mouth opening wider until the sound alone rattled his skull.
Wyatt grabbed Dylan, dragging him back as the cameras fizzed, sparks flying. Theo screamed as his disruptor overloaded, bolts of energy snapping across the wires. The house stank of burning copper.
“Elena!” Mason roared over the cacophony. “Finish it!”
Elena screamed the final word in that drowned language.
The entity convulsed, its shadow thrashing across the walls. The disruptor flared white-hot, shattering the windows with a deafening crack. Water poured from the ceiling in torrents. The girl’s figure dissolved like mist in sunlight—gone.
The entity howled one last time—so loud the glass of the twins’ lenses shattered—before collapsing inward, sucked screaming into the floor.
The house fell still.
Only dripping water remained.
And silence.
Theo slumped against the wall, chest heaving, hands burned from the sparks. Mason lowered the shotgun, his ears ringing. Dylan held the ruined camera in his lap, face white. Wyatt just sat there, staring at the empty hallway, for once without a joke.
Elena collapsed to her knees, shaking. Mason rushed to her side, catching her before she hit the waterlogged floor.
“It’s gone,” she whispered, voice raw. “But it knows us now.”
Mason’s stomach turned. “What do you mean?”
Her gaze lifted to his, eyes hollow.
“It said our names. All of them.”
Chapter Five: Sacrifice
The farmhouse was silent.
Too silent.
The air was heavy, dense, as though the house itself was holding its breath. Outside, the wind moved through the trees, but inside only the sound of dripping water broke the stillness. It plinked into puddles on the warped boards, echoing like a clock counting down.
Theo lay slumped near his machine, sparks still smoking from the disruptor’s shattered coils. His palms were blistered, red streaks across his fingers where the wires had burned through skin. He tried to laugh, but it came out ragged, a cough flecked with blood.
“Well…” he rasped. “At least we got good footage. Right?”
Dylan just stared at him, camera still dead in his hands. “The footage is gone,” he whispered. “Everything’s fried.”
Wyatt swore, kicking at the floor, but the sound was hollow, forced. He wasn’t angry about the cameras. Not really. His eyes wouldn’t leave the place where the thing had disappeared.
“It’s not over,” Elena murmured. She sat propped against Mason, her face ghost-pale, her breath shallow. Her voice was paper thin, but it carried weight. “That wasn’t… an ending. That was a warning.”
Mason tightened his hold around her shoulders. “You’re done for tonight. We’re pulling you out. No arguments.”
Elena gave a weak smile. “You don’t get it, Mason. It marked us. There’s no pulling out now.”
They left the house before midnight, gear ruined, spirits broken. But none of them spoke on the drive back to the motel. The silence pressed heavier than any words.
In the flickering neon of the “Vacancy” sign, they looked like survivors of a wreck—faces gaunt, eyes sunken. Even Wyatt had lost his quips, staring out the van window with the blankness of someone who’d seen too much.
Theo insisted on checking his machine first thing. He spread the broken coils and melted circuits across the bed, his burned hands trembling as he traced them.
“It was working,” he muttered, eyes wild. “It was working. If I just had more power… a cleaner tether point…” He stopped, swallowed, then looked up at Mason. “We can’t stop now. We need to finish this before it finishes us.”
Mason rubbed at his jaw, the stubble rasping. He felt the weight of command like a stone. He wanted to take the keys, drive his team home, and never look back. But Elena’s words still rang in his ears: It marked us.
They weren’t done. Not by choice.
That night, Elena dreamed.
She was back in the well. The cold water rose over her chest, her throat, her mouth. She couldn’t scream—she could only watch as pale hands reached up from the depths, clutching at her arms, her neck, dragging her under.
Then she saw the girl. The soaked dress. The rope-burned throat. Eyes wide and white.
“You freed me,” the girl whispered. “But now you must pay.”
Elena woke gasping, tangled in damp sheets.
And in the corner of the motel room, the carpet squelched, soaked with water that wasn’t there moments before.
Morning didn’t bring relief.
Theo’s burns had worsened overnight, red streaks climbing his arms like veins of fire. Dylan swore he heard children sobbing outside his window. Wyatt had a nosebleed that wouldn’t stop. And Mason caught his own reflection in the bathroom mirror—only for it to look back a second too long, lips curving into a smile he hadn’t made.
At breakfast, the team sat in silence until Elena spoke.
“It wants something,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if the tether broke. That house wasn’t its prison—it was its hunting ground. It chose us.”
“Then we hit it again,” Mason said, too sharply. “We hit it harder, smarter. We finish the job before it finishes us.”
Theo shook his head. “You don’t get it, man. This isn’t like anything we’ve faced. It doesn’t just want to kill us. It wants… parts of us.”
Wyatt laughed, hollow. “Yeah? Which part?”
Theo’s eyes were bloodshot when he answered.
“All of them.”
That night, they set up again—this time in the motel’s conference room. No haunted house, no creaking floorboards. Just fluorescent lights and a table covered in Theo’s jury-rigged equipment. But the atmosphere was worse. Heavier. The entity didn’t need the house anymore.
Theo wired himself to the rebuilt disruptor, electrodes against his temples. Mason argued, cursed, even shoved him against the wall, but Theo wouldn’t back down.
“It wants a host,” Theo said. “If I can catch it, even for a second, we can trace the tether back. Find its heart. Kill it.”
Dylan was pale as chalk. “Or it kills you.”
Theo smiled crookedly. “That’s the gamble.”
The lights flickered. The air pressure dropped. Elena gasped, clutching her chest.
It was here.
The machine roared to life.
Theo convulsed, body arching as the disruptor screamed, blue arcs snapping through the room. His mouth opened in a soundless cry—and then another voice came out.
A hundred voices. A thousand.
“YOU OPENED THE DOOR. YOU ARE MINE.”
Mason lunged forward, trying to rip the wires free, but Elena shouted, “No! If you stop it now, we lose everything!”
Theo’s eyes rolled back, pupils drowned in white. His hands clawed at the table, leaving bloody streaks. The disruptor pulsed harder, building toward something catastrophic.
Elena pressed her palms flat to the table, speaking that drowned language again, desperate, tearing her throat raw.
The room stank of rot and stagnant water. The carpet squelched under their boots. Shadows writhed across the walls.
Theo’s body jerked once. Twice.
Then he went limp.
The machine flatlined.
The presence vanished.
And all that remained was silence—and Theo’s blistered, unmoving body sprawled across the table.
Mason’s hands shook as he pressed against Theo’s neck. A pulse. Faint, but there.
“He’s alive,” Mason breathed.
But when Theo’s eyes fluttered open, they weren’t his eyes anymore.
They were white.
Chapter Six: The Well
The motel room smelled like wet soil.
Mason barely noticed he’d drawn his pistol until Elena touched his arm.
“Put it away,” she said hoarsely.
Her face was drained of color. “It won’t help.”
Theo sat slumped in the chair, his body present but his eyes gone—pupils drowned in milky white.
His lips twitched, forming words that weren’t his.
Down we go… deeper still… the water waits…
The voice wasn’t one.
It was a chorus: children, women, men, all layered until the air itself vibrated.
Dylan clutched his camera to his chest even though it was dead.
Wyatt hovered near the door, pale but holding a crowbar like it was holy.
Mason forced his voice steady.
“Whatever you are, you’re not staying.”
The thing inside Theo laughed—a sound like water gurgling through a clogged drain.
Then the overhead lights went black.
The Call Beneath
The floor of the room darkened, a slick sheen spreading across the cheap carpet.
Water seeped upward, icy and black, pooling around their boots.
It smelled of iron and algae.
Elena staggered forward.
“It’s calling us back,” she said.
“To the well.”
Before Mason could grab her, the water surged higher, swallowing the furniture, the walls, the ceiling—
and the motel dissolved.
They were standing once again in the farmhouse basement.
But it wasn’t a room anymore.
It was an endless cavern of dripping stone, the smell of rot and stagnant water pressing against their throats.
In the center yawned the well: black, bottomless, breathing.
Theo’s body stepped toward it like a sleepwalker.
The entity moved him like a marionette.
Elena shouted over the roar of rushing water.
“If he goes in, it wins! That’s the tether—it’s pulling him to seal the bond!”
Mason leapt, catching Theo’s arm.
The force nearly dislocated his shoulder.
Theo’s strength was inhuman.
The chorus swelled.
One to drown. One to stay. One to remember.
Descent
Theo’s free hand shot out, seizing Mason’s wrist.
Mason’s vision flashed white—images stabbing into his mind:
- The drowned girl, rope cinched around her neck.
- A farmhouse family screaming as water filled their lungs.
- A dark figure standing behind him.
The shock almost drove him to his knees.
Wyatt swung the crowbar, smashing into Theo’s ribs.
It should have dropped him.
He didn’t flinch.
The well gurgled, bubbles breaking the surface.
Dylan, voice cracking, shouted, “Elena! Do something!”
Elena closed her eyes and began to chant—not the Latin prayers they’d used before, but something older, rawer.
Her voice shivered the air.
The entity shrieked through Theo’s mouth.
SHE IS MINE—
The water exploded upward.
The Bargain
The spray was freezing, burning.
Mason lost his grip and stumbled back.
The well widened, edges crumbling into a yawning sinkhole.
Theo teetered at the brink, his body leaning forward as though gravity belonged to someone else.
Elena stepped between him and the abyss.
Her eyes were black from corner to corner.
“You can have me,” she said.
“Let him go.”
The chorus fell silent.
The cavern pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
Yours willingly?
“Yes,” she said.
Mason roared, “No! Elena, don’t—”
The ground beneath them cracked.
A wave of freezing air knocked him backward.
Then drown.
The water surged toward her like a living wall.
The Counterstroke
Theo suddenly convulsed.
His head snapped back, eyes flashing a single flicker of brown.
“Elena—no!” he croaked.
That single human cry broke the chant in her throat.
Theo wrenched free of the entity’s hold for a heartbeat—long enough for Mason to hurl the emergency flare from his belt into the well.
The magnesium ignited with a blinding roar.
Light speared downward, revealing something inside the shaft:
an endless column of pale faces, mouths open in silent screams.
The entity shrieked.
The water recoiled, steam boiling upward.
Elena seized the moment.
Her voice rose into a raw, throat-tearing command—
a word none of them understood but every nerve recognized.
The cavern shattered.
Return
Mason hit hard carpet.
The motel room re-formed around them—walls, ceiling, buzzing fluorescent light.
No water.
No cavern.
Theo collapsed in a heap, eyes normal but unfocused.
Elena knelt beside him, trembling violently.
Wyatt stumbled back until his shoulders hit the door.
“What the hell just happened?”
Theo’s voice was barely a whisper.
“We… we severed it. For now.”
Dylan lowered his ruined camera.
His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Mason crouched next to Elena.
“You okay?”
She gave a fragile smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“It’s not gone,” she said.
“It just… went deeper.”
Her gaze flicked to the corner of the room.
Mason followed it.
The carpet there was wet.
Chapter Seven: Aftermath
The van was quieter than it had ever been.
Rain slicked the highway as Mason drove, headlights cutting a pale path through the darkness. The team sat in the back, huddled over their ruined gear, the silence more oppressive than any storm. No one spoke—each replaying the night’s terror in their minds, like echoes bouncing off wet walls.
Elena sat closest to Mason, knees pulled to her chest. Her hands were still shaking, lips pale, but her eyes burned with the knowledge that they had won… barely.
Theo leaned forward, inspecting the mangled disruptor for the hundredth time. Sparks still hissed faintly from the fractured coils. “I can salvage parts of it,” he muttered. “Not enough for a full-scale fight, but…” His voice trailed off.
“That’s if we survive the next one,” Mason said quietly, eyes on the road.
Dylan and Wyatt didn’t argue. Both stared at their knees, fingers twitching like they were trying to push away unseen water.
Uploading the Evidence
Back at the studio, the team huddled around monitors. They had salvaged a fraction of the footage, distorted and warped, but enough to upload a complete episode.
Elena watched silently as Dylan hit “Publish.” The screen blinked green.
Viewers: 1, 2, 5, 10 thousand…
The numbers climbed. Comments flooded in, messages praising their bravery, begging for more, speculating about the Drown House.
And then the email came.
From a client:
“Church in Ohio. Statues bleed. Voices chant in the dark. Can you help?”
Elena’s lips parted, her breath catching. Mason leaned over her shoulder.
“They’re not random,” she whispered. “They’re being sent to us.”
Mason didn’t speak. He just stared at the screen, jaw tight.
The team gathered around, the weight of another unknown pressing down.
“This is why we exist,” Mason said finally. “But it’s bigger than the Drown House. Much bigger.”
Theo ran his fingers over the damaged disruptor. “And we’ll need more than tech next time. Whatever that thing was… it isn’t finished with us, and it knows our names now.”
Dylan shivered. “Great. So, fame, YouTube money, and probably death. Fun.”
Wyatt managed a grim smile. “You forgot PTSD.”
Elena stared out the window, dark eyes thoughtful. “We’ve survived the first round. But the second… it won’t be easy. Not even close.”
Mason gripped her shoulder. “Then we get ready. We’ve got a team, we’ve got each other… and we don’t run from what hunts us.”
The van sat idle in the lot outside the studio, rain dripping from the roof.
Somewhere, in Ohio—or perhaps elsewhere—the next call waited.
The shadows were moving.
And the team of Paraspectre was ready to answer.