Chapter 8: THE BASEMENT THING
The Morrison house looked normal from the outside.
Two stories, white siding, neatly trimmed lawn. The kind of suburban dream the magazines sold to young families with two kids and a station wagon. A basketball hoop hung above the garage. Tulips were starting to push through the flower beds.
But I could feel it the moment I stepped out of my car. That pressure at the edge of my senses, darker and heavier than anything I'd encountered before. Not the cold emptiness of a ghost. Something oily. Aware. Watching.
Mr. Morrison met me at the door. Mid-thirties, thinning hair, the exhausted look of a man who hadn't slept properly in weeks. His wife stood behind him, arms wrapped around herself, eyes red from crying.
"Thank you for coming." His handshake was clammy. "We didn't know who else to call. Father Mancini said—"
"He told me about the situation." I stepped inside, trying to project confidence I didn't feel. "When did it start?"
"Six weeks ago. Maybe seven." Mrs. Morrison's voice was hoarse. "Little things at first. Knocking sounds. Cold spots. We thought it was the heating system."
"Then the scratches," Mr. Morrison added. "On the walls. On the kids."
They showed me a bedroom upstairs. A boy's room—superhero posters, toy soldiers scattered on the floor. Three parallel gouges marked the wall above the bed. Too deep for fingernails. Too deliberate for accident.
[ENTITY DETECTED: DEMONIC — TIER 2]
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: BEYOND CURRENT CAPABILITIES]
[RETREAT RECOMMENDED]
"I know."
But I didn't leave. The kids were at a neighbor's house—the Morrisons had sent them away when they called. If I could identify what was here, assess its strength, maybe figure out a containment until proper help arrived...
"The basement," Mrs. Morrison said. "That's where it feels worst."
The basement door was in the kitchen. Wooden, old-fashioned, the kind with a brass latch that clicked when you lifted it. I stood in front of it and activated Spirit Sight.
The door glowed. Not light—darkness. Concentrated wrongness seeping through the cracks like smoke.
"Stay up here," I told the Morrisons. "No matter what you hear."
I opened the door.
The stairs descended into black. My flashlight barely cut through it—the beam seemed to die three feet from the lens. I descended one step at a time, rosary in one hand, holy water vial in the other.
The temperature shifted. Not cold, like with ghosts. Hot. Stifling. Like stepping into an oven with the door closed.
"Little boy playing priest."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Glass breaking and bones grinding, layered over something that might have been words.
"I can smell what you are."
Movement in the darkness. Too fast to track. My flashlight caught glimpses—a shape that wasn't quite a shape, limbs that bent wrong, eyes that reflected nothing because they swallowed everything.
"Wrong. Different. Delicious."
I threw the holy water.
The demon laughed.
It was on me before I could react. Claws—actual claws, not ghostly imitations—raked across my left forearm. Three deep gouges that opened like mouths and screamed with blood.
I stumbled back, hitting the stairs, grabbing for my rosary. The beads glowed faintly—Nonna's blessing activating, trying to protect me—but the demon barely slowed.
"Pretty little light." Its face was inches from mine now. No features I could recognize. Just hunger and hate compressed into flesh that wasn't quite flesh. "Let me show you real darkness."
I ran.
Up the stairs, through the kitchen, past the screaming Morrisons, out the front door. The night air hit me like a wall and I kept running, blood dripping from my arm, legs pumping until I reached my car.
The demon didn't follow. It didn't need to. It had what it wanted—my fear, my failure, my knowledge that I was nothing compared to what lurked in that basement.
I sat in the driver's seat, shaking, wrapping my arm with a torn piece of my shirt. The wounds were deep. They'd need stitches. They'd need cleaning, probably antibiotics, probably—
"The family. Oh God, the family."
They were still inside. I'd left them inside with that thing.
My hands wouldn't stop trembling. The blood kept coming. I couldn't go back in there. I couldn't face that thing again with nothing but optimism and a glowing rosary.
But I couldn't leave them either.
Payphone. There was a payphone at the gas station two blocks away.
I drove there with one hand, blood soaking through the makeshift bandage, and dialed St. Michael's with fingers that felt like they belonged to someone else.
"Father, I need help."
Mancini's voice was alert despite the late hour. "Paul? What's wrong?"
"There's a family—a real demon—I couldn't—" The words tangled in my throat. "I ran. I left them there. I'm sorry, I couldn't—"
"Address." His tone shifted. Calm. Commanding. "Give me the address now."
I gave it. Heard him writing it down.
"Stay where you are. I'm calling in a favor."
The line went dead.
I leaned against the phone booth's glass wall, watching blood drip onto the floor, and waited for someone to save the people I'd abandoned.
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