Chapter 32: THE MOREAU ESTATE — PART 2
The first attack came at 11:47 PM.
We'd set up surveillance equipment throughout the house—cameras, audio recorders, EMF sensors—and established a base of operations in the sitting room. Drew monitored the feeds despite my protests about his arm. Ed patrolled the main floor with his rosary and his prayers. I took the second floor, walking the hallways with Spirit Sight active, counting the presences that lurked in shadows and waited behind closed doors.
The night had been quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that meant something was building.
Then everything happened at once.
The chandelier in the foyer tore itself from the ceiling and crashed to the floor three feet from where Ed was standing. The temperature throughout the house dropped twenty degrees in seconds. Every piece of surveillance equipment screamed static simultaneously.
And the ghosts manifested.
Not one. Not two. Three.
The man appeared first—middle-aged, wearing a suit that might have been fashionable in the 1940s, his face twisted with rage. He materialized in the dining room and immediately hurled a chair at Ed's head.
I felt rather than saw the woman appear on the second floor behind me. Cold breath on my neck. Hands that weren't quite solid reaching for my throat.
And somewhere in the east wing, Drew started screaming.
[MULTIPLE HOSTILE ENTITIES ACTIVE]
[COORDINATED ATTACK PATTERN DETECTED]
[WARNING: DREW THOMAS — THREAT PROXIMITY]
I spun, drove my rosary into the female ghost's face, shouted the binding prayer Father Mancini had drilled into me years ago. She shrieked—a sound like tearing metal—and recoiled. Not destroyed, but driven back.
Drew was still screaming.
I ran.
The east wing hallway was chaos. Paintings had torn themselves from walls. A grandfather clock lay shattered across the floor. And at the end of the hall, Drew was pressed against the wall by something invisible, his good arm pinned, his face twisted in terror.
The old woman from the bedroom closet had him.
"Drew!" I reached for my telekinesis—pulled with my mind as hard as I could. The invisible force holding Drew shifted. He gasped, managed to get one arm free.
Then the old woman turned to face me.
In Spirit Sight, she was terrible. A face ravaged by decades of death and rage. Eyes that burned with the particular hatred of someone who'd been trapped too long, denied too much, forgotten by everyone who'd ever mattered.
"Another one," she hissed. "Another sacrifice for the master below."
I threw a blessed object at her—a small crucifix from my kit, charged with Faith Resonance. It struck her manifestation and she screamed, her form scattering like smoke in a strong wind.
Drew collapsed. His arm—his good arm, the one that wasn't already in a sling—was bent at an angle that made my stomach turn.
"Ed!" I shouted into my walkie-talkie. "Drew's down! Second floor, east wing!"
Static answered me. Then Ed's voice, strained but steady: "I'm pinned in the dining room. The male ghost won't let me—"
The transmission cut off.
The next hour was survival.
I dragged Drew to the sitting room—our designated safe zone, blessed and warded before the attack began. The protections held, but barely. I could feel the three ghosts circling outside, testing the barriers, looking for weaknesses.
Ed fought his way to us eventually, bleeding from a cut on his forehead where a thrown candlestick had grazed him. His rosary was clutched in white-knuckled hands, his lips moving constantly in prayer.
"The basement," he said. "They're all connected to whatever's in the basement. Every time I tried to bind one, it drew power from below."
"Like puppets on strings."
"Exactly." He crouched beside Drew, examined the arm. His face went grim. "We need to set this. He needs a hospital."
"I'm fine," Drew said through gritted teeth. "I can still—"
"You can still get yourself killed." Ed's voice was sharp. "This arm is broken in two places. You're out, son."
Drew started to argue. Then Ed set the bone.
I held Drew still while he screamed, while Ed worked with the grim efficiency of someone who'd done this too many times before. When it was over, Drew was unconscious, his face gray with shock, his arm splinted with materials from our first aid kit.
"We can't finish this tonight," I said.
"No." Ed stood, wiped Drew's blood from his hands. "We need Church authorization for a full exorcism. We need more priests. We need—"
The laughter rose again from the basement.
Low. Patient. Amused.
"Come down," a voice whispered through the floor. "Come down, little anomaly. Let's talk about what you really are."
I froze.
Ed looked at me sharply. "What did it say?"
"Nothing." The lie came automatically. "Just noise."
But I knew it had heard what Seraph had heard. Seen what Seraph had seen. The demons were talking to each other. Sharing information about the "anomaly" that kept appearing in their cases.
I was running out of time to keep my secrets.
Dawn broke over the Moreau Estate like a promise that couldn't be kept.
We extracted Drew first, loading him carefully into Ed's station wagon. Lorraine drove him toward Hartford Hospital while Ed and I stayed behind to maintain the protections we'd established.
The house was quiet now. The ghosts had retreated with the sunrise—a common pattern, one small mercy in a situation that offered few. But I could still feel the presence in the basement. Waiting. Watching. Amused by our struggle.
"I'm going to call Father Hawkins," Ed said. "And Father Martinez from Boston. We need at least two additional priests for something this strong."
"Will they come?"
"They'll come." Ed's jaw set in that familiar line of determination. "This is what we do. This is what the Church trained us for."
He went to make calls. I stayed in the foyer, adding salt to the basement door's threshold, reinforcing the blessed seals that were already straining against the pressure from below.
The demon's voice came again, quieter this time, intimate.
"I know what you are," it whispered. "Seraph told us before it was cast out. Wrong soul in a stolen body. Traveler from somewhere else. Do they know, little anomaly? Do the people who trust you know what wears their friend's face?"
I didn't answer. I added more salt. Recited prayers under my breath.
"They'll find out eventually. We always make sure of that. And when they do... will they still love you? Will they still fight beside you? Or will they finally see the monster in their midst?"
The voice faded, replaced by that patient, knowing laughter.
I stood alone in the Moreau foyer, surrounded by blessed objects and protective wards, and felt more exposed than I ever had in my life.
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