Chapter 2: The Knock at Midnight

Chapter 2: The Knock at Midnight

The silence that followed the crow’s final, twitching shudder was a living thing. It pressed in on Elias, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the mournful howl of the wind through the shattered window and the frantic, whimpering breaths of Milo from under the couch.

Stress. The word was a desperate anchor in a sea of insanity. It has to be stress. Sleep deprivation. A waking nightmare. He’d read about them. The mind, under duress, could project its deepest fears into reality. A grotesque bird with a human face? A textbook example of a psyche cracking under pressure.

He tried to hold onto the thought, to wrap its clinical logic around himself like a blanket. But the cold air flooding the room was real. The crunch of glass under his worn sneakers was real. And the spreading, black stain on his carpet was undeniably, viscerally real.

He forced himself to move, his limbs feeling like lead. He needed to do something normal. Something mundane. He grabbed a roll of paper towels and a trash bag from the kitchen. With a piece of cardboard, he scraped the broken body of the… the thing… into the bag. It felt unnervingly light, like a hollow prop. His hands shook so violently he could barely tie the knot.

Then he knelt by the stain. The black ooze had an oily, prismatic sheen under the living room light. It didn’t soak into the carpet fibers so much as it seemed to consume them, the edges of the stain darkening and curling like burnt paper. The smell—ozone and decay—clogged his throat. He dabbed at it with a paper towel, but the liquid clung to the paper, stretching like warm taffy before snapping back. It wouldn't be wiped away. It was a permanent scar.

His carefully constructed reality was fracturing. He could feel it slipping, the logical explanations becoming thinner, more transparent. Milo refused to come out from under the couch, his low, continuous growl a testament to the fact that whatever this was, it wasn't just in Elias’s head.

He managed to tape a thick piece of cardboard over the gaping hole in the window. It did little to stop the cold, but it blocked the view of the mad, swirling sky. He worked on autopilot, his mind a maelstrom of fear and denial. He just wanted it to be over. He wanted to wake up.

That's when he heard it.

Thump.

Elias froze, a roll of duct tape in his hand. It was a soft sound, barely audible over the wind. It came from the front door.

Thump. Thump.

It wasn't the wind. It was a knock. Calm. Deliberate. Persistent.

A cold dread, entirely different from the panicked horror of the crow, washed over him. He backed away from the door, his heart a frantic, trapped bird in his chest. Milo’s growl deepened, a low rumble of warning.

"No," Elias whispered to the empty room. "No way."

The emergency broadcast had been explicit. Seal all doors. Do not, under any circumstances, venture outside. He wasn’t a hero. He was a man who followed the rules because it was the easiest way to be left alone.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Louder this time. More insistent. Whoever was out there wasn't going away. He crept to the peephole, his breath fogging the small, fish-eye lens. He saw nothing. Just the distorted, rain-slicked wood of his porch railing and the swirling, unnatural darkness beyond. No person. No car. Nothing.

"Please…"

The voice was a woman's, muffled by the thick oak of the door but clear enough to make the hair on Elias’s arms stand on end. It was faint, whipped by the wind, but it carried a desperate, pleading quality that twisted in his gut.

"...please, let us in. My little girl… she’s so cold."

Elias squeezed his eyes shut. A trick. It had to be a trick. No sane person would be out in this. Not with that… thing happening in the sky. He pressed his back against the wall beside the door, his fingers finding the familiar, cool shape of the locket through his shirt. He wouldn't answer. He couldn't.

"I know you're in there," the voice called, stronger now, closer to the door. "I can hear you. Please, just for a little while. The storm is… it’s not right."

The voice… there was something achingly familiar about its cadence, a ghost of a melody he hadn't heard in years, buried under a mountain of guilt and grief. It vibrated on a frequency of pure memory, a key turning a lock in his soul he had long since cemented shut.

"Go away," he croaked, his voice barely a whisper. "There's a lockdown. I can't."

There was a pause. The wind howled, a long, lonely cry. For a moment, he thought, he prayed, she had gone.

Then the voice came again, stripped of its desperation, now imbued with a chilling, intimate knowledge.

"But you have to, Elias. It's us."

His blood turned to ice water.

Elias.

It knew his name.

The fortress of his home, his carefully constructed anonymity, shattered. This wasn't a random survivor. This wasn't a lost woman and her child. This was a predator that had come to his door. A predator that knew his name. The walls of his house suddenly felt as thin as paper. The deadbolt on the door felt as flimsy as a paperclip.

The knocking stopped. The silence that followed was absolute, a crushing weight that felt heavier than any sound. The storm outside, the screams of the dying crows, everything faded into a muted roar. The entire world had shrunk to this single, terrifying moment at his front door.

He stood frozen, his back pressed to the wall, every muscle screaming at him to run, to hide. Milo was at his feet, no longer growling, but whining softly, a sound of pure fear.

Then, with a sudden, deafening CLICK, the world vanished.

The lights went out. The low hum of the refrigerator died. The soft glow from his computer monitor in the other room winked out of existence. The power grid had failed. He was plunged into an absolute, disorienting darkness, the kind that felt thick and tangible, like black velvet.

The only light was the faint, bruised purple of the storm-wracked sky filtering through the other windows. It cast long, dancing shadows that turned familiar furniture into monstrous shapes.

Elias’s breath hitched in his throat. His senses were on fire, straining to pierce the blackness. He could hear his own frantic heartbeat, the soft patter of rain against the roof, the whisper of the wind.

And one other sound.

The faint, soft shifting of air.

Directly behind him.

A cold spot formed on the back of his neck, a single point of icy terror. He wasn't alone in the hallway. He wasn't alone in the house.

A voice, small and clear as a winter bell, whispered into the air right beside his ear. It was a sound that broke through his terror and pierced him straight through the heart, a perfect echo of a memory he had spent years trying to forget.

"Daddy?"