Chapter 1: The Wrong Kind of Quiet

Scott Miller had delivered pizza to every corner of Havenwood for three years, and he'd never heard the town this quiet.

His beat-up Ford Focus idled at the corner of Maple and Third, the engine's rumble unnaturally loud in the stillness. The dashboard clock glowed 9:47 PM—prime time for Friday night deliveries. He should be hearing televisions blaring through windows, dogs barking at his headlights, the distant hum of traffic from the main strip. Instead, there was... nothing.

Scott rolled down his window, straining to catch any sound. Even the crickets had gone silent.

"What the hell?" he muttered, checking his phone. Three missed calls from dispatch, but no new orders. The last text from his manager read: Where are you? Customers calling about missing drivers.

He'd been driving the same routes for hours, but something felt wrong. Not just quiet—empty. He'd knocked on doors where porch lights blazed but no one answered. Pizza boxes sat cooling in his backseat, destined for houses that seemed abandoned despite every indication of recent life.

The Speedy Pizza logo on his polo shirt felt tight against his chest as anxiety crept in. Scott had always prided himself on being logical, rational. There had to be an explanation. Maybe a power outage had knocked out the cable, sent everyone to bed early. Maybe—

A streetlight flickered overhead, casting dancing shadows across the empty sidewalk. That's when he noticed something that made his stomach clench: no cats.

Havenwood was crawling with strays. Every night shift, he'd see them darting between houses, yellow eyes reflecting his headlights. Mrs. Henderson on Oak Street fed at least a dozen from her back porch. The Martinez family had three that lounged on their fence. But tonight, nothing.

No cats. No dogs. No raccoons digging through trash cans.

Scott's hands tightened on the steering wheel. The rational part of his mind offered explanations—maybe animal control had been through, maybe there was construction somewhere that had scared them off. But his gut knew better. Animals ran before disasters. Before earthquakes, before storms...

Before predators.

He grabbed his phone and dialed dispatch. It rang once, twice, then cut to static. He tried again. Same result.

"Come on," he whispered, checking his signal. Full bars.

The silence pressed against his eardrums like cotton. Even inside the car with the engine running, he could feel it—a suffocating absence of life that made every breath feel stolen.

His next delivery was supposed to be 1247 Birch Street, a large pepperoni for the Kowalski family. He'd delivered there dozens of times. Mr. Kowalski always tipped in exact change and complained about the wait, even when Scott was early. Mrs. Kowalski would apologize for her husband while their kids peeked around the door frame.

Normal. Predictable. Safe.

Scott put the car in drive and headed toward Birch Street, his headlights carving a weak tunnel through the darkness. Every house he passed looked wrong somehow—too still, too dark, despite the porch lights and the glow of windows. Like stage sets with no actors.

1247 Birch Street sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, a modest two-story colonial with white shutters and a red door. The porch light was on. The living room window glowed warm yellow. A silver Honda sat in the driveway next to Mr. Kowalski's ancient pickup truck.

Everything looked normal.

Scott parked at the curb and grabbed the pizza box, still warm from the heated bag. The silence followed him up the driveway, thick as fog. His footsteps on the concrete sounded like gunshots.

He knocked on the red door. "Pizza delivery!"

Nothing.

He knocked harder, the sound echoing off the empty street behind him. "Mr. Kowalski? It's Scott from Speedy Pizza."

The house felt hollow, like shouting into a cave. But the lights were on. The cars were here. Someone had ordered this pizza less than an hour ago.

Scott pressed his ear to the door. No television. No conversation. No footsteps.

But something else—a sound so faint he almost missed it. A rhythmic creaking, like... rocking. Like someone in a rocking chair, moving back and forth, back and forth.

"Hello?" He tried the doorbell. The chime echoed through the house, but the rocking continued, unchanged.

His rational mind catalogued explanations: they were asleep, they had headphones on, they were in the bathroom. But his body knew better. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to get back in his car and drive away from this too-quiet street, this too-still house, this town that felt like a graveyard pretending to be alive.

The rocking stopped.

Scott's breath caught. In the sudden silence, he heard something that made his skin crawl—a wet, sliding sound from inside the house. Like something heavy being dragged across the floor.

He backed away from the door, pizza box clutched against his chest like a shield. The living room window glowed warmly, inviting. Through the sheer curtains, he could see the outline of furniture, the flicker of what might be a television.

And movement.

Something large shifted behind the curtains. Not walking—flowing. Undulating like water, or like...

Like something without bones.

Scott stumbled backward, his heel catching on the porch step. The pizza box tumbled from his hands, scattering pepperoni across the concrete. He didn't stop to pick it up.

Three steps to his car. Two. One.

His hand was on the door handle when he heard it—a voice from inside the house, muffled by walls and windows but unmistakably clear:

"Help me."

Scott froze. It was Mr. Kowalski's voice, thick with terror and pain.

"Please... help me."

Every nerve in Scott's body screamed conflicting commands. Run. Help. Hide. Fight. The voice came again, weaker now:

"It's... it's in the ceiling. Oh God, it's—"

The voice cut off with a wet, choking sound.

Scott's hand trembled on the car door. He should call 911. He should break down the door. He should—

Behind him, the front door of 1247 Birch Street creaked open.

"Help me," came Mr. Kowalski's voice, perfectly clear now. Perfectly calm. "Please help me."

Scott turned slowly, his heart hammering against his ribs.

Mr. Kowalski stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the warm light of his living room. He looked normal—same receding hairline, same cardigan sweater, same wire-rimmed glasses. But he stood perfectly still, arms at his sides, head tilted at an angle that was just slightly wrong.

"Help me," Mr. Kowalski repeated, his voice flat and emotionless, like a recording. "Please help me."

Scott's legs turned to water. This wasn't right. The voice was Mr. Kowalski's, but everything else was wrong—the stillness, the angle of his head, the way he didn't blink.

"Help me. Please help me. Help me. Please help me."

The words repeated like a broken record, and with each repetition, Scott noticed something that made his sanity fracture just a little: Mr. Kowalski's lips weren't moving.

Scott yanked open his car door and threw himself inside, slamming it behind him. His hands shook as he jammed the key into the ignition. The engine coughed, sputtered.

"Come on, come on, come on—"

Through his windshield, he could see Mr. Kowalski walking down the driveway with mechanical, puppet-like steps. Still calling for help in that dead, flat voice. Getting closer.

The engine caught. Scott threw the car into reverse and floored it, tires screaming against asphalt. In his rearview mirror, he watched Mr. Kowalski stop at the end of the driveway and stand perfectly still, watching him flee.

Scott didn't slow down until he reached the main road, his entire body shaking with adrenaline and terror. He fumbled for his phone, trying to dial 911 with trembling fingers.

No signal.

"What the fuck is happening?" he whispered to his empty car.

That's when he saw the figure in his headlights.

A man in a torn business suit stood in the middle of the road, waving his arms frantically. Real movement, desperate movement—nothing like the mechanical puppet he'd just fled from.

Scott slammed on the brakes, his car skidding to a stop just feet from the stranger. The man's face was pale and slick with sweat, his eyes wide with manic terror. He had a fresh scratch on his cheek and his clothes were torn and disheveled.

The stranger ran to the passenger side and yanked open the door before Scott could react, throwing himself into the seat.

"DRIVE!" he screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria. "DRIVE NOW!"

Scott stared at him, still processing the impossibility of the last ten minutes. "What—"

"THEY'RE COMING!" The stranger grabbed Scott's arm with both hands, his grip desperate and painful. "We have to go, we have to go NOW!"

In the distance, back toward Birch Street, Scott heard something that turned his blood to ice—voices calling for help. Multiple voices, all flat and emotionless, all perfectly synchronized:

"Help me. Please help me. Help me. Please help me."

Scott didn't ask any more questions. He floored the accelerator, and his Ford Focus shot forward into the night, carrying two terrified men away from whatever Havenwood had become.

Behind them, the voices continued their mechanical chorus, growing fainter but never stopping, echoing through streets that should have been full of life but were now nothing more than a hunting ground wrapped in the wrong kind of quiet.