Chapter 2: A Sanctuary of Ruin

The stranger's name was Matt Jensen, and he wouldn't stop shaking.

Scott had tried three times to get a coherent explanation from him as they drove through Havenwood's empty streets, but Matt could only manage fragments between gasping breaths: "Office... late... screaming... ceiling... not human..."

"We need to go to the police," Scott said, gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles had gone white. "Whatever's happening, they'll know what to do."

Matt let out a sound that might have been laughter if it hadn't been so broken. "Police," he repeated hollowly. "Yeah. Police."

The Havenwood Police Department sat on Center Street like a brick fortress, its blue and white sign illuminated by harsh fluorescent lights. Scott had driven past it thousands of times—a symbol of order in his predictable world. Tonight, it looked like salvation.

Two patrol cars sat in the parking lot under buzzing streetlights. Normal. Official. Safe.

"See?" Scott said, more to himself than to Matt. "They're here. They'll figure this out."

But as they pulled into the lot, Scott noticed something that made his stomach clench: the front door hung wide open, spilling harsh white light onto the concrete steps.

Matt had gone completely silent, his breathing shallow and rapid. When Scott looked over, he saw the man's face had drained of what little color it had left.

"Matt?"

"The door," Matt whispered. "It's... it's just like..."

Scott parked near the entrance, leaving the engine running. Through the open doorway, he could see the reception desk, overturned chairs, and papers scattered across the linoleum floor.

"Stay in the car," Scott said, but Matt was already shaking his head violently.

"No. No, don't leave me alone. Please." His voice cracked on the last word. "I can't... not again."

Against every instinct screaming at him to drive away, Scott turned off the engine. The sudden silence pressed against them like a physical weight.

They approached the entrance together, their footsteps unnaturally loud on the concrete. The smell hit them first—metallic and thick, like pennies left in the rain. Blood.

The reception area looked like a hurricane had torn through it. The duty officer's chair lay on its side, computer monitor dark, keyboard scattered in pieces. Deep gouges ran along the walls, too wide and jagged to be from any human hand.

But it was the silence that terrified Scott most. Police stations were never quiet—radios crackling, phones ringing, voices echoing from holding cells. This felt like a tomb.

"Hello?" Scott called out, his voice swallowed by the oppressive stillness. "This is Scott Miller. We need help."

Matt grabbed his arm. "Don't," he hissed. "Don't call attention."

But Scott pulled free and stepped deeper into the station. The main bullpen stretched before them, desks overturned, filing cabinets toppled, papers drifting like snow across the floor. Emergency lights bathed everything in hellish red.

A patrol officer's hat sat perfectly centered on one desk, as if placed there with care. Next to it, a half-eaten sandwich and a cup of coffee, still warm.

"Where is everyone?" Scott whispered.

That's when he saw the blood.

Not spatters or drops, but long, smeared trails leading from the bullpen toward the back offices. As if people had been dragged, their bodies painting red streaks across the linoleum.

Matt made a choking sound behind him. "Just like the office building. Just like..." He swayed on his feet. "They pulled them into the ceiling. All of them."

Scott looked up instinctively. The drop ceiling tiles hung at odd angles, several missing entirely, revealing dark crawlspace beyond. Water stains—or what he hoped were water stains—darkened the remaining tiles.

A radio crackled to life somewhere in the darkness, making both men jump. Static-filled voices, codes and locations that meant nothing now. Then it cut to silence again.

"We should go," Matt said, backing toward the door. "We should go right now."

But Scott found himself drawn deeper into the station, following the blood trails like breadcrumbs in a fairy tale. His rational mind needed answers, needed to understand what had happened here.

The trails led to a hallway lined with offices and interrogation rooms. Most doors hung open, revealing chaos within—overturned furniture, shattered glass, more of those impossible gouges in the walls.

One door remained closed.

Interrogation Room B, according to the placard. No light showed beneath the door, but Scott could hear something from inside. A mechanical sound, rhythmic and steady.

Click. Whirr. Click. Whirr.

"Matt," Scott whispered, but when he turned, Matt was gone.

Panic flared in Scott's chest until he spotted movement back in the bullpen—Matt crouched behind an overturned desk, eyes wide with terror, shaking his head frantically.

The sound from the interrogation room continued. Click. Whirr. Click. Whirr.

Scott's hand found the door handle. Cold metal against his palm. Every survival instinct told him to run, but something else drove him forward—the need to understand, to find some rational explanation for the impossible things he'd witnessed.

He turned the handle.

The door swung open to reveal a small, windowless room dominated by a metal table and two chairs. One chair had been thrown against the wall and lay in pieces. The other...

Scott's gorge rose.

A severed arm, pale and bloodless, was handcuffed to the table's metal ring. It ended at the elbow in a mess of torn flesh and splintered bone, as if it had been ripped away rather than cut.

But it was the sound that made Scott's sanity fracture.

Click. Whirr. Click. Whirr.

A tape recorder sat on the table next to the arm, its reels turning steadily, playing back whatever had been recorded in this room's final moments.

Scott stepped closer, drawn by horrified fascination. The tape was near its end, the recorded voices distorted by age and damage, but still audible:

"—name and badge number for the record. Officer Sarah Chen, badge 247, conducting interview with suspect in the Hartwell Building incident."

A pause, then a man's voice, shaky with fear: "I already told you, I don't know what it was. It wasn't human. It came from the ceiling and—"

"Mr. Jensen, please calm down and tell me exactly what you saw."

Jensen. Matt's last name. Scott glanced back toward the bullpen where Matt cowered, understanding beginning to dawn.

The tape continued: "The lights went out first. Emergency power kicked in, but it was too late. I heard screaming from the floor above, then... sounds. Like something wet sliding through the walls."

"What happened to your coworkers, Mr. Jensen?"

"It took them. One by one. Sarah from accounting was working late, and I heard her calling for help. But when I went to check..." Matt's recorded voice broke. "It wasn't her anymore. She was... puppeted. Being moved like a marionette."

Officer Chen's voice remained professional: "Moved by what?"

"Tendrils. Flesh-colored cables coming down from the ceiling. They went into her head, her spine. She kept asking for help, but her lips weren't moving. And her eyes..."

A long pause, filled only with the static of the old recording.

"Her eyes were already dead."

Scott felt ice in his veins. This was what Matt had witnessed, what had broken him.

The tape played on: "How did you escape?"

"I hid. Under my desk for three hours, listening to it hunt. It uses their voices, makes them call for help. But the calls are wrong—too perfect, too repeated. Like a recording."

"Mr. Jensen, I understand you're traumatized, but—"

The lights went out on the tape with an audible pop. Emergency lighting hummed to life.

Officer Chen's voice, no longer professional: "What the hell was that?"

A new sound entered the recording—a wet, sliding noise, like something massive moving through liquid.

"It's here," Matt whispered on the tape. "Oh God, it followed me. It's in the ceiling."

Scott heard Officer Chen's radio crackle: "This is Chen, I need backup at—"

The radio died with a shriek of static.

What followed made Scott's blood turn to water. A sound like tearing meat, Officer Chen's scream cut short, then the wet sliding noise moving overhead.

Silence stretched for long minutes. Then, impossibly, Officer Chen's voice returned—calm, professional, exactly as it had been:

"This is Officer Chen. False alarm. Everything is secure."

But underneath her words, Scott could hear another sound—the mechanical creak of puppet strings.

The tape had more to play, but Scott couldn't listen. His hands shook as he backed away from the recorder, away from the severed arm, away from the truth of what had happened in this room.

He turned to run and found Matt standing in the doorway, tears streaming down his face.

"Now you know," Matt said quietly. "Now you understand why we can't trust anyone who calls for help."

From somewhere deep in the station came a new sound—a voice, clear and calm:

"This is Officer Chen. Is anyone there? I need assistance."

Both men froze. The voice was coming from the hallway behind them, perfectly matching the woman they'd just heard die on the tape.

"This is Officer Chen," the voice repeated, getting closer. "Please help me."

Scott grabbed Matt's arm and pulled him toward the exit, but Matt was already moving, his earlier paralysis replaced by desperate purpose.

They ran through the bullpen, past the overturned desks and scattered papers, toward the front door and the promise of open air beyond.

Behind them, Officer Chen's voice followed, patient and deadly:

"This is Officer Chen. Is anyone there? Please help me. This is Officer Chen. Is anyone there? Please help me."

They burst through the front entrance into the parking lot, the cool night air hitting their faces like salvation. Scott's Ford Focus sat waiting, keys still in the ignition.

They threw themselves inside, Scott's hands fumbling with the controls. The engine turned over just as something appeared in the station's doorway.

A figure in a police uniform, standing perfectly straight, arms at her sides. Even from this distance, Scott could see that her head was tilted at that same wrong angle he'd noticed with Mr. Kowalski.

"This is Officer Chen," the figure called across the parking lot, her voice carrying impossibly well in the still air. "Is anyone there? Please help me."

Scott threw the car into reverse and floored it, tires screaming against asphalt. In his headlights, he caught a glimpse of something that would haunt him forever—dark, glistening tendrils descending from the shadows above the doorway, attached to the back of Officer Chen's head like the strings of a marionette.

They sped away into the night, leaving behind their last hope of rescue, their final sanctuary transformed into just another hunting ground. Behind them, the voice continued its mechanical litany, growing fainter but never stopping:

"This is Officer Chen. Is anyone there? Please help me. This is Officer Chen. Is anyone there? Please help me."

The words echoed through the empty streets of Havenwood, a siren song for the damned.