Chapter 10: The Road to Blackwood Chapel

The pre-dawn darkness felt different as Ethan loaded supplies into his car—heavier somehow, pregnant with the weight of approaching finality. Carol moved beside him with grim efficiency, checking and rechecking the ritual materials they'd assembled from five generations of Hayes family research.

Salt in consecrated leather pouches. Iron filings blessed by three different priests who'd never asked why. Candles carved with symbols that seemed to writhe in his peripheral vision. His father's silver lighter, still carrying traces of Daniel Hayes's fingerprints after eight years. And the knife—an ancient blade that had belonged to Thomas Hayes, its edge still sharp enough to draw blood from the unwary.

"The chapel is sixty miles north," Carol said, spreading a road map across the car's hood. The route was marked in red ink, following back roads that avoided major highways and population centers. "Your father's journal indicates the entity will be strongest there, but also most vulnerable. It's where the barriers between worlds are thinnest."

Ethan studied the map, noting how the marked route seemed to curve and spiral rather than taking the most direct path. "Why not just take the interstate?"

"Because it will be hunting us from the moment we leave the safety of the city lights." Carol's finger traced the winding path they would follow. "These roads pass through areas where your family has maintained protective wards for decades. Not perfect protection, but enough to make it harder for the entity to manifest fully during our journey."

The eastern horizon was beginning to show the faintest hint of gray when they finally set out, Carol following in her Honda while Ethan led the way in his sedan. The Chicago suburbs fell away quickly once they left the main arteries, replaced by farmland and scattered woodlots that looked older and wilder than they should in the pre-dawn gloom.

For the first twenty miles, the drive seemed almost normal. Early commuters appeared on the secondary roads, their headlights creating brief moments of human connection in the darkness. Radio stations played familiar music, and the GPS on Ethan's dashboard tracked their progress with mundane precision.

But as they turned onto increasingly remote roads, following the route his father had mapped years before, normalcy began to fray at the edges.

The radio started picking up stations that shouldn't exist—broadcasts in languages that sounded almost but not quite like words he recognized, weather reports for places that weren't on any map, emergency bulletins warning of dangers that made no rational sense. When he tried to tune to a clear station, the speakers would emit only static shot through with what sounded disturbingly like whispered conversations.

"He's coming home, Daniel. Finally coming home to us."

"The boy doesn't understand yet. But he will. Oh, he will."

"So much love in that family. So much grief. So much fear. It tastes like Christmas morning and funeral flowers all at once."

Ethan snapped the radio off, but the whispers continued—not from the speakers now, but from the air vents, the upholstery, the metal frame of the car itself. As if the entity's presence was so strong it could transform any medium into a conduit for its voice.

The road ahead began to shimmer like heat waves, though the September morning was cool and overcast. In the distance, Ethan could see what looked like other cars—their headlights moving in patterns that suggested normal traffic. But as he drew closer, the lights would vanish, leaving only empty asphalt stretching toward the horizon.

"You're going the wrong way, son."

His father's voice came from the passenger seat, so clear and immediate that Ethan jerked the steering wheel hard enough to send the car into a brief skid. When he looked, the seat was empty—but he could smell sandalwood aftershave, could see the faint impression in the upholstery where someone might have been sitting.

"The chapel isn't your destination. It never was. You're driving toward your death, just like I did eight years ago."

"You're not real," Ethan said through gritted teeth, fighting to keep his focus on the road. But his voice lacked conviction. The presence beside him felt absolutely genuine—the warmth of another person, the subtle sounds of breathing and shifting fabric, the familiar way his father had always drummed his fingers against his knee when he was thinking.

"I'm as real as love, as real as memory, as real as the bond between father and son that not even death can break." The voice was patient, gentle, exactly the tone Daniel Hayes had always used when trying to explain difficult concepts to his son.

"Look at me, Ethan. You know it's really me."

Despite every instinct screaming warnings, Ethan found himself turning toward the passenger seat. His father sat there exactly as he remembered—a little tired around the eyes, wearing the blue work shirt that had always been his favorite, smiling with the mixture of pride and concern that had defined so many of their conversations.

But the car was still moving at sixty miles per hour down a narrow country road, and Ethan's attention was no longer on his driving.

The vehicle drifted toward the shoulder, tires catching gravel before lurching back onto the asphalt. In his rearview mirror, Ethan could see Carol's headlights swerving as she fought to avoid rear-ending him.

"Careful there, son. Wouldn't want you to end up like your old man." Daniel Hayes chuckled, the sound exactly right, exactly as Ethan remembered. "Though I suppose that's where this is all heading anyway. You following in my footsteps, walking the same path that got me killed."

"This is what you wanted," Ethan said, trying to focus on the road ahead while his peripheral vision insisted his father was reaching toward the steering wheel. "You wanted me to finish what you started. The ritual, the binding—"

"Is that what Carol told you? That I wanted you to throw your life away on some impossible task?" The entity's laugh was bitter now, carrying undertones of disappointment and betrayal. "I died trying to protect you from this burden, Ethan. Died trying to end the cycle so you could live a normal life. And now she's convinced you to repeat my mistakes."

The road ahead began to curve and twist in ways that seemed geometrically impossible, doubling back on itself while somehow still leading forward. Ethan's GPS showed their location as a blank space between mapped roads, and his speedometer gave readings that fluctuated wildly without any change in his actual speed.

"You don't have to do this. There's still time to turn around, to go back to your safe little apartment and your safe little job and pretend none of this ever happened. The entity will follow you, yes, but it will be patient. You could live for years before it finally decides to feed."

"Years of what?" Ethan asked. "Years of looking over my shoulder, wondering when you—when it—would finally come for me?"

"Years of life, son. Isn't that worth something?"

But even as the words came from his father's mouth, Ethan could see the wrongness beginning to show through the perfect mimicry. The smile was too wide, stretching his father's familiar features in ways human anatomy couldn't accommodate. The eyes held depths that belonged to spaces between stars, ancient and hungry and utterly alien.

"Or perhaps you'd prefer the alternative. Following your family's noble tradition of dying young and dying afraid, convinced that your sacrifice means something when all it really accomplishes is feeding the thing you're trying to fight."

The passenger seat was empty again, but frost was forming on the windows despite the car's heater running at full blast. The entity's presence filled the vehicle like a malignant pressure, making every breath taste of grave dirt and rotting flowers.

In his mirrors, Ethan could see that Carol's car was no longer behind him. He was alone on a road that couldn't exist, driving toward a destination that promised only death, while something wearing his father's face whispered seductive lies about survival and surrender.

But as the fear threatened to overwhelm him, Ethan remembered something his father had actually said—not the entity's twisted version, but a real memory from his childhood. A camping trip when he'd been afraid of the dark, and Daniel Hayes had sat with him by the dying fire, explaining that courage wasn't the absence of fear.

"Courage is being afraid and doing what needs to be done anyway," he said aloud, his father's real words cutting through the entity's psychological assault. "You taught me that, Dad. The real you, not this thing wearing your face."

The laughter that answered him came from everywhere and nowhere, echoing off surfaces that shouldn't exist in the confined space of the car:

"Oh, my boy. You still don't understand. I am your father. Every memory, every word, every moment of love you shared with Daniel Hayes—it all lives in me now. I consumed him completely, down to the last thought, the last feeling. When you speak to me, you are speaking to him. When you fight me, you are fighting him."

"So tell me, son—if destroying me means destroying every trace of your father that remains in this world, are you really prepared to pull that trigger?"

The question hung in the air like a physical weight as Ethan crested a hill and saw Blackwood Chapel in the distance—a stone structure silhouetted against the gray dawn sky, its broken windows and collapsed roof speaking of decades of neglect and decay. The building sat in the center of a cleared space that might once have been a cemetery, though no headstones remained to mark the dead.

Carol's Honda appeared in his rearview mirror as if it had always been there, following at a respectful distance as they descended toward their destination. The entity's presence withdrew slightly, perhaps conserving its strength for the final confrontation.

But its parting words followed Ethan down the hill and into the chapel's shadow:

"Welcome home, son. Your father is waiting for you."

As he parked beside the ruined church and began unloading the ritual materials, Ethan could feel the weight of five generations pressing down on him—Hayes men who had fought this same battle, who had carried the same impossible burden, who had died trying to protect families they loved more than their own lives.

Tonight, that cycle would finally end.

One way or another.