Chapter 9: The Power Fails

The attack came at 11:47 PM, just as Ethan was reviewing the ritual preparations for what felt like the hundredth time. He'd been sitting at his kitchen table, surrounded by the accumulated knowledge of five generations of Hayes guardians, when every light in his apartment began to flicker in unison.

Not the random electrical hiccups he'd grown accustomed to—this was systematic, deliberate, the kind of coordinated failure that spoke of intelligence behind the malfunction. The work lights strobed like a nightclub, the overhead fixtures dimmed and surged, and even the LED displays on his appliances began to dance with erratic numbers.

Carol looked up from the ritual circle she'd been constructing with salt and iron filings, her face grim in the stuttering illumination. "It's testing the barriers. Probing for weaknesses."

"I thought the lights were supposed to be protection," Ethan said, gripping the iron poker he'd taken to carrying everywhere. The weight of it in his hands was reassuring, a tangible defense against intangible threats.

"They are. But nothing's absolute, especially this close to the anniversary." Carol's voice was tight with concern as she scattered more salt around the circle. "It's been feeding off your grief for days now, growing stronger. Eventually, it was bound to find ways around our defenses."

The temperature in the apartment began to drop, the change subtle at first but rapidly becoming noticeable. Ethan's breath started to mist in the artificial light, and frost began forming on the windows despite the September heat outside. The entity's presence was affecting the physical world more directly than ever before.

Then the whispers started.

They came from everywhere and nowhere—his father's voice speaking from inside the walls, under the floorboards, through the electrical outlets. The words were too soft to understand clearly, but the tone was unmistakable: disappointed, hurt, betrayed.

Why won't you listen to me, son? Why won't you let me explain?

The lights flickered more violently, throwing wild shadows across the apartment. In those brief moments of deeper darkness, Ethan caught glimpses of movement—shapes that shouldn't be there, familiar silhouettes in impossible places.

I've been trying so hard to reach you, to make you understand. But you've let her poison your mind against me. She never understood our family, never understood what we mean to each other.

"Don't listen," Carol hissed, pressing more iron charms into his hands. "It's trying to break your concentration before tomorrow night. Make you doubt yourself, doubt the plan."

But the voice was so perfectly his father's—not just the sound, but the cadence, the slight way Daniel Hayes had always pronounced certain words. It carried the weight of eighteen years of shared memories, bedtime stories and baseball games and quiet conversations about life and death and everything in between.

I know you're scared. I was scared too, the night I died. But I'm not afraid anymore, Ethan. Death isn't the end—it's just a different kind of beginning. I can show you, if you'll just—

The main circuit breaker threw with a sound like a gunshot, plunging the apartment into absolute darkness.

Ethan's carefully constructed fortress of light vanished in an instant, leaving him blind and vulnerable in the space he'd thought was safe. The silence that followed was complete and terrible, broken only by the sound of his own ragged breathing and Carol's muttered prayers.

Then the hunting began.

Something moved in the darkness—not footsteps exactly, but the soft whisper of fabric against furniture, the almost-silent displacement of air that spoke of a large presence navigating his familiar space. The entity no longer needed to stay hidden in corners and shadows. With the lights gone, the entire apartment had become its domain.

Ethan fumbled for his lighter, the small flame casting a pathetic circle of illumination in the consuming blackness. In that tiny bubble of light, he could see Carol clutching a handful of iron charms, her face pale but determined.

"The circuit box," she whispered. "In the hall closet. If we can get the power back—"

The lighter went out, snuffed by a wind that shouldn't exist in a closed apartment.

In the renewed darkness, Daniel Hayes spoke from directly behind them: "You don't need electric light, son. You never did. Remember what I used to tell you when you were afraid of the dark?"

Ethan spun toward the voice, swinging the iron poker through empty air. The metal struck nothing, but he heard his father's soft chuckle echoing from a different direction entirely.

"I used to tell you that darkness was just the absence of light, nothing more. But I was wrong." The voice moved around them as they stood back-to-back, Carol fumbling with matches while Ethan kept the poker ready. "Darkness is alive, Ethan. It has its own kind of sight, its own kind of hunger. And it's been waiting so patiently for this moment."

A match flared in Carol's hands, revealing the apartment exactly as they'd left it—furniture in place, ritual materials undisturbed, no sign of an intruder. But the shadows cast by that tiny flame seemed too deep, too solid, moving independently of the flickering light.

"There," Carol pointed toward the hallway. "The electrical panel is—"

The match went out, pinched between invisible fingers.

The darkness pressed in around them like a living thing, thick and suffocating. Ethan could feel it probing at the edges of his mind, trying to find purchase in his memories, his fears, his desperate love for his dead father.

Why are you fighting me? The voice was plaintive now, wounded. I'm not your enemy, Ethan. I'm your father. I love you. Everything I'm doing, everything I've ever done, has been to protect you.

"You're not him," Ethan said through gritted teeth, though part of him—the part that had never stopped being eight years old and afraid of monsters under the bed—desperately wanted to believe otherwise.

Look at me, son. Really look at me.

Another match blazed to life in Carol's hands, and there he was—Daniel Hayes in his favorite flannel shirt and work jeans, standing exactly where he used to stand when he came to check on Ethan after a nightmare. The face was perfect in every detail, from the slight scar on his chin where he'd cut himself shaving to the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled.

But the smile was wrong. Too wide. Too knowing. Too aware of exactly what effect it was having.

There's my boy. I've missed you so much, Ethan. These eight years have felt like centuries. But we can be together again. All you have to do is put down that poker and come give your old dad a hug.

The entity began to move closer, its footsteps making no sound on the hardwood floor. In the flickering matchlight, Ethan could see that it cast no shadow of its own, that frost was forming on the surfaces it passed near.

"Stay back," Ethan warned, raising the iron poker. But his voice lacked conviction. This looked exactly like his father, sounded exactly like him, even moved with the same slightly off-balance gait Daniel Hayes had developed after breaking his ankle badly in his twenties.

You're really going to threaten your own father? The man who worked two jobs to keep you in Little League? Who stayed up all night when you had pneumonia in third grade? Who loved you more than his own life?

The words hit like physical blows, each one carrying the weight of genuine memory. Because all of it was true—Daniel Hayes had been a devoted father, had sacrificed for his family, had died trying to protect the son who was now holding a weapon against his image.

Carol's match burned down to her fingers and went out. In the renewed darkness, the thing wearing his father's face moved closer still.

I know what she's told you. That I'm some kind of monster, some parasite feeding on your grief. But look into your heart, son. You know who I am. You've always known.

Ethan could smell his father's aftershave now, that familiar combination of sandalwood and something vaguely medicinal that had always meant safety when he was young. The scent triggered a flood of sense memories—being carried to bed after falling asleep watching TV, getting help with math homework at this very kitchen table, learning to shave in the bathroom mirror while his father patiently explained the technique.

That's right. Remember who I am. Remember what we meant to each other.

A soft touch against his cheek—his father's hand, warm and callused from years of manual work, gentle in the way it had always been when offering comfort.

I never left you, Ethan. Even in death, even across the barriers between worlds, my love for you kept me anchored to this reality. Isn't that what love is supposed to do? Isn't it supposed to conquer even death?

The iron poker wavered in Ethan's grip. Everything the entity was saying felt true on a level deeper than rational thought. Love did transcend death—wasn't that what every religion, every philosophy, every grief-stricken heart had always insisted? Maybe the journals were wrong. Maybe the family stories were incomplete. Maybe what he was facing wasn't a monster at all, but a genuine miracle.

Let me hold you, son. Let me tell you how proud I am of the man you've become. Let me explain what really happened that night eight years ago, and why I had to find a way back to you.

Ethan was leaning forward now, drawn by that beloved voice, that familiar presence. The poker hung loose in his grip as every instinct screamed at him to embrace his father, to accept this impossible gift of reunion.

Carol's hand slammed into his chest, shoving him backward just as invisible claws whistled through the space where his head had been. Her final match flared to life, revealing the entity's true nature for just an instant—something tall and wrong-jointed, wearing Daniel Hayes's face like an ill-fitting mask, its mouth opened far too wide in a predatory snarl.

Then the match went out, and the thing that was not his father shrieked with frustration and rage.

"The circuit breaker!" Carol shouted. "Now, while it's distracted!"

They ran through the darkness, guided more by memory than sight, stumbling over furniture and crashing into walls. Behind them, the entity's footsteps followed—not the soft, careful steps of Daniel Hayes, but the sharp clicking of something with too many joints moving in ways human anatomy couldn't accommodate.

The hall closet door was already open, the electrical panel exposed. Ethan groped for the main breaker in absolute blackness while the sound of pursuit grew closer. His fingers found the switch just as something cold and sharp brushed against the back of his neck.

Light exploded through the apartment as the power returned, every bulb and fixture blazing at maximum intensity. The entity shrieked again—a sound like metal tearing and wind through empty spaces—and the temperature spiked as if a furnace had suddenly ignited.

When Ethan's vision cleared, the apartment was empty except for Carol and himself. But the hardwood floor bore fresh scorch marks in the shape of footprints, and the air still carried the lingering scent of sandalwood aftershave mixed with something organic and rotting.

They stood in the restored light, breathing hard, both understanding that something fundamental had changed. The entity was no longer content to wait and probe and gradually wear down their defenses. It had shown its true strength tonight, demonstrated that their protective barriers were temporary at best.

"Tomorrow," Carol said, her voice shaking slightly. "We can't wait any longer. Whatever preparation we haven't finished will have to be enough."

Ethan nodded, still gripping the iron poker, still feeling the phantom touch of his father's hand against his cheek. The final confrontation at Blackwood Chapel was less than twenty-four hours away, and tonight had proven that their enemy was far more powerful than they'd hoped.

But it had also revealed something else—in that moment when the entity had shown its true form, when the perfect mimicry had slipped just enough to expose the predator underneath, Ethan had felt something shift inside himself. The desperate, grief-stricken part of him that wanted to believe was still there, would probably always be there.

But now it was balanced by something else: the cold, clear knowledge that whatever was wearing his father's face, it was not Daniel Hayes. It was something that used love as a weapon, that fed on the bonds between the living and the dead.

And tomorrow night, he was going to destroy it.

The lights continued to burn bright and steady, pushing back the darkness that had nearly claimed him. But outside the windows, shadows moved with purpose and intelligence, counting down the hours until the anniversary of Daniel Hayes's death.

Twenty-two hours until Blackwood Chapel.

Twenty-two hours until the end of everything, one way or another.