Chapter 2: A Name in Static

The tapping had stopped just before dawn, fading away with the darkness like some hellish reveille played in reverse. Michael remained pressed against the bedroom wall until the first pale fingers of sunlight crept through the curtain, his body cramped and aching from hours of motionless terror.

When he finally worked up the courage to peer outside, the snow told its story in perfect, undeniable detail. The footprints were there—a single line circling the cabin exactly as he'd heard them. But what made his blood turn to ice was what he saw directly beneath his bedroom window: a series of small, precise holes in the snow where something had tapped against the glass. The spacing was exact, methodical, and far too deliberate to be anything natural.

Michael stumbled to the kitchen and made coffee with shaking hands, trying to process what had happened. His rational mind offered explanations—a lost hiker, maybe someone playing a prank, though who would be out here in the middle of nowhere seemed impossible to answer. But the evidence outside spoke to something else entirely, something his logical, analytical brain refused to accept.

He spent the day pacing the small cabin, jumping at every creak of settling wood, every whisper of wind through the eaves. His peaceful retreat had been transformed overnight into a prison, and he found himself constantly checking the locks, peering through curtains, listening for sounds that didn't belong.

As evening approached, dread settled over him like a physical weight. The sun disappeared behind the mountains with what felt like malicious speed, and Michael found himself dreading the coming darkness with a intensity that bordered on panic. He built up the fire until it roared, flooding the cabin with light and warmth, but no amount of illumination could chase away the growing certainty that something was coming back.

He tried to stay awake, really tried. He made more coffee, turned on every light in the cabin, even found an old battery-powered radio and let it fill the silence with static-laden country music from some distant station. But exhaustion from the previous night's terror eventually won out, and somewhere around midnight, his eyes finally closed.

The sound that woke him wasn't footsteps this time.

It was the slow, deliberate creak of the front door opening.

Michael's eyes snapped open, his body instantly flooded with adrenaline. The digital clock read 3:33 AM, and through the thin bedroom wall, he could hear it clearly—the ancient hinges of the cabin's front door protesting as it swung inward.

But that was impossible. He'd checked the locks obsessively before bed, had even wedged a chair under the handle. The door was solid wood, the lock was strong, and there was no way someone could have opened it without making noise, without breaking something.

The door creaked shut with a soft click that seemed to echo through the cabin like a gunshot.

Michael lay perfectly still, every muscle in his body coiled tight with terror. Someone was inside the cabin. Inside his sanctuary, inside his safe space, moving around in the darkness of the main room just beyond his bedroom door.

Then he heard the breathing.

It wasn't human breathing—not quite. It was too wet, too labored, like air being drawn through damaged lungs or a throat full of fluid. The sound was arhythmic, coming in long, shuddering gasps followed by equally disturbing exhales that seemed to rattle with moisture.

And underneath the breathing, another sound that made his skin crawl: a soft scraping noise, like fingernails dragging across wood, or claws scratching at the floor.

Michael's mind raced through his options. His phone was in the kitchen—useless anyway without signal, but it had a flashlight. The back door was in the kitchen too, but getting there would mean crossing the main room where the intruder was. The bedroom window was small and high, and jumping out into the snow in his pajamas in the middle of winter would be suicide.

The breathing moved closer to his door, accompanied by that horrible scraping sound. Whatever was out there was large—he could hear the floorboards creaking under its weight with each movement. But the way it moved was wrong somehow, too slow and deliberate, like it was studying every inch of the space.

Michael slipped as quietly as possible from the bed and crept toward the closet in the corner of the room. It was small and cramped, filled with musty winter coats and old boots, but it was the only hiding place available. He eased the door open and squeezed inside, pulling it closed just as he heard the bedroom doorknob begin to turn.

Through the slats in the closet door, he watched in horror as his bedroom door swung open. The thing that entered defied every rational explanation his mind could produce.

It was tall—impossibly tall—hunched over to fit through the doorframe. Its skin was pale and waxy, stretched too tight over a frame that seemed to be mostly bone and sinew. But it was the proportions that were all wrong: arms that hung nearly to the floor, fingers that were far too long, a torso that seemed to bend and flex in ways human anatomy shouldn't allow.

The scraping sound came from those fingers—long, bony appendages that dragged across the floor as it moved, leaving gouges in the hardwood. Its breathing filled the small bedroom, wet and labored, like someone drowning in slow motion.

Michael pressed his hand over his mouth to keep from making any sound, his heart hammering so hard he was sure it would give him away. The thing moved around his bedroom with that same deliberate patience he'd heard in the tapping the night before. It approached the bed, leaned over it with movements that suggested joints that bent in impossible directions, then slowly turned toward the closet.

Even in the darkness, Michael could see that its face was wrong. Where features should have been, there were only suggestions—dark hollows where eyes might be, a suggestion of a mouth that seemed too wide, too eager. But the worst part was the way it tilted its head, like it was listening, like it knew exactly where he was hiding.

The thing took a step toward the closet, then another. Each footfall made the floorboards groan, and Michael could smell something now—a musty, organic odor like old leaves and standing water, with an underlying sweetness that reminded him horribly of flowers left too long in a vase.

It stopped directly in front of the closet door.

Through the slats, Michael could see it standing there, swaying slightly as if moved by a breeze he couldn't feel. The wet, rattling breathing continued, and he realized with growing horror that it wasn't just breathing—it was tasting the air, sampling it like a predator scenting prey.

Then it spoke.

The voice that emerged from that impossible throat was not one voice but many, layered on top of each other like a badly tuned radio picking up multiple stations at once. Men, women, children—a chorus of voices speaking in perfect unison, each one distinct yet blended into a harmony that made Michael's teeth ache.

"Michael."

His name emerged from that static-laden chorus like a prayer and a curse combined. The voices knew him, had sought him out specifically. This wasn't random, wasn't chance—this thing had come for him personally.

"Michael Hayes."

The voices spoke his full name now, and he could distinguish individual tones within the chorus. An older man with a gravelly smoker's voice. A young woman who sounded like she might be crying. A child whose voice cracked with fear. All of them speaking his name with an intimacy that suggested they knew him, had been watching him, waiting for him.

"We've been looking for you, Michael."

The closet doorknob began to turn.

Michael's vision grayed at the edges as terror threatened to drag him into unconsciousness. The doorknob turned with agonizing slowness, the old metal creaking softly as it rotated. Through the slats, he could see that horrible, impossible face drawing closer, could smell that sickly-sweet organic decay getting stronger.

The door began to swing open, and Michael's last coherent thought before his world went black was the realization that the voices in that terrible chorus weren't speaking to him.

They were welcoming him home.

The closet door opened with a soft whisper, and darkness rushed in to claim him.