Chapter 7: Whispers from the Museum

Chapter 7: Whispers from the Museum

The dripping water in the underpass was a form of torture, each hollow plink a tick of a clock counting down to their own monstrous births. Toeless had curled into himself, his sobs subsiding into a silent, shivering dread. The concrete was a cold, unforgiving bed, but it was the cold inside that was killing them.

“We should throw it in the river,” Toeless finally whispered, his voice raspy and thin. “Sink it. Let it rot at the bottom of the harbor.”

Reg looked down at the statuette in his hand. The carved face of the monster that had been Maggie seemed to mock the idea. “And what good would that do?” he asked, his own voice a dead, flat thing. “It’s already seen us. It has our faces. Do you think a few feet of dirty water is going to stop it? It’s not a thing, Toeless. It’s a process. And we’re already in it.”

He could still feel the phantom echo of the rage, the addictive, consuming power that had flooded him outside the pawnshop. It was a poison in his veins, and this object was the source. Throwing it away felt like a child closing his eyes and believing the monster was gone. It was a fool’s hope.

“So what do we do?” Toeless asked, his voice cracking with despair. “We just wait? We just sit here until our skin starts to peel off?”

Wait. The word echoed in Reg’s mind. Wait for the end. That was the soldier’s curse: hurry up and wait. But you didn’t just wait for the enemy to overrun your position. You looked for an angle. You looked for an out. You found the source of the attack and you dealt with it.

“No,” Reg said, the word solidifying something in his own mind. A new, desperate desire was taking root in the barren soil of his terror: the need to understand. “We don’t wait. We go back.”

Toeless stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Back? Back to the shop? Are you insane?”

“Not the shop. The beginning. The dumpster.” Reg’s mind, honed by years of assessing threats and finding patterns, was finally cutting through the fog of fear. “Think about it. The St. Augustine Hotel and Museum. It’s not some flophouse. Things like this don’t just end up in their trash by accident. Someone threw it out. Or it got out. It came from inside that building. That’s where the answers are.”

It was a sliver of a chance, a thread of logic in a world that had become a chaotic nightmare. But it was more than nothing. It was a target. It was a mission.

The journey back across the city was a waking dream. Every passing face was a potential carving on the stone. An angry driver yelling at a cyclist, a woman weeping into her phone, a child screaming in terror at a barking dog—Reg saw them all through a new, horrifying lens. He saw raw material. The city wasn’t just a collection of people; it was a buffet of emotions for the parasite in his pocket. He kept his hand on it, the cold stone a constant reminder of the stakes.

They approached the museum from the side street, sticking to the shadows. The grand, colonnaded entrance was lit up, a beacon of civilization and order, a world away from the filth and chaos they now inhabited. To them, it was the enemy’s fortress. Their objective was the alley behind it, the grimy service entrance to hell.

The alley was just as they had left it, steeped in shadow and the stench of gourmet garbage. The dumpster lid was still propped open, a gaping metal mouth. The crime scene. The place where Reginald Carter and ‘Toeless’ Tom had died, and two incubators had been born.

“What are we even looking for?” Toeless whispered, his nervousness a palpable thing. He kept glancing over his shoulder, expecting to see the skeletal creature from the pawnshop scuttling out of the darkness.

“I don’t know,” Reg admitted, his voice low. “A box. A crate with a label. A discarded acquisition form. Anything that tells us what this thing is and where it came from.”

They started sifting through the bags they had torn open that morning. It was a grim, disgusting task. The stench of rotting food and stale champagne filled their nostrils. Reg worked with a grim determination, tearing open bags, his eyes scanning for anything unusual, anything out of place. He found designer shopping bags, half-eaten trays of hors d'oeuvres, empty liquor bottles worth more than he’d made in a week. It was the refuse of a life he could no longer comprehend. But there was nothing. No clues. Just expensive trash.

The beam of a flashlight cut through the darkness, pinning them against the dumpster.

“Well, well. Look what the rats dragged in. Back for a second helping?”

Reg froze, his hand deep inside a bag of wet linen napkins. He turned slowly. It was him. Marty, the security guard. He stood at the mouth of the alley, blocking their only escape, a smug, contemptuous look on his face. He was younger than Reg remembered, maybe late twenties, with the bored arrogance of a man given a little bit of power and a uniform to go with it.

“We’re just leaving,” Reg said, slowly pulling his hand from the trash and raising both in a gesture of surrender.

“I bet you are,” Marty said, walking towards them, the flashlight beam dancing over their faces. “You know, I’ve been thinking about you two. You were in a real hurry this morning. Found something good, didn’t you? That little statue thing I saw. Looked old. Looked fancy.”

Toeless took an involuntary step back, pressing himself against the cold metal of the dumpster.

“It was nothing,” Reg said, his voice tight. “A piece of junk. We threw it away.”

Marty laughed, a short, ugly bark. “Threw it away? Bullshit. I saw your faces. You looked like you’d won the lottery. I’m thinking there might be a finder’s fee involved. For security. For making sure you weren’t… disturbed.” His eyes glinted with petty greed. He wasn’t just a guard; he was an opportunist.

“We don’t have anything,” Reg insisted, his body tensing. The familiar, simmering rage began to bubble in his gut, the parasite stirring within him. He fought it down, his knuckles white.

“Let’s see about that,” Marty said, stepping closer. He reached out and grabbed the front of Reg’s jacket. “Why don’t you empty your pockets for me? Let’s see what kind of junk you found.”

The physical contact was like a jolt of electricity. In that moment, as Marty’s face was inches from his own, illuminated by the harsh glare of the flashlight, Reg saw it. He saw the intense, burning curiosity in the guard’s eyes. It wasn't just greed; it was a powerful, nagging desire to know. To see the strange object, to possess the secret. It was an emotion as potent and pure as his own rage or Toeless’s terror.

A wave of ice-cold dread washed over Reg, extinguishing the simmering anger in an instant. His mind flashed to the effigy in his pocket. To the three occupied faces.

And to the one that was still waiting.

The smooth, blank, featureless face.

A vacancy. A space for a new victim, marked by a powerful, overwhelming emotion.

This is how it finds the next one, the thought screamed through his mind, a revelation so horrible it almost brought him to his knees. Marty, with his bullying questions and his burning curiosity, was the perfect candidate. His desire to see the effigy was an invitation.

Reg stared into the guard’s insistent eyes, and he was no longer looking at a threat. He was looking at a ghost. He was looking at the third victim. By coming back here, by leading this man to them, he hadn't found a clue to save himself.

He had found the next sacrifice.