Chapter 5: The Red Feast

Chapter 5: The Red Feast

The drive back to Elm Street was the longest of Jack’s life. The setting sun painted the sky in streaks of orange and purple, a beautiful, serene backdrop to the ugly, crawling horror that awaited him. Alistair’s words echoed in his skull, a grim mantra of purpose. Cut the head off the snake. It’s the only way.

He parked the van a block away this time, the engine’s dying rumble sounding like a final exhalation. He didn't just grab his standard sprayer. From a false-bottomed compartment under the passenger seat, a "retirement gift" from his uncle, he retrieved a second, smaller canister. It was matte black, unmarked, and felt cold and heavy in his hand. He also grabbed a heavy steel crowbar from his toolbox. If chemicals didn't work, blunt force was the universal language.

Walking up the manicured path to the blue door felt like a death march. The house looked the same—impossibly, infuriatingly normal. But the sickness inside was palpable now, a low thrum of psychic energy that made his teeth ache and the scar over his eyebrow itch.

The front door was still ajar. He pushed it open and was met by the same wall of humid, fetid air. And the music. Dear God, the music. The same lovesick 60s tune, its upbeat rhythm and jangly guitars a profane counterpoint to the dread coiling in his stomach. It was the monster’s lullaby, the soundtrack to Stephanie’s mental decay.

He moved through the house like a soldier clearing a hostile building, the crowbar held tight in one hand, the black canister in the other. The living room was empty, the kitchen silent save for the drip of a faucet. The swarms he had seen in the basement and on Stephanie were gone, retreated into the walls, waiting. The whole house felt like it was holding its breath.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and paused, listening. The wet, rhythmic clicking from the master bedroom was louder now, more frantic. It was accompanied by a low, guttural tearing sound, like wet fabric being ripped apart. He placed a foot on the first step, the wood groaning under his weight. He was an exterminator, a man who dealt in poison and traps. He was not a warrior. He had never been more terrified in his life.

And then, a sound tore through the house that shattered the unnatural calm.

It wasn't Stephanie’s dreamy, disconnected murmur. It was a scream. A raw, piercing shriek of pure, unadulterated terror, ripped from the depths of her soul. It was the sound of a mind breaking, of a beautiful, terrible dream coming to a bloody end.

Adrenaline, cold and sharp, flooded Jack’s system, washing away the fear and leaving behind a hard, crystalline resolve. He didn’t hesitate. He took the stairs two at a time, his boots pounding a desperate rhythm against the wood, the crowbar held forward like a lance.

He burst onto the upstairs landing and shoved the master bedroom door wide open. The beam of the flashlight he’d clipped to his uniform cut through the gloom, and what it revealed would be seared into his memory forever.

The Brood-Father was no longer sleeping on the bed. It was crouched on the floor, its massive, pulsating body a glistening mountain of chitin and horror. Its multiple, chittering mandibles were slick with blood, tearing into the small, white-furred body of a housecat. The delicate bones he’d vaguely noticed before suddenly made a horrifying kind of sense. This was what she had been feeding it. Her pets. Her companions.

And Stephanie was there, standing by the edge of the bed, her hands clapped over her mouth. Her eyes were wide, no longer vacant and serene, but filled with a dawning, soul-shattering horror. The psychic spell, the comforting delusion Alistair had described, had been broken by the raw, undeniable violence happening in front of her. The monster wasn't her reincarnated husband. It was just a monster, and it was devouring her cat, Mittens.

“Travis…?” she whispered, the name a fragile, broken question.

The creature on the floor ignored her. It snapped the cat’s spine with a sickening crunch and began to feed in earnest, the sound of its chewing a wet, obscene noise in the sudden silence.

The breaking of the psychic link had another, more immediate consequence. The spell that held the hive in a state of placid worship had vanished. For the first time, Stephanie seemed to notice the roaches still clinging to her robe. She looked down at her arm, at an insect crawling on her sleeve, and she flinched, a gesture of pure revulsion.

It was as if that single movement was a signal. A switch had been flipped.

The roach on her arm suddenly bit down, its tiny mandibles piercing the thin skin of her wrist. She cried out, shaking her hand, but it was too late. All over her body, her "friends," her loyal "court," turned on their queen. Insects swarmed up from the folds of her robe, from the cuffs of her sleeves, from the floor around her feet. They were no longer languid companions; they were a frantic, hungry tide.

They bit at her ankles, her legs, her hands. They crawled up her neck, into her hair. Her screams turned from terror to pure agony as the dozens of tiny, sharp bites overwhelmed her. She stumbled back, clawing at herself, trying to pull the living, chittering shroud from her body, but for every one she crushed or threw off, two more took its place. The family she had imagined had become a waking nightmare, consuming her alive.

The Brood-Father, finished with its meal, lifted its massive head. It dropped the mangled remains of the cat, its antennae twitching, its cluster of black, unfeeling eyes fixing on the new source of commotion. It turned its colossal body with a slow, deliberate scrape of chitin on the floorboards.

It was no longer looking at its caretaker, its beloved host. It was looking at its next meal.

It took a step towards the screaming, swarmed woman, its huge, segmented legs moving with an unnatural grace. The illusion was gone. The game was over. All that was left was the predator and its prey.

Jack stood in the doorway, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The scene was a tableau from hell: the shrieking woman being devoured by her own delusion, the colossal monster moving in for the kill, and the cheerful, insane music still drifting up from the floor below, a final, mocking insult.

He had run once. He wouldn’t run again.

He raised the crowbar, its cold steel a comforting weight in his hand. He thumbed the actuator on the black canister. This was it. The job he was never trained for, the one that had been waiting for him in the dark his whole life.

As the Brood-Father opened its gore-stained mandibles and let out a high-pitched, chittering hiss, Jack took a deep breath, braced himself, and charged into the room.