Chapter 2: The Spreading Stain

Chapter 2: The Spreading Stain

Sleep was a forgotten country, its borders closed to him. Liam spent the hours of darkness huddled in his armchair, a blanket pulled tight around his shoulders, watching the walls. He’d turned every picture frame to face the plaster, draped a thick sheet over the dead screen of the television, and avoided the kitchen with its arsenal of polished cutlery and chrome appliances. But he couldn't escape his own shadow.

In the dim glow of a single lamp, it stretched across the floor, a dark wound in the light. And always, fused to it, was the other one. Arthur’s silhouette, hunched and dripping, a permanent parasite latched onto his own. When Liam shivered, the second shadow trembled violently. When he shifted his weight, it seemed to list, as if struggling to keep its footing on an unseen, rolling deck. It was a constant, silent mockery of his every movement.

He had tried to outrun it. He’d paced the length of the apartment, a frantic, caged animal, only to have the conjoined shadow follow him, a grotesque dance partner he could not shake. It was proof. This wasn't a hallucination born of stress. This was an invasion.

The air in the apartment had grown cold. Not the simple chill of a drafty window, but a deep, penetrating cold that seemed to emanate from the very center of the room and spread outwards. It was a wet, heavy cold, the kind that clings to you after an unwanted plunge into deep, dark water. It sank into his bones, making his teeth chatter and his muscles ache. He knew, without having to see a reflection, that Arthur was close. The cold was his calling card, a stain spreading through the atmosphere of Liam’s life.

He gave up trying to ignore it. He needed information. His phone was a minefield, its dark screen a perfect black mirror. He held it at an angle, squinting, his thumb hovering over the power button. With a deep breath, he pressed it.

The screen flared to life, showing his lock screen—a generic, calming image of a mountain range. For a blessed second, it was just a phone. He quickly navigated to the browser, his fingers fumbling. He typed in clumsy, frantic words: ghosts, hauntings, how to get rid of a spirit.

The search results were a useless cascade of psychic hotlines, amateur paranormal blogs, and articles about burning sage. Idiots. Superstitious fools. He scoffed, a bitter, humorless sound. This wasn't some campfire story. This was a tactical problem. An infestation.

As he scrolled, his thumb brushed the edge of the screen. In the polished silver bezel of the phone, no wider than a pencil line, he saw him. A tiny, perfect miniature of Arthur Vance, drenched and staring, his hollow eyes somehow filling the entire microscopic reflection.

Liam yelled and flung the phone across the room. It hit the far wall with a sharp crack and skittered to the floor, screen-down. He was breathing in harsh, ragged gasps, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. It was everywhere. There was no escape. The cage was getting smaller.

He retreated to the kitchen, driven by a thirst that scraped his throat raw. He needed water, but the thought of the sink, of the gleaming faucet, made his stomach clench. He grabbed a spoon from the drawer to stir sugar into the instant coffee he now lived on. He paused, his gaze drawn to the curved, distorted bowl of the spoon.

There, in the warped reflection, Arthur’s face stared back. His mouth was stretched into a wide, soundless O, his bloated features twisted into a parody of a drowning man’s final gasp for air.

Liam dropped the spoon with a clatter. It spun on the linoleum floor, each rotation catching the light, each flash a tiny, mocking glint. He backed away, his hands raised as if to ward off a physical blow.

This wasn't about guilt. Guilt was an illogical, useless emotion. He felt no remorse for what he’d done. Arthur Vance, in his fog of dementia, was already fading from the world. Liam had simply... expedited the process. He had been a force of nature, like a tide or a storm. A tide doesn't feel guilt. A storm doesn't apologize for the wreckage it leaves behind.

He’d taken others before Arthur. Quietly. Perfectly. A hiker who “slipped” from a rain-slicked cliff edge. A lone camper whose tent “accidentally” caught fire. They were footnotes in his personal history, faint memories of triumph. He couldn’t even recall all their faces. They were just… gone. They didn’t come back. They didn’t cling to his shadow or warp their faces in his cutlery.

So what made this one different?

The cold in the room seemed to intensify, coalescing around him. The answer bloomed in his mind, a moment of terrible, chilling clarity. It wasn't about Arthur. It was about him. About his control. The old man’s persistence was an imperfection in the memory, a stain on his masterpiece. It was a glitch in his system that was overwriting his own sense of power. The haunting wasn't a punishment; it was a symptom of a flawed victory.

His mind, once a fortress of cold calculation, was now under siege. He was reactive, fearful, paranoid. He was becoming a victim. And that, more than any ghost, was the one thing Liam Corbin could not tolerate.

A slow, predatory smile touched his lips for the first time in weeks. It felt foreign, a stretching of unused muscles. The logic was so simple, so pure. He couldn't erase the stain. So he would cover it with a newer, darker one.

He needed to reset the system. To reclaim that feeling of absolute power, of being a god in the water. He needed to create a new memory, a fresh masterpiece so perfect, so potent, that it would eclipse the lingering failure of Arthur Vance. He needed to kill again.

The fear didn't vanish, but it receded, pushed back by a surge of his old self. The familiar, dark thrill began to uncoil in his gut. The hunter, dormant and terrified, was beginning to stir.

He walked over to his discarded phone, his steps now measured and confident. His shadow, and its ghastly companion, followed him. He no longer cared. It was just another problem to be solved. He picked up the phone. The screen was shattered, a spiderweb of cracks spreading from the point of impact. He powered it on. The screen lit up, fractured into a hundred tiny shards of light.

And in every single shard, a tiny piece of Arthur Vance was reflected. An eye here, a sliver of soaked cardigan there, a fragment of a pale, bloated hand. A hundred broken windows, all looking in on him.

Liam stared at the mosaic of his tormentor and felt nothing but cold resolve. This was the disease. He had just found the cure. He swiped through the cracks, ignoring the fragmented ghost, and opened his web browser again. He didn't search for ghosts this time. He searched for jobs.

“Lifeguard positions. Secluded beaches. Immediate start.”

He would find a new hunting ground. He would select a new target. He would perform a new, perfect baptism and wash this persistent memory away in a fresh tide of his own making. The spreading stain would be covered, and he would be whole again.