Chapter 7: The Second Sign

Chapter 7: The Second Sign

The city library had spat him back out into the dying light of the first day. Leo didn't stop moving. To stay still was to be a target. He walked for hours, a ghost in the evening crowds, the archivist’s faded text and the coroner’s spidery handwriting burning behind his eyes. The Thirsty Well. The spinal column is hyperextended. Bent entirely backward.

He couldn't go back to his apartment, the site of the first token. He couldn't go near the church, the tomb of the first sign. He needed anonymity, a place to disappear for a few hours, a transient space where no one knew his name. He found it on the grimy edge of the industrial district: the ‘Sleep Eazy’ Motel. The neon sign, with a flickering ‘Sl’ and a dead ‘y’, cast a sickly pink glow on the rain-slicked asphalt. It was perfect. A place for nightmares.

The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke, desperation, and the sharp, chemical tang of industrial-strength bleach that failed to cover the sins of a thousand previous occupants. He paid in cash, gave a fake name, and locked the door behind him. He jammed the room’s single, rickety wooden chair under the knob, a gesture he knew was utterly pointless but which his frayed nerves demanded.

Sleep was a distant country he wasn't sure he'd ever visit again. He sat on the edge of the lumpy mattress, the springs groaning in protest. He had just over a day left. The Collector’s words played on a loop in his mind, a cold, clinical countdown to his own unmaking. Three tokens. Three signs. On the morning of the third day, the Patron will come.

He had received the first token: the toothbrush. He had witnessed the first sign: the death of Father Renwick.

He was now living on borrowed time, waiting for the other shoe—or token—to drop. He pulled the silver rosary from his pocket. The metal was cold against his sweaty palm. He wasn't praying. He was just holding on to the last thing a man saw before he was dissolved by an ancient god.

Exhaustion eventually won a battle of attrition against his terror. He collapsed onto the bed, fully clothed, and fell into a shallow, fitful doze filled with images of churning, dark water and smiles that were too wide.

He awoke with a jolt.

It wasn’t a noise from outside that had woken him. It was a sound from inside his own head. A memory so vivid it became real. A low, wet, gurgling rattle. The sound of a man trying to laugh through a lungful of water. Gurgle-hic-hic-haaa…

Leo sat bolt upright, his heart a frantic, trapped bird against his ribs. The room was dark, save for the rhythmic pink pulse of the broken neon sign outside the window. The sound was gone, leaving only a ringing silence and the hum of the ancient air conditioner in the wall. A dream. It had to be a dream.

He swung his legs off the bed, his bare feet landing on the thin, grimy carpet. He needed to ground himself. See something real. His gaze fell on the old, boxy television set squatting on a dresser across the room. Its screen was dark, a blank, dusty rectangle of black glass.

But it wasn't blank.

Something was swimming in its depths. A shape, faint and indistinct at first, like a faulty image burned into the phosphorus. He stared, frozen, as the shape resolved itself. It was a face. A human face, pale and bloated, pressed up against the inside of the glass. The skin was waterlogged and gray, the hair plastered dark against the skull. The eyes were wide, bloodshot, and locked directly on him. The mouth was open, torn at the corners, twisted into that obscene, gurgling laugh-sob of pure agony.

It was Father Renwick.

Leo scrambled backward, a strangled cry catching in his throat. He fell off the bed, crab-walking away until his back hit the cold, damp wall. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. The face was still there. It wasn't a projection or a broadcast. It was an infestation. It stared out at him from the dead television, silent, eternal, and amused.

This was it. The second sign.

Panic seized him. He had to get out. He lurched to his feet and lunged for the door, his hands fumbling for the lock. The chair he’d wedged under the knob was in his way. As he struggled with it, the pulsing pink light from the window caught his eye.

And he saw it again.

Reflected in the rain-streaked windowpane, superimposed over the flickering neon sign and the dark, wet world outside, was the same face. Father Renwick’s contorted features stared back at him, his silent, wheezing laughter mocking him from the glass. He was trapped between two identical specters.

Leo let out a raw, guttural sob and spun away from the window, his wild eyes searching the room for an escape, for a single surface that wasn't tainted. His gaze fell to the floor.

Near the rattling air conditioner, a small puddle of leaked condensation had formed on the cracked linoleum. It was no bigger than his hand, a dark, insignificant stain. But in its murky, shallow surface, a third face stared up at him. Tiny, distorted, but unmistakably the same. The same bloodshot eyes. The same torn mouth. The same horrific, endless agony.

Every reflective surface.

A red wave of rage and terror surged through him. It was a violation. An invasion. The creature wasn't just in his world anymore; it was wearing the face of its last victim to torment him.

“Get out!” he screamed at the silent room, his voice cracking. “Get out of my head!”

He snatched the heavy glass ashtray from the bedside table and, with a guttural roar, hurled it at the television. The screen imploded with a sharp, satisfying crash, a spiderweb of cracks erupting from the point of impact. Shards of dark glass showered the filthy carpet.

For a heartbeat, he felt a surge of triumph. He had destroyed it. He had broken the image.

He stumbled closer, breathing heavily, and looked at the shattered screen. The face was gone, replaced by a chaotic mosaic of broken glass. But in every shard, in every tiny, glittering sliver, a fragment of the image remained. A hundred of Renwick’s eyes stared back at him. A hundred pieces of his torn, laughing mouth reflected his own horrified expression. He hadn’t destroyed the sign. He had only multiplied it.

He backed away slowly, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He couldn’t fight this. He couldn’t smash every window, every puddle, every shard of glass. The world was a mirror, and the Patron was showing him its power in every reflection.

His eyes fell upon a large, jagged piece of the broken screen lying on the floor. Trembling, he picked it up. The sharp edges bit into his fingers. He held it up, and in its dark, reflective surface, he saw his own face. Pale, terrified, unshaven. His own eyes, wide with madness.

And for a terrifying second, he thought he saw them flicker. He thought he saw the corners of his own reflected mouth begin to stretch into a familiar, gurgling, impossibly wide grin.

He dropped the shard as if it were burning hot. The second sign wasn't just a vision. It was a warning. The Patron wasn't just showing him what it did to other people.

It was showing him what he was about to become.