Chapter 5: It Follows You Home

Chapter 5: It Follows You Home

The ride home from The Pit was a study in shared shock. No one spoke. Zach drove his beat-up sedan, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, his face a pale, ghostly mask in the intermittent glow of the streetlights. Josh sat in the passenger seat, his usual boundless energy completely gone, replaced by a stunned, wide-eyed silence. In the back, Maya sat beside Ash, a thoughtful, worried frown on her face. Ash just stared out the window, the cityscape a meaningless blur. The word echoed in his mind, a brand seared onto his consciousness.

DEMON.

The shattered glass of the prize counter was a distant, secondary shock. The real explosion had happened inside his own skull. For ten years, he had lived with a creeping, nameless dread, a cold passenger he could almost convince himself was just a product of guilt and trauma. He had called it a presence, an entity, a ghost. He had never, not once, dared to give it its proper name. Now, a cheap plastic box had screamed it at him, and his carefully constructed denial lay in glittering shards on the arcade floor.

When Zach dropped him off at his apartment complex, the silence was finally broken.

“Don’t… don’t be alone tonight, man,” Zach said, his voice raspy. It was the closest he’d ever come to showing genuine fear.

Ash just nodded, unable to form a reply, and watched them drive away. The adrenaline that had propelled them through the night, that strange, electric buzz of having survived, was rapidly draining away, leaving behind a cold, heavy residue of pure terror.

The next day was worse. The daylight offered no comfort, only a harsh clarity that made the night’s events seem even more impossible and therefore more terrifying. Ash called in sick to work, the first time in three years. The thought of stepping foot inside The Pit, of standing before that violated prize case or that silent, waiting laser tag door, made him physically ill.

His phone buzzed on his coffee table around noon. He ignored it. It buzzed again. And again. Finally, on the fifth call, he saw the caller ID: Zach. A knot of dread tightened in his stomach. He answered, a single word of greeting catching in his throat.

“Ash?” Zach’s voice was a frantic, high-pitched squeak, stripped of all its usual sarcasm. He sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “Ash, you have to help me, man. I think I’m losing my mind.”

“Zach, slow down. What’s wrong?”

“My birds,” he choked out. “Sunshine and Pico. My cockatiels.”

Ash frowned. Zach was obsessed with his two pet birds. He’d taught them to whistle the theme to The Andy Griffith Show and perfectly mimic the building’s doorbell, a trick that drove him insane. “What about them?”

“You know how they mimic things, right?” Zach’s breathing was ragged, panicked. “They… they started doing it this morning. A new sound. At first I thought it was just random squawking, but I listened closer… Ash, it’s not random.”

A cold premonition washed over Ash. “What does it sound like, Zach?”

“It sounds like static,” Zach whispered, the words tumbling out in a rush. “Like that… that thing. That spirit box. It’s the exact sound, that rushing, sweeping noise. It’s a perfect imitation. They’ve been doing it for hours, non-stop.”

Ash felt the blood drain from his face. “Get out of the house, Zach.”

“That’s not the worst part!” Zach’s voice cracked, a sob catching in his throat. “In between the static… they’re saying the word. Over and over. But it’s not their voice. It’s not a bird’s chirp. It’s… it’s that other voice. That deep, gravelly sound from the box. Sunshine is just sitting there on her perch, her little head tilted, and that… that horrible, guttural voice is coming out of her beak.”

Ash could hear it then, faintly, over the phone line. A distorted, electronic hiss, followed by a low, wet growl that formed a single, vile syllable.

“…mon…”

“DE…MON…”

The sound was a grotesque parody, a sacred terror being mocked by the cheerful, feathered pets of his friend. The horror wasn't just that the haunting had followed Zach home; it was the sheer psychological cruelty of it, twisting something he loved into a vessel for their tormentor.

“I’m coming over,” Ash said, his voice a low command. But he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that there was nothing he could do.

That night, sleep was a laughable impossibility. Ash sat in the dark of his small living room, every lock on his door and windows checked and re-checked. It was a useless, pathetic ritual. A demon didn’t need a key. He thought about Zach, who was now staying at his sister’s place, too terrified to go back to his own apartment. He thought about Maya and Josh, wondering if they were experiencing anything, if they were safe.

The guilt was a physical weight, crushing the air from his lungs. This was his fault. He had brought this into their lives. He had known, on some level, what he was dealing with. He had carried this thing for a decade, a parasitic attachment that had started with a stupid teenage dare and a Ouija board. It had been mostly dormant, content with subtle torments, feeding on his fear and regret. But The Pit, with its own dark history and ambient misery, had acted like an amplifier, giving it strength. And last night, they had given it focus. They had given it new names to learn. New voices to mimic.

Exhaustion finally claimed him around 3 AM. He didn’t dream. He simply fell into a black, bottomless pit of unconsciousness, only to be ripped from it moments, or maybe hours, later.

He was awake. Instantly. His eyes snapped open to the familiar darkness of his bedroom. The digital clock on his nightstand glowed: 3:33 AM. But it wasn't the time that had woken him. It was a sound.

A voice.

From his hallway, just outside his closed bedroom door.

“Ash?”

He froze, every muscle in his body locking into place. His blood turned to ice water. It was a quiet call, laced with a soft, questioning tone. It was a perfect, flawless imitation of his own voice.

“Ash? Are you awake?”

It was coming from right outside the door. A slow terror, colder and sharper than anything he had ever felt, began to crawl up his spine. This was infinitely worse than the shadow in the loft, worse than the exploding glass. This was an intimate violation, a mockery of his very identity within the supposed sanctuary of his own home.

He held his breath, listening. The floorboards in the hallway creaked, the sound of a slow, deliberate footstep. The doorknob, a round brass thing he’d never paid any attention to, began to jiggle. Softly at first, then more insistently, a dry, metallic rattle in the suffocating silence.

He scrambled backward on his bed, pressing himself against the headboard, his eyes glued to the door. He knew, with an absolute and soul-shattering certainty, that there was no one on the other side. Not in any physical sense.

The rattling stopped. A heavy silence descended again, thick and watchful. Ash didn't move, didn't breathe. He just waited.

And in that moment, the final, horrifying piece of the puzzle slammed into place. The mimicry of Maya’s voice to lure him. The spirit box audio, replayed through Zach’s birds to terrorize him. And now, his own voice, used to torment him in his own home.

A wave of dawning horror washed over him, so profound it left him breathless. The horror was not contained within the sticky floors and flickering lights of The Pit. It had never been about the arcade. The arcade was just a stage. By investigating, by calling out into the darkness, they hadn't simply observed the haunting.

They had answered its call. They had invited it into their lives. They had given it a key to their front doors.