Chapter 2: The Sound in the Dark

Chapter 2: The Sound in the Dark

Baaaaaaaaa.

The sound hung in the night air, thin and sharp as a shard of glass. Jennifer stood frozen, her forehead pressed against the cold pane of the door, every muscle in her body locked tight. Her desire, a desperate, clawing need, was for it to be a prank. It had to be. Some local kids who knew the Ellisons were out of town. They’d seen her, the city girl in the fancy house, and decided to have a little fun. They’d seen Jimmy, the local weirdo, run up to the house and thought it was the perfect setup. It was cruel, but it was explainable. It was human.

She took a shaky breath, the air tasting of ozone and pine. "Very funny, assholes," she muttered into the cavernous living room, her voice a feeble weapon against the crushing silence that followed. She hoped they could hear her, hoped they’d laugh and run off into the woods, their little game concluded.

But the only answer was the thrumming of her own blood in her ears.

She backed away from the door, her eyes scanning the wall of blackness outside. The manicured lawn ended abruptly fifty yards away, and beyond that, the forest was a solid entity, a breathing darkness that swallowed the light. Jimmy’s words echoed in her mind. It's in the woods. It imitates things. Had it imitated a goat to mock her? Or was that its real voice?

This was the obstacle: her rational mind was at war with the primal terror Jimmy had just injected into her veins. Pranksters didn't make a sound like that. It had felt ancient, hungry.

Suddenly, a different sound ripped through the quiet. It wasn't a bleat this time. It was a scream. Not human, not animal, but a ghastly fusion of both—the high-pitched shriek of a rabbit caught in a snare, layered with the grating sound of dragging metal. It came from the right side of the house, sharp and close, and was cut off with a sickening, wet gurgle.

Jennifer yelped, stumbling backward and crashing into a minimalist white armchair. The sound was a physical blow. The prank theory evaporated, leaving behind a cold, hard certainty: she was not alone, and whatever was out there was not friendly.

Her survival instinct, honed by years of navigating sketchy city neighborhoods at night, took over. She scrambled around the living room, her actions jerky and panicked. The Ellisons had left a list of instructions on the marble kitchen island. Thermostat. Wi-Fi password. Alarm system. She’d thought the alarm system was overkill when they’d shown it to her. Now, it was her only hope. She found the keypad by the front door and punched in the code, her fingers slipping twice on the smooth plastic. The small screen glowed green, and a soft chime confirmed it was armed.

Scraaaape.

The sound came from the back of the house, from the huge glass door she had just locked. The sound of something hard and sharp dragging slowly down the pane. A branch? An animal's claw?

She held her breath, listening. The house, her supposed fortress, felt like a glass cage. Every window was a potential entry point, a gaping eye into the darkness. There were no real curtains in the living room, only thin, decorative swaths of red silk flanking a few of the smaller windows, a useless affectation of privacy.

Thump.

A soft, dull impact on a window at the far end of the kitchen.

Rattle.

The doorknob on the front door, turning back and forth with a frantic, metallic clicking.

It was testing the house. A methodical, intelligent search for a way in. It was moving impossibly fast, circling the perimeter, probing for any weakness. Her cage was being systematically shaken by an unseen predator. This was no longer a game or a prank. This was a siege.

The turning point was the realization that the alarm hadn't gone off. Whatever was touching the doors and windows wasn't breaking them. It was testing them, patiently. The alarm would only sound if a window shattered or a door was forced. It wouldn’t protect her from this slow, creeping horror.

Her lifeline. She needed a real one. Her phone was still clutched in her hand, the screen glowing. Her fingers, trembling uncontrollably, navigated to the keypad. She pressed the three numbers that were a prayer in every horror movie. 9-1-1.

The phone rang once, twice. Her heart hammered against her ribs in time with the electronic tone.

"911, what is your emergency?" The voice was a woman's, calm and professional. A wave of relief so powerful it almost buckled her knees washed over Jennifer.

"Hello? Yes, hi. My name is Jennifer Miles. I'm at 417 Clark’s Creek Lane. I'm housesitting. Someone is outside the house, trying to get in." Her voice was a ragged whisper. She tried to keep it steady.

"Okay, Jennifer. Is the person trying to force entry?"

"I... I don't know. I hear them. At the windows, the doors. They're all around the house." She couldn't bring herself to say it. It would sound insane.

"Can you describe the person, Jennifer?"

"I can't see them. It's dark." She glanced nervously at the blood smear Jimmy had left on the floor. "My friend... he was here. He was hurt. He said something was in the woods. He ran off."

"Okay, Jennifer, stay calm. We're dispatching a unit to your location. Can you stay on the line with me?"

"Yes," Jennifer breathed, tears of gratitude welling in her eyes. "Yes, thank you."

There was a moment of silence on the other end, just the faint hiss of an open line. Jennifer waited, her entire being focused on that fragile connection to the outside world.

Then, the operator spoke again. But the voice was different. The calm professionalism was gone, replaced by a cold, flat tone that held a faint, metallic echo. It was as if the voice was being constructed, piece by piece, from other sounds.

"We know your name, Jennifer Miles."

Jennifer’s blood turned to ice. "What?"

"You didn't have to tell us," the voice continued, its cadence unnervingly perfect, yet utterly devoid of human inflection. It was the sound of a machine trying to imitate a person. "We've been listening."

The phone felt slick and alien in her hand. "Who is this? Is this a joke?"

"There is no unit, Jennifer," the voice mimicked, pitching itself into a chillingly accurate replica of her own panicked tone from moments before. "I can't see them. It's dark." Then it returned to its flat, dead monotone. "There is no one coming to help you."

A strangled sob escaped her lips. She wanted to hang up, to throw the phone across the room, but she was paralyzed.

"Jimmy Foster was a disappointment," the voice said, the name striking her like a physical blow. "He looked away too quickly. He didn't appreciate the gift. But you will."

"What do you want?" she whispered, her voice barely audible.

The line crackled. And from the phone’s tiny speaker came a single, chilling command, delivered in that same cold, inhuman voice that promised unimaginable horrors.

"Look."

The line went dead.

Jennifer stared at the blank screen of her phone, the silence in the house roaring back to life. Her only connection to help had been a trick. A cruel, impossible trick. It had used the operator's voice. It had used her voice. Jimmy was right. It could imitate anything.

She felt a strange, cold draft on her cheek. She hadn’t noticed it before. She slowly turned her head, her movements stiff and robotic. To her left was a tall, narrow window, one of the few framed by those useless strips of crimson silk. The fabric, thin as a whisper, was wafting gently in a breeze that shouldn’t exist. The window was latched, she was sure of it.

Then she saw it. A shape behind the silk.

Something was rising up from outside the window, its form distorted and obscured by the sheer red fabric. It was tall, impossibly tall, unfolding itself from the ground like a nightmare taking form. It was just a silhouette, a column of deeper black against the night.

But as it reached its full height, two points at the top of the shadow pressed against the silk, stretching the fabric taut. They were long. They were sharp.

And they were cruelly, unmistakably curved.

Horns.