Chapter 6: The Rot on the Vine

Chapter 6: The Rot on the Vine

The groan of the garage door was the sound of a tomb opening. For a terrifying three seconds, Shai was a statue, his thumb jammed against the opener button, his ears filled with the grinding of gears. On the other side of the thin interior door, the soft, inquisitive scratching stopped. It was replaced by a single, solid thump as the entity wearing his sister’s body likely leaned its full weight against the wood, listening. It knew.

Panic, cold and absolute, finally broke his paralysis. He snatched Trixie from the floor where he’d set her down, the little dog a trembling, warm weight under his arm. He sprinted the few feet to his car, fumbling with the handle. The garage door was only halfway up, a dark, gaping mouth leading out into the suburban night. He threw himself and the dog inside the car, not even bothering with the passenger side, and slammed the door.

His keys were already in the ignition. The engine roared to life with a desperate cough. He slammed the car into reverse, not daring to look at the interior door, and shot backwards out of the garage. The bottom of the still-opening door scraped loudly along the roof of his car with a screech of protesting metal. He whipped the wheel around, tires squealing on the asphalt, and sped down the street.

Only when he was two blocks away, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps, did he risk a glance in the rearview mirror.

Under the warm glow of the porch light, the figure of his sister stood calmly in the driveway. She wasn't running. She wasn't screaming. She was just standing there, her hands clasped loosely in front of her, watching him go. Her face, even from this distance, was serene. A puppet whose strings had been momentarily cut, waiting patiently for its master’s next command. The utter lack of pursuit was more terrifying than any chase. It was the calm certainty of a predator that knew its prey had nowhere left to run.

He drove for an hour, maybe more, with no destination. The manicured streets of his sister's neighborhood gave way to the neon-streaked arteries of the city, and then to the bleak, anonymous highways that led to nowhere in particular. Trixie had crawled into his lap, her shivering finally subsiding into a deep, exhausted sleep. The car was a tiny, moving capsule of terror, the only space in the world that felt even remotely safe.

But safety was an illusion. The entity had found him at his own home. It had anticipated his flight to his sister’s. It was always one step ahead. How? How did it know? The question hammered at his skull.

He couldn't go to the police; Detective Miller’s pitying gaze had made that clear. They thought he was a traumatized victim hallucinating his dead stalker. He couldn't go to his family. The thought of his parents' warm, loving faces twisted into that same smiling, dead-eyed mask made his stomach clench with nausea.

There was only one person left. His last bastion of support. The one person whose cynical, grounded view of the world might be the only thing that could make sense of this madness.

Collen.

He couldn't just call him while driving aimlessly. He needed to be still. He needed to think. He pulled off the highway at a dingy exit, the sign promising cheap lodging. The motel he found was a relic from another decade, its sign buzzing with a missing letter. It was perfect. Anonymous. Forgotten.

He paid for the room in cash, using a false name he invented on the spot. The room smelled of stale cigarettes and industrial cleaner. He dragged the single, flimsy chair from the corner and wedged it under the doorknob, a laughably pathetic barricade against the impossible thing that was hunting him. He sat on the edge of the stiff, scratchy bedspread, Trixie curled up beside him, and finally pulled out his phone. His lifeline. His one remaining connection to the world he once knew.

His thumb hovered over Collen’s contact photo. He took a deep, shuddering breath and pressed the call button. It rang twice.

“Shai? Dude, it’s like two in the morning. What’s going on?” Collen’s voice was thick with sleep, but it was blessedly, wonderfully normal.

“Collen, you have to listen to me,” Shai began, the words a frantic, desperate torrent. “I was wrong. It’s not just some creep. It’s something else. The guy, Rodney, the police told me he was dead before I even met him. He died yesterday evening.”

There was a long pause on the other end. “Whoa, whoa, slow down. What are you talking about? You’re not making any sense.”

“I know it doesn’t make sense! Just listen! The thing that was in my yard, it wasn’t him. It was just… wearing his face. And now it’s my sister. It’s wearing Sarah’s face. I saw it, Collen. The eyes. It has these bright green eyes, and they were in Rodney, and now they’re in Sarah, and she’s not her anymore!”

He was babbling, he knew it. He sounded like a lunatic. But he needed his friend to hear the terror in his voice, to grasp onto the impossible truth with him.

Collen sighed, a long, weary sound that was not filled with alarm or concern, but with a strange, detached patience. “Shai. Man. You’ve been through a lot. The breakup with Tom, and now this stalker thing. It sounds like you’re having some kind of breakdown.”

“No! I’m not having a breakdown!” Shai shouted, standing up to pace the tiny room. “This is real! It used Tom’s nickname for me, ‘Shy-Shy.’ How could it know that? It’s in my sister’s house right now, pretending to be her!”

“Okay, okay, calm down,” Collen said, his voice a smooth, placid balm that did nothing to soothe him. It was the voice you used on a hysterical child, not your best friend who was in mortal danger. “Where are you right now? Are you safe?”

“I’m at a motel, I don’t know where. I just drove.”

“See? That’s good. You’re away from the situation. You just got spooked, that’s all. Your mind is playing tricks on you.”

The lack of urgency was a cold hand squeezing Shai’s heart. Where was the panic? Where was the frantic, “Oh my God, I’m coming to get you”? This placid dismissal was so fundamentally unlike the loyal, hot-headed friend he’d known for a decade.

“You don’t believe me,” Shai whispered, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a creeping, icy dread.

“I believe you’re terrified,” Collen said, his tone still maddeningly calm. “And I think the best thing you can do right now is lock your door and try to get some sleep. Everything will seem clearer in the morning.”

Get some sleep.

The phrase hit Shai with the force of a physical blow. It was so utterly, profoundly wrong. It was the advice of a stranger, a hollow platitude offered when genuine concern was absent. The cold dread coalescing in his gut began to crystallize into a new, more terrible shape.

The entity had worn Tom. Then Rodney. Then Sarah. It had moved from person to person, a parasite jumping hosts. But what if it didn't need to be in someone to control them? What if its influence could spread, like a sickness, a rot on the vine of his life, turning everyone he trusted into a passive agent of his destruction?

He looked at the phone in his hand. His link to the outside world. His last hope. He realized with a dawning, soul-crushing horror that it wasn't a lifeline at all. It was a vector. The entity hadn't needed to chase him from Sarah's house. It had already been waiting for him, right here in his pocket. It had been listening to their entire conversation.

“Shai? You still there?” Collen asked, his voice still holding that same unnatural calm.

Shai’s own voice was a dead, hollow whisper. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“Good. Just get some sleep, okay? We’ll talk tomorrow.”

The line went dead. Shai slowly lowered the phone, staring at the screen. He scrolled through his contact list. His mother. His father. Old college friends. Dozens of names and faces, a network of people he had loved and trusted his entire life.

Now, they were all just potential masks. Every number was a potential trap. Every voice on the other end of the line could be a puppet.

The flimsy chair wedged under the doorknob seemed absurd. He wasn’t trying to keep something out. The monster was already in the room with him, its cold, emerald gaze glowing from the screen of his phone. He was completely, irrevocably alone.