Chapter 5: An Eye for an Eye

Chapter 5: An Eye for an Eye

The name on the screen pulsed in time with the sick, heavy thudding of Alex’s heart. St. Jude’s Home for Children.

Guilt was a physical thing, a thick, oily fluid rising from his stomach and coating his throat. He felt filthy, contaminated. The chilling relief he had felt just minutes ago was a distant, shameful memory. He hadn't escaped. He had only passed the sentence on. He pictured the Griever, her face of bleached bone and her smile of splintered needles, clinging to the brick façade of the orphanage, whispering her cold pleas through the dormitory windows. He imagined the terror of children waking up to that sound, that face, with nowhere to run.

He had to move it. He had to take it back.

The thought was a desperate, moral command. He gripped the mouse, his knuckles white. He could do it. He could drag the pin back to his own address, invite the monster back to his own window. He could face the pounding, the shrieking, the shattering glass. It was his curse, his burden to bear.

He moved the cursor over the pin, ready to reclaim his fate. But as he did, his gaze flickered to the spiderweb of cracks on his window.

The memory of the attack wasn't a thought; it was a full-body relapse. He could feel the deep, concussive boom vibrating through his bones. He could hear the unholy, glass-shattering shriek that promised a violent, terrible end. He could smell it again—that faint, foul odor of stagnant water and decay that had seeped through the cracks, the Griever’s personal miasma. His breath hitched. His hand, hovering over the mouse, began to tremble uncontrollably.

He couldn't. He was a coward. The stark, honest truth of it was another layer of shame. He couldn't face that thing again. The terror it inspired was primal, absolute. It bypassed reason and went straight for the instinct to survive.

Just then, he heard the faint jingle of keys at the front door, followed by the familiar click of the lock.

“Alex? Honey, I’m home. Are you feeling any better?”

His mom’s voice. Warm, normal, completely oblivious to the supernatural horror that had almost breached the walls of their home. She was a part of the real world, the world of groceries and work and worrying about her son’s stomach bug.

A new, colder wave of dread washed over him, eclipsing even the memory of the Griever. If he brought the pin back here, what would happen? The thing was pure malice, an engine of violent death. Would it stop with him? Or would its rage spill over? Would it come for his mother when she came to check on him? Would he be forced to watch through a live feed on a cursed website as his own family became another red pin on the map?

He was trapped. Crushed by a guilt that demanded he sacrifice himself, and paralyzed by a fear that screamed he would be sacrificing his mother as well. He couldn't let the children die. But he couldn't let his family die either. The cursor trembled over the pin on St. Jude’s, a digital god of life and death, and he was paralyzed by his own terrible omnipotence.

His mind raced, desperately seeking a third option, a way out of the impossible moral equation. He was backed into a corner, his back against a wall of certain damnation. And when a creature is cornered, it doesn't just cower. It bites.

Anger began to smolder beneath the fear and guilt. A hot, acidic rage that needed a target. Why was he in this position? Why was he forced to choose between the lives of orphans and the life of his own mother? He hadn't asked for this. He hadn't sought out this digital plague. It had been brought to his door. It had been placed on his home.

An image flashed in his mind, sharp and clear: Mark Miller, leaning back in Alex’s own chair, his face alight with that familiar, casual cruelty. Mark’s mocking smirk as he dragged the pin. The sound of Liam and Chloe’s laughter.

“Don’t go jumping off any balconies, Rider.”

It wasn't just a prank. It wasn't a harmless joke. It was a death sentence, delivered with a smile. Mark had loaded the gun, pointed it at Alex’s head, and pulled the trigger for a laugh. The only reason Alex wasn’t a red pin on that map right now was blind, panicked luck. Mark had started this. He had thrown Alex into the arena with the monster, just to watch him squirm.

The smoldering anger roared into a white-hot flame. The guilt didn't vanish, but it was cauterized, burned away by the searing heat of his rage. The equation in his head began to shift. This was no longer a choice between innocents. This was a choice between the victims of the curse and the one who had so gleefully set it in motion.

This wasn't murder. It was justice.

The paralysis broke. His movements were now cold, deliberate, and precise. There was no more trembling. He was no longer a victim reacting to terror; he was a perpetrator with a purpose. He opened a new browser tab, his fingers flying across the keyboard with a renewed, chilling confidence.

He was the computer guy. This was his territory.

Finding Mark’s address was pathetically easy. Mark wasn't a ghost who lived on the fringes like Alex. He was the center of his own universe, constantly geotagging photos on social media, checking in at restaurants, bragging about his dad’s new car in the driveway of their oversized suburban home. A few cross-references, a quick search of online property records, and Alex had it. 245 Juniper Creek Drive. A big, new-construction house in the wealthiest part of town.

He dragged the map on The Final Pin’s website, the movement smooth and controlled. He left the crying shame of St. Jude’s behind, moving west, across the river, to the sprawling lawns and cookie-cutter mansions of Juniper Creek. He zoomed in, the satellite image resolving into a crisp picture of Mark’s home. A backyard pool glittered like a sapphire. The basketball hoop in the driveway. The place where Mark lived his perfect, careless life.

Alex positioned the cursor directly over the center of the roof.

He lifted the pin from the orphanage. For a single, breathless moment, the curse was homeless, a digital specter tethered only to his will. He dragged it across the city, a yellow comet of damnation, and placed it gently, precisely, onto Mark Miller’s house.

He paused, his finger hovering over the mouse button. A final, fleeting ghost of his former self rose up, whispering of morality, of the sanctity of life, of the monster he was becoming. Mark was cruel, arrogant, and thoughtless, but did he deserve to die? Did his family?

Then he remembered the needle-toothed smile pressed against his window. He remembered the shrieks. He remembered the cold certainty of his own imminent, violent death. Mark hadn't cared if Alex or his family died. He’d thought it was funny.

An eye for an eye. A pin for a pin.

With a final, grim click, he set the curse down.

The yellow pin settled over 245 Juniper Creek Drive, pulsing with a soft, patient light.

Alex leaned back, a profound and unnerving calm washing over him. The guilt wasn't gone, but it had been… repurposed. The terror was still there, a low hum beneath the surface, but it was no longer his own. He had taken the horror that had been forced upon him, and he had aimed it. He had passed the sentence.

He was no longer just a player in the game. He had just become the judge, the jury, and the executioner. And in the cold, blue light of the monitor, he rationalized his grim transformation not as a descent into monstrousness, but as the first act of justice in a world that had none.