Chapter 9: The Screaming Line

Liam drove through the night like a man possessed, his truck's headlights cutting weak swaths through the darkness as he raced toward town. Every shadow looked like a crouched predator, every rustling branch sounded like claws scraping against bark. Behind him, the Thorne house blazed with light—a beacon calling something home from its hunt.

His phone sat on the passenger seat, Sarah's number glowing on the screen. He'd tried calling back three times, but each attempt went straight to voicemail. The silence was worse than screaming would have been. At least screaming would have meant someone was still alive to make the sound.

Monica lived on Elm Street, in one of those modest suburban houses that lined the older part of town like neat rows of teeth. Liam had been there before, years ago, when he and Hayley were still close enough for him to drive her to sleepovers and birthday parties. It was the kind of place where nothing bad was supposed to happen, where families felt safe enough to leave their doors unlocked and their children unsupervised.

The kind of place where a seventeen-year-old monster could feed undisturbed.

Thunder rolled across the sky as Liam pulled onto Elm Street, and the first drops of rain began to spatter against his windshield. The storm Sarah had mentioned was building, dark clouds swirling overhead like something out of a nightmare. Most of the houses were dark, their residents either asleep or hunkered down to wait out the weather.

But Monica's house was different.

Every light was blazing, casting harsh rectangles of yellow across the rain-soaked lawn. The front door hung open, swaying gently in the wind, and even from the street Liam could see that something was wrong with the interior. Furniture overturned, dark stains on the walls, the kind of chaos that spoke of violence and terror.

His phone rang.

The sound made him jump, his heart hammering against his ribs as he fumbled for the device. Sarah's number glowed on the screen, and for a moment hope flared in his chest. Maybe they'd survived. Maybe there was still time to help.

"Sarah?" His voice came out as a croak.

"Liam?" The whisper was so faint he could barely hear it over the sound of rain on the truck's roof. "Thank God. I thought... I thought it had gotten you too."

"Where are you?"

"Upstairs bathroom. Locked myself in when it started hunting." Her breathing was rapid, panicked. "I can hear it moving around down there, going through the rooms. Looking for me."

Relief flooded through him. At least one person was still alive. "I'm outside. I can see the house. Just stay where you are, and I'll—"

"No!" The word came out as a hiss. "Don't come in here. It's not safe. She's not... she's not human anymore."

Through the phone, he could hear sounds from inside the house—heavy footsteps, furniture being overturned, something being dragged across the floor. And underneath it all, a sound that might have been humming, a tuneless melody that seemed to vibrate through the walls themselves.

"What happened to Monica?"

Sarah's sob cut through the line like a knife. "She's gone. They're all gone. Monica, her little brother, my husband..." Her voice broke completely. "It happened so fast. One minute Hayley was just a normal girl having a sleepover, and then the storm hit and the power went out and she started... changing."

"Changing how?"

"Growing. Getting taller, thinner, like something was stretching her from the inside. Her voice got deeper, and her teeth..." Another sob. "Oh God, her teeth got so sharp. And her eyes... they weren't Hayley's eyes anymore. They were something else, something that looked at us like we were food."

The humming from inside the house had stopped, replaced by a silence that was somehow worse. Through the rain-streaked windows, Liam could see movement—shadows that seemed too large and too fluid to be human.

"Where is she now?"

"I don't know. She was in the kitchen a few minutes ago, but now I can't hear her anymore. Sometimes she goes quiet like this, and I think maybe she's left, but then I hear her voice calling my name from different parts of the house. Like she's playing with me."

As if summoned by Sarah's words, a voice drifted through the phone—sweet, familiar, unmistakably Hayley's. But there was something wrong with the tone, something that made Liam's skin crawl.

"Sarah," the voice called from somewhere inside the house. "Sarah, where are you? I'm still hungry."

Sarah's breathing became rapid, terrified gasps. "She knows I'm here. She's been calling to me for hours, trying to get me to come out. But I saw what she did to the others. I saw her feeding."

The voice came again, closer now, and Liam could hear it through both the phone and the house's open windows. "I can smell you, Sarah. Fear makes the meat taste better, did you know that? All that adrenaline, all that terror... it's like seasoning."

Something heavy hit the bathroom door, and Sarah's scream cut through the line. "She's found me! She's trying to get in!"

More impacts against the door, accompanied by sounds that no human throat should have been able to make. Growls and snarls mixed with something that might have been laughter, all of it filtered through vocal cords that had been designed for hunting rather than speaking.

"The door's holding," Sarah whispered. "But I don't think it'll last much longer. She's gotten so strong."

Through the phone, Liam could hear wood splintering, hinges groaning under pressure that seemed to come from multiple directions at once. Whatever Hayley had become, she wasn't just trying to break down the door—she was tearing it apart systematically, piece by piece.

"Listen to me," Liam said, his voice steady despite the terror clawing at his chest. "I'm going to create a distraction. When you hear my truck horn, you run. Get out of the house and don't look back."

"I can't. She'll see me. She'll catch me."

"You have to try. It's the only chance you have."

Another impact, and this time Liam could hear the door frame beginning to give way. Sarah's breathing had become a series of rapid, shallow gasps that spoke of someone on the edge of complete panic.

"She's almost through," Sarah whispered. "I can see her fingers coming through the gap. They're not... they're not right. Too long, too sharp."

Liam was already out of the truck, running toward the house through the driving rain. His feet splashed through puddles that reflected the harsh light from the windows, and every step felt like a violation of some invisible boundary. The closer he got to the house, the stronger the smell became—that same organic wrongness that had been haunting his family's property, magnified until it made his eyes water.

The front porch was slick with rain and something else, something dark that gleamed wetly in the artificial light. Liam didn't want to think about what it might be. He just pressed his back against the house's exterior wall and leaned his truck's horn with his remote, the sound cutting through the night like a scream.

The impacts against the bathroom door stopped immediately.

"Sarah, go!" Liam shouted into his phone. "Now!"

He could hear movement inside the house—fast, fluid motion that seemed to flow through the rooms like water. Whatever Hayley had become, she moved with the grace of something that had never been bound by human limitations.

Through the phone came the sound of a door opening, followed by Sarah's running footsteps on the stairs. But they were accompanied by something else—a sound like claws scraping against hardwood, moving with predatory speed.

"She's coming," Sarah gasped. "She's right behind me."

Liam could see her now through the front door—a middle-aged woman in pajamas, running for her life with terror written across her face. Behind her, flowing down the staircase like liquid shadow, came something that might once have been his sister.

Hayley's transformation was nearly complete. She moved on limbs that had too many joints, her spine curved in ways that should have been impossible. Her face still held traces of the girl he remembered, but they were distorted now, stretched over a skull that had changed shape to accommodate teeth designed for tearing flesh. Her eyes were the worst part—still recognizably Hayley's, but filled with an intelligence that was ancient and alien and absolutely without mercy.

She was beautiful in the way that apex predators were beautiful—perfectly designed for killing, every line of her body speaking to evolutionary advantages that had been refined over generations of careful breeding.

Sarah reached the front door and stumbled onto the porch, but she wasn't fast enough. Hayley flowed after her with impossible speed, one elongated hand reaching for the woman's shoulder.

"Get away from her!" Liam stepped around the corner, his presence causing both women to freeze.

Hayley turned toward him, and when she smiled, her teeth caught the light like knives. "Brother," she said, her voice a harmony of tones that made his ears ache. "I was hoping you'd come. I've been saving room for you."

Behind her, Sarah took the opportunity to flee into the rain-soaked night, her bare feet splashing through puddles as she ran toward the neighbors' houses. But Liam barely noticed. All his attention was focused on the thing that had once been his sister, the creature his family had nurtured and fed for seventeen years.

"You killed them," he said.

"I fed," Hayley corrected, taking a step onto the porch. Her movements were fluid, predatory, like a cat preparing to pounce. "For the first time in my life, I fed properly. Do you know what it's like to be hungry for seventeen years? To survive on scraps and rationed meat while your true nature screams for release?"

"You're not my sister."

Her laugh was like breaking glass. "No. I never was. But I've worn her face so well, haven't I? Played the part of the sweet, innocent girl while my keeper brother fed me just enough to stay alive. Just enough to stay contained."

Lightning flashed overhead, illuminating her fully for a moment. The girl was gone completely now, replaced by something that belonged in nightmares. Her limbs had elongated, her torso stretched until her proportions were all wrong. And her face... Christ, her face was still beautiful, but it was the beauty of something designed to lure prey close enough to kill.

"Neil's been faithful," she continued, circling him with predatory patience. "Such a good keeper, following father's instructions even after the old man lost his nerve. But the protections were always going to fail eventually. Magic like that requires belief, requires constant reinforcement. And faith, brother... faith is such a fragile thing."

She was right. The rituals had been breaking down for years, weakened by doubt and desperation. His father's suicide had been the final crack in a dam that had been straining to hold back a flood.

"What do you want?" Liam asked, though he already knew the answer.

"To feed freely. To hunt as I was meant to hunt. To find others like myself and create a world where the hunger is never denied." Her eyes gleamed with an intelligence that was far older than her seventeen years. "This little town is just the beginning. There are others like me out there, others who've been contained by family members too weak to understand what they're nurturing. I'll find them. Free them. And together, we'll remake this world into something better."

The rain was coming down harder now, turning the world into a blur of water and shadow. But through it all, Hayley remained perfectly clear, as if the storm itself bent around her presence.

"You can't do this," Liam said.

"Watch me."

She moved.

The attack came with inhuman speed, claws reaching for his throat with surgical precision. But Liam was already diving sideways, rolling across the wet porch as her talons scraped against the house's siding. He came up running, racing toward his truck as Hayley's frustrated howl split the night air.

Behind him, he could hear the sound of pursuit—not footsteps exactly, but something that moved with fluid grace across the rain-soaked ground. She was playing with him, he realized. She could have caught him already if she'd wanted to. But where was the fun in that?

The truck's engine roared to life as something landed on the roof with a sound like thunder. Claws scraped against metal, seeking purchase, and through the windshield he could see Hayley's face pressed against the glass. Her smile was wide enough to split her face in half, revealing rows of teeth that gleamed like polished bone.

"You can't run forever, brother," she said, her voice somehow audible over the sound of rain and engine. "And when you finally stop, when you finally accept what I am... the feeding will be exquisite."

Liam gunned the engine and took off down the street, tires screaming against wet asphalt. In his rearview mirror, he watched Hayley tumble from the roof to land gracefully on the pavement. She didn't try to follow. She just stood there in the rain, watching him flee, her smile never wavering.

She knew where he was going.

She knew there was nowhere left to run.

The hunt had finally begun in earnest, and Liam was no longer the hunter. He was the prey, running through the night toward a confrontation that had been seventeen years in the making.

Behind him, Hayley's laughter echoed through the storm like the promise of nightmares yet to come.