Chapter 6: There Can Only Be One

Chapter 6: There Can Only Be One

The voice was his own. A perfect, chilling echo in the cavern of death. Trey’s blood turned to ice in his veins. He spun around, every muscle in his body screaming in protest, his gaze snapping to the source of the sound.

Standing in the impenetrable darkness just beyond the nest's sickly glow was himself.

It wasn't a reflection. It was a solid, three-dimensional duplicate. It wore his clothes, stained with the same dust and grime. It had the same unkempt dark brown hair, the same haunted green eyes, the same weary, gaunt set to its jaw. It even held its body with the same tense, exhausted posture. The only difference was the expression. While Trey’s face was a mask of raw horror, the copy’s was one of calm, unnerving curiosity.

His mind, already fractured, struggled to comprehend the sight. This was the true nature of the evil. It wasn’t just a ghost or a ghoul. It was a Mimic. A perfect, parasitic copy.

The duplicate’s lips curved into a slight, knowing smile. It opened its mouth to speak, but the voice that emerged was not his. It was the soft, impossibly gentle voice of his mother.

“I was so worried you wouldn’t come, sweetheart. Now our collection is complete.”

The sound twisted, glitching like a broken radio, and became Neil’s voice, strained with the last vestiges of frantic terror. “I tried to warn you, Trey. I told you to stay away. It promised it would be quick if I didn’t fight.”

Then, the voice dropped into the dry, dead rasp of his father’s reanimated corpse. “The Bargain… the price was you. It was always you.”

The creature—the Mimic—was a ventriloquist using the voices of the dead, taunting him with their stolen final moments. It was a psychological evisceration, designed to paralyze him, to break him before the physical violence even began. Trey’s grief and terror curdled into something else: a white-hot, defiant rage. These were his memories, his family, and this thing was wearing them like a costume.

“You son of a bitch,” Trey snarled, the words tearing from his raw throat.

The Mimic’s smile widened, stretching unnaturally at the corners. The mask of his face began to lose its integrity. “That’s the spirit,” it said, and this time the voice was a layered chorus of all of them, a monstrous chord of his stolen family.

Then it lunged.

Its form blurred, warping as it moved. The fingers on its right hand elongated, the skin darkening and hardening, the nails thickening into wicked, black claws. It shot across the space between them with inhuman speed.

Adrenaline, pure and potent, finally shattered Trey’s paralysis. There was no thought, only a primal, explosive need to survive. He dodged sideways, his bare feet sliding on the slick, hair-matted floor. As the Mimic’s claws sliced through the air where his throat had been, his hand scrabbled on the floor, closing around a heavy, jagged piece of rock—a fragment of the cave wall.

The Mimic righted itself, its borrowed face twisted in a rictus of predatory fury, and lunged again. Trey didn't hesitate. He swung the rock with all the force his terrified body could muster.

The impact was a sickening, wet thwump. It didn’t sound like bone breaking; it sounded like punching a side of raw meat. The rock connected with the Mimic’s temple, caving in the side of its stolen face. For a horrifying moment, the crushed flesh didn't bleed; it rippled, like thick mud, before it began to ooze a dark, tar-like substance.

The creature staggered back, a silent scream distorting its features. Trey didn't wait to see if it was enough. He turned and ran.

He bolted from the main cavern, back into the tight, winding passage. Behind him, the sound began. It was not a single cry of pain, but a cacophony. His mother’s scream, his father’s death rattle, Neil’s final, terrified gasp, and dozens, hundreds of other voices—the voices of the lost souls from the stolen photos—all layering over one another, rising in volume and pitch until they merged into one deafening, multi-voiced shriek that clawed at his sanity.

“TREYYYYYYYY!”

The sound reverberated off the stone, seeming to come from all directions at once. It was the sound of a legion of the damned, and it was right behind him.

He burst out of the cave’s mouth and back into the chilling moonlight, his lungs on fire. He didn’t dare look back. He sprinted onto the path of bones, the brittle fragments crunching and shattering under his bare feet, sharp edges slicing into his soles. The pain was distant, unimportant.

He risked a single, fleeting glance over his shoulder. The Mimic was emerging from the cave. Its form was no longer his. It was taller, its limbs stretched and distorted into a mockery of a human shape. Its face was a churning vortex of features, shifting between his own, his mother’s, and Neil’s in a nauseating, high-speed blur. It moved with a loping, predatory gait that was impossibly fast.

It was on him in seconds. A clawed hand shot out, wrapping around his ankle with crushing force. He pitched forward, his face slamming into the gruesome gravel of the boneyard. The creature began to drag him back toward its lair. Panic gave him a surge of strength. He twisted, kicking out with his free leg, but the Mimic was too strong. It loomed over him, its shifting face finally settling on his own, a look of triumphant hunger in its eyes. It opened its mouth—his mouth—and lunged.

Searing, white-hot agony exploded in his calf. The teeth, no longer human, sank deep into the muscle. The pain was clarifying, a bolt of lightning that cut through the fog of terror. He screamed, a raw, animal sound of pure agony, and thrashed wildly. His foot connected with the creature’s unstable face. It recoiled with a wet hiss of fury, its grip momentarily loosening.

It was all he needed. He scrambled away, ignoring the fire in his leg, crab-walking backward before lurching to his feet. He ran. It was a hobbling, staggering, pathetic run, but it was the most desperate and meaningful act of his life. A hot, wet trail of his own blood marked his path on the pale bones.

He crashed through the tree line, the overgrown backyard of his house a surreal sight. There, by the side of the road, was his car. His salvation. He fumbled in his pocket, his hand shaking so violently he could barely grasp the keys. The sound of something immense and heavy was crashing through the woods behind him, snapping branches like twigs.

He jammed the key into the driver’s side door, yanked it open, and threw himself onto the seat. He slammed the door, thumbed the lock, and twisted the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered, died.

“No, no, no, come on!” he begged, turning the key again.

The engine roared to life. He threw the car into reverse, tires screaming on the asphalt, and fishtailed onto the road. He slammed the gear into drive and stomped on the accelerator, rocketing away from the house of horrors.

His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, his heart hammering. He expected to see the distorted copy of himself standing at the edge of the woods.

The reality was infinitely worse.

Emerging from the darkness was not a single figure. It was a colossal, writhing pillar of flesh and bone. It towered over the trees, a shifting, unstable monstrosity composed of hundreds of fused, struggling bodies. He saw faces he recognized from the photographs—old men, young women, terrified children—all trapped in the creature’s amorphous form, their heads and limbs emerging and receding into the mass like figures in a waking nightmare. The skeletons from the cave—his family—were part of it now, their bones providing a horrific armature for the wailing flesh. This was the Collector. The Mimic hadn't been the monster; it had been a single finger on a truly cosmic hand.

As he sped down the dark country road, a final sound blasted through the night. It wasn't a noise his ears could hear; it was a psychic scream that erupted directly inside his skull, a telepathic roar composed of a thousand stolen voices, broadcasting its singular, terrifying purpose across the void.

“THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!”