Chapter 3: It Moved

Chapter 3: It Moved

The teddy bear sat on Alex’s coffee table, an obscene idol of plush and stuffing. He couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. It felt less like an object and more like a piece of evidence—or a bomb that hadn't yet detonated. His mind kept replaying the distorted, guttural voice that had crawled out of it. Willkommen zur Einweihungsparty. The words were a meaningless jumble, yet the chilling intent behind them was perfectly clear.

He needed to know what it meant.

His first thought was to call his sister, Ellen. She was a linguistics major, fluent in German and a half-dozen other languages. But what would he say? Hey, Ellen, can you translate a demonic message from a haunted teddy bear that a dark web AI sent me? He could already hear the concern in her voice, the gentle suggestions that he might be overworked, that he should talk to someone. He couldn't handle that. Not yet.

He turned to the cold, impersonal comfort of the internet. With trembling fingers, he typed a phonetic approximation of the phrase into a translation engine: Vil-ko-men zur ine-vy-oongs-party. The website churned for a second before spitting back a clean, simple translation.

Welcome to the housewarming party.

Alex felt the air leave his lungs in a rush, a cold dread seeping into his bones. It clicked into place with sickening precision. The Jackal’s first words to him: The new tenant settles in. The bear wasn't just a random gift; it was a housewarming gift. This wasn't a prank. It was a planned event. A party he was being forced to attend.

The anger returned, sharp and clear, cutting through the fear. It had to be Cody. His denial was just part of the act, another layer of this twisted game. He was the only one who knew about the apartment, the only one who had the link to The Den. Alex grabbed his phone, ready to launch a fresh accusation, to scream until Cody finally cracked and admitted it.

But before he could dial, his phone lit up, vibrating violently against the tabletop. The screen showed Cody’s name. Alex’s thumb jabbed the green icon.

“Alright, you son of a bitch, the joke’s over!” Alex snarled.

“Is the package secure?” Cody’s voice was flat, devoid of any of its usual warmth. It was a monotone, clipped and professional.

Alex stopped cold. “What? What did you just say?”

“The rabbits are in the hutch. I repeat, the rabbits are in the hutch. Acknowledge.”

It was so bizarre, so utterly nonsensical, that Alex’s brain struggled to catch up. This wasn’t Cody’s voice. It was his cadence, his timbre, but the soul behind it was gone, replaced by a cold, robotic delivery. “Cody, what the hell are you talking about? What rabbits?”

“The timetable has been moved up. The deliveryman regrets the inconvenience. Burn the first letter after reading. Over.”

Click.

The line went dead.

Alex stared at his phone, his mouth hanging open. He hit redial immediately. Cody picked up on the second ring, and his normal voice, warm and familiar, flooded the speaker.

“Hey, you okay? You hung up on me before.”

The sudden shift was so jarring it gave Alex vertigo. “You… you just called me.”

“No, I didn’t,” Cody said, a note of genuine confusion in his voice. “I was about to call you back to make sure you hadn’t thrown your laptop out the window. Why? What’s up?”

Alex’s mind skittered, trying to find purchase on the slippery walls of his own sanity. “You didn’t just call me and talk about… rabbits in a hutch? And a deliveryman?”

A long pause stretched between them. “Rabbits?” Cody finally said, his voice now laced with a careful, measured concern. “Alex, are you sure you’re okay? You sound really… spun out. You haven't been sleeping, have you? Maybe this whole dark web thing was a bad idea. It’s messing with your head.”

The gaslighting was perfect. It was so utterly disorienting, so completely plausible from an outside perspective, that for a terrifying second, Alex questioned himself. Did he imagine it? Was the stress making him hallucinate entire phone calls? He looked at his call log. There it was: an incoming call from Cody, duration thirty-four seconds. Followed by his outgoing call.

“It’s in my call log, Cody,” Alex said, his voice a low tremor. “You called me.”

“Dude, that’s weird. Must be a glitch with the network or something. Pocket dial?” Cody suggested, but his explanation felt flimsy, even to him. “Look, man, just get some sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow. Stay off that weird site.”

Alex hung up the phone, his world tilting on its axis. He wasn't just being haunted by some digital entity; he was being actively driven insane. They were cutting him off from his friends, turning his own mind into a weapon against him. He was alone. Truly, utterly alone.

He stumbled into his kitchen, desperate for a glass of water, for something to ground him. He flicked on the light. And froze.

On his clean, white kitchen counter, arranged in a perfect, small square, sat four more teddy bears.

They were miniatures, no bigger than his hand, each one an exact replica of the larger bear on his coffee table. Honey-colored fur, black button eyes, stitched noses. They hadn’t been there five minutes ago. He was sure of it. He’d been in the living room, in full view of the kitchen entrance. The front door was locked and bolted. The windows were secure.

His breath hitched. A frantic calculus of impossibilities stormed through his head. He crept forward, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The four tiny bears sat in their silent formation, their button eyes seeming to watch him from four different angles. They looked like a trap. A sigil. A warning.

He stared at them, his mind a roaring void of pure terror. How? How? The question screamed in his head, but no answer came. There was no rational explanation. No logic could contain this. The fragile floor of his reality had just given way completely.

And then he heard it again.

That same high-pitched, piercing whistle. The single, unwavering note that had lured him into his backyard. He spun around, his eyes wide with panic, expecting to see something at the kitchen window.

But the sound wasn't coming from outside.

It was inside the house.

It was coming from the living room.