Chapter 4: The Second Echo

Chapter 4: The Second Echo

Sam’s funeral was a muted, surreal affair under a perpetually grey sky. The platitudes from the priest about a life taken too soon felt like hollow echoes in the face of the truth Leo carried like a lead weight in his stomach. He watched Nate, Isaiah, and James from a distance. They stood huddled together, their faces pale masks of grief and confusion. They looked like boys forced to wear their fathers' suits, ill-fitting and uncomfortable in the formal sorrow of it all.

Leo couldn't bring himself to stand with them. To him, this wasn't just a tragedy; it was the first tick of a bomb. He was living in a different reality, one where the polite fiction of a random home invasion was stripped away, revealing the gnashing, obsidian-clawed truth beneath.

He waited until they were back at the apartment, the scent of funeral lilies still clinging to their clothes. He couldn't wait any longer. The clock was ticking. Nate’s clock.

"He's next," Leo said, the words cutting through the somber silence.

Nate, who had been staring blankly at the wall, finally looked at him. His eyes were red-rimmed, his usual sarcastic spark extinguished. "Who's next, Leo? What are you talking about?"

"You are, Nate," Leo said, his voice raw with an urgency that bordered on hysteria. "Sam died exactly like I saw in the dream. Exactly. You're the next one in the sequence. We have six days left."

Isaiah sighed, a long, weary sound of pure intellectual frustration. He sank onto the sofa, rubbing his temples. "Leo, we just buried our friend. Can we not do this right now? It’s ghoulish."

"It's ghoulish that he's dead!" Leo shot back, taking a step forward. "And it'll be even more ghoulish when Nate is, too! Don't you see? It's not a coincidence. It's a pattern. It's a goddamn schedule."

"It's confirmation bias," Isaiah said, his voice taking on the detached tone of a professor lecturing a particularly slow student. "You had a vivid nightmare, and then a statistically improbable but entirely possible tragedy occurred that happened to share some superficial details. Your brain is now desperately trying to connect the two events to make sense of a senseless act. You're seeing a pattern where there's only chaos."

"Gouged eyes and a slit throat are not 'superficial details'!" Leo was practically shouting now, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He turned to Nate, his eyes pleading. "Nate, please. We need to do something. We need to find a way to stop it."

Nate finally stirred, a flicker of his old self returning, but it was twisted, warped by grief and a fear he refused to name. He forced a grim smile. "Stop what, man? Should I wear a helmet? Maybe a fashionable neck brace? Come on. It was a psycho. A random, messed-up psycho. That's all." But his hand was trembling as he reached for a beer he’d left on the coffee table. He was masking his terror with jokes, building a wall of humor to hide behind.

James, who had been silent until now, spoke up, his voice barely a whisper. "But the ritual, Leo… you said his name. The Taker of Tithes."

"It's from a book, James!" Sam's voice was sharp. "A book of folklore and forgotten myths. It's not a damn instruction manual."

"Then what do you call what happened to Sam?" Leo demanded, his gaze sweeping over them. "Anthropological research? A psychological trick? He's dead! He’s dead, and the thing that did it is coming for Nate next!"

The argument went in circles, a carousel of denial and desperation. Leo’s frantic certainty crashed against Isaiah’s cold logic and Nate’s brittle sarcasm. They couldn't make the leap. Their minds, grounded in a world of textbooks and traffic laws, refused to accept a reality where nightmares bled into the waking world and monsters answered invitations.

Defeated, Leo retreated to his room. If they wouldn't help him, he would find answers himself. He flipped open his laptop, the glow of the screen a pale blue beacon in his darkened room. His fingers flew across the keyboard, a desperate staccato.

Taker of Tithes.

The search results were a garbage heap of digital noise. A heavy metal band from Finland. A character in a badly written online fantasy serial. Pages and pages of creepypasta forums where users tried to one-up each other with spooky stories.

He refined his search. Blood ritual ancient entity communication. Seven day death curse. Shadow monster obsidian claws.

He fell down a rabbit hole of occult websites, digital grimoires, and paranormal investigation forums. It was a world of grainy photos of "orbs," unsubstantiated anecdotes, and self-proclaimed warlocks offering hexes for twenty dollars. It was all useless. There was nothing concrete, nothing that matched the cold, methodical precision of what he had witnessed in his dream. The creature that haunted him was not some common ghost; it was older, more alien, and it left no trace on the internet's vast web of myths.

The days bled into one another. Monday. Tuesday. He saw Nate on campus, trying to act normal, but the jokes were more forced, the laughter a little too loud. There were dark circles under his eyes that mirrored Leo's own. He was scared, Leo knew it, but admitting it would make it real.

Wednesday. Thursday. Leo stopped going to class altogether, his life reduced to the four walls of his room and the endless, fruitless scroll of his research. He subsisted on coffee and the adrenaline of pure terror.

Friday. The sixth day. He sent Nate a single text: Please, just lock yourself in my room tonight. We can wait it out together.

The reply came back almost instantly: I’m fine, Leo. Having some friends over. Trying to feel normal. You should too.

He knew it was hopeless. The creature wasn't bound by locks or doors. It was bound by a contract they had signed in blood.

Saturday. The seventh day. Leo didn't leave his room. He sat on his bed, the laptop forgotten on the floor, and simply watched the clock on his phone. Each minute that passed was a turn of the screw. He imagined Nate in his apartment across town, laughing with friends, drinking a beer, unknowingly walking through the final hours of his life. The banality of it was the most horrifying part.

Evening fell. 7 PM. 8 PM. Leo’s messages to Nate went unread. At 10 PM, he tried calling. It went straight to voicemail. His heart began to hammer a frantic, panicked rhythm against his ribs.

11:58 PM. He was staring at his phone, his thumb hovering over Nate’s contact, when the screen lit up. A new message. From Nate.

Leo’s breath caught in his throat. For a wild, impossible second, he felt a surge of relief. He was okay. The dream was wrong. He’d made it.

Then he read the text. It consisted of just three words.

Something's here.

A second message appeared immediately after, a jumbled mess of letters as if typed by a fumbling, terrified hand. jkldofgdoon

And then, silence.

Leo’s fingers shook as he mashed the call button. The line rang once, twice, and then a click. Not voicemail. The call had been disconnected. Dropped. Ended.

He tried again. And again. Each time, the same result.

He stared at the final, nonsensical message on his screen, the cold dread from his dream returning with the force of a physical blow. He didn't need a phone call or a news report to know the truth.

The second echo of his nightmare had just rung out, sharp and final. The dreamer's toll had been paid again.