Chapter 5: A Room Full of Nothing

Chapter 5: A Room Full of Nothing

The police found Nate’s body two days later. His friends, the ones he’d invited over for a sense of normalcy, had left around eleven. They’d told the cops Nate had been in good spirits, laughing and joking. They didn't know they were the last people to see him alive. The official report, which Leo read over Isaiah’s shoulder on a laptop screen, was clinical and cold. No forced entry. No murder weapon found. The cause of death was a massive, inexplicable exsanguination from wounds on his face and throat.

The report didn’t mention the gouged-out eyes. The police were keeping that detail from the press, but Isaiah’s uncle was a detective. One phone call was all it took to confirm Leo’s prophecy down to the last, gruesome detail.

The confirmation shattered Isaiah’s carefully constructed wall of logic. His intellectual arrogance crumbled, replaced by a raw, primal terror that left him pale and shaking. He stared at the screen, at the black-and-white text describing the desecration of their friend, and all the fight went out of him.

"You were right," he whispered, the words sounding like shards of glass in his throat. "Oh God, Leo. You were right."

James, who had been sitting catatonically on the sofa since they got the news, just sobbed, his face buried in his hands. The last vestige of denial was gone, incinerated by the horrifying truth. The monster was real. The curse was real. And Isaiah was next on the list.

That night, the dynamic shifted. Isaiah, the skeptic, became the lead researcher. He attacked the problem with the same methodical fervor he usually reserved for his physics homework, only now his subject was their survival. His internet searches were no longer about psychological phenomena, but about demonic wards, spiritual barriers, and protective rituals from every culture and creed he could find.

"It's an entity that adheres to a contract," he reasoned, pacing his room while Leo and James watched, his voice strained with a desperate, academic intensity. "It operates on rules. So, we create a new set of rules. We build a fortress it can't enter. We make this room a sanctum."

For the next five days, they worked. They bought every crucifix and rosary from a local Catholic supply store. They cleared out the entire stock of sea salt from three different grocery stores. Isaiah found a website that sold consecrated incense used by Eastern Orthodox priests and paid a fortune for overnight shipping. They became prisoners in Isaiah's house, their world shrinking to the confines of his second-floor bedroom.

They sealed the window frame with caulk and then painted it over with a mixture of salt and holy water. They taped every crucifix to the walls until the floral wallpaper was barely visible beneath a grim collage of suffering Christs. James, his faith rekindled by sheer terror, blessed every corner of the room, his voice a constant, trembling murmur of prayer.

And the salt. Following Isaiah’s frantic research, they poured a thick, unbroken line of it across the threshold of the door, along the base of the walls, and on the windowsill. It had to be unbroken, he’d insisted, a perfect, seamless barrier.

By the evening of the seventh day, the room was a claustrophobic, reeking shrine to their fear. The air was a suffocating cloud of incense smoke, thick with the scent of frankincense and myrrh, mingling with the sharp, mineral smell of the salt. It was a room full of everything they could think of, a desperate bulwark against the nothing they could see.

Which brought them back to the beginning.

Leo sat hunched in the corner, the oppressive atmosphere a familiar nightmare. He had seen all of this before. He watched Isaiah perch on the edge of his bed, clutching a baseball bat—a futile, physical weapon against a non-physical threat. He listened to James pace the floor, his whispered Hail Marys a frantic, rhythmic drone that did nothing to soothe the screaming silence in Leo’s own head.

"It's going to be fine," James whispered, his words a desperate attempt to convince himself. "The salt... the crosses... Nothing can get through this. It's a fortress."

Leo remained silent. He knew better. This creature wasn't a demon from his grandmother’s stories, to be turned back by a cross. It wasn't a simple spirit, to be blocked by a line of salt. It was an interdimensional predator, and their contract was its key. A key that could open any door.

The grandfather clock in the downstairs hall began to chime, each resonant bong echoing up the stairs and into the heart of their makeshift sanctuary. The sound was a death knell.

At the fifth chime, the cold swept in. It was a profound, unnatural chill that had nothing to do with the temperature, a presence that felt like a vacuum sucking all the warmth and hope from the room. The incense smoke flattened. The crucifix above Isaiah’s bed rattled once, a sharp, mocking sound.

"It's here," Isaiah breathed, scrambling back on his bed. The baseball bat fell from his grasp, forgotten.

At the seventh chime, Isaiah was ripped from the bed. He was yanked upwards by an invisible hand, his body suspended a foot above the mattress in a horrifying, silent parody of a crucifixion. His back arched, his limbs trembled, and his mouth stretched open in a scream that made no sound.

"Isaiah!" James shrieked, lurching forward before his own terror slammed him back, his eyes fixed on the unbroken line of salt he dared not cross.

Leo watched, paralyzed by the grim horror of his own prophecy coming true for the third time. He could see it now, not with his eyes, but in his mind—the formless shadow coalescing, the gnarled, wrinkled fingers with their obsidian claws reaching out.

Two deep, bloody furrows were carved down Isaiah's face, a brutal, symmetrical violence that tore through flesh and sinew. His eyes, which a moment before had been wide with agony, became ruined pits of crimson.

Then the gurgling started. A wet, choking sound as a third, impossibly precise line was drawn across his throat. The rosary on the doorknob swayed gently. The crucifixes on the walls watched with silent, wooden indifference. Their fortress of faith and folklore was nothing more than a stage for the slaughter.

The twelfth chime faded. Isaiah's body fell back onto the bed with a sickening, wet impact.

Silence. The room was full of nothing. Nothing had entered. Nothing had left. The salt line was pristine. The incense still smoldered. But Isaiah was gone.

James’s ragged, animal gasps for air were the only sound. His head swiveled from the corpse to Leo, his face a canvas of pure, mind-breaking horror. The intellectual, the joker, and now the pragmatist were gone. Only the follower and the prophet remained.

"It's done," Leo said, his voice a dead, hollow thing. He was numb, the horror so immense it had burned away all other emotion. "The tithe has been paid."

"No... no..." James shook his head, a single, repeated denial that had lost all meaning.

Leo rose to his feet on trembling legs. He looked at the carnage, at the pathetic, useless charms, and then at James. In his friend’s terrified eyes, he saw the curse passing, the invisible mark of the Taker settling on its next victim. The seven-day clock, which had just stopped for Isaiah, had already begun its countdown for James.

"The clock just started again," Leo said, his words sealing their fate in the suffocating, holy air. "It's your turn now, James. We have seven days."