Chapter 2: The Vanishing Eye

Sleep offered no escape, only a different kind of vigil. Liam had spent the night on the living room couch, a thin blanket pulled up to his chin, his body coiled tight with a tension that sleep couldn't erase. The stinging throb from the gashes on his face was a constant, physical anchor to the horror of the previous night. Every time he drifted off, the image of the crimson-stained pillow would flash behind his eyelids, jolting him awake with a silent gasp.

Dawn broke, painting the dust motes dancing in the grey light. He hadn't been touched. No new wounds marked his skin. He sat up, the blanket pooling around his waist, and listened to the profound silence of the house. The absence of another attack wasn't a relief. It was a question. Why not?

The answer, he knew, was waiting for him upstairs.

Fueled by a cocktail of caffeine, exhaustion, and grim determination, he retrieved the GoPro. It felt small and inadequate in his hand, a piece of consumer electronics pitted against an unknowable malevolence. But it was his only weapon. He was an IT technician. Problems were solved with data, with observation, with undeniable proof.

He forced himself to walk up the stairs, each step a conscious act of will. The air grew colder as he ascended, a phenomenon he would have dismissed as a draft a day ago. Now, it felt like a presence, a pocket of absolute cold radiating from the closed bedroom door.

He pushed it open. The room was just as he’d left it, the bloody pillow still a focal point of desecration on the unmade bed. He couldn't leave it there. In a burst of agitated energy, he stripped the sheets and the pillowcase, balling them up and stuffing them deep into a trash bag. It was a futile gesture of control, of cleansing, but he needed it.

With fresh sheets on the bed, he turned his attention to the camera. He needed the perfect vantage point. Not the dresser—too low. The nightstand was too close. His eyes settled on the tall bookshelf against the opposite wall. It was high enough to get a wide, encompassing view of the entire bed and most of the room. Perfect.

He secured the small black camera to the top shelf, nestled between a dusty college textbook on network theory and a faded copy of Moby Dick. He angled it down, checked the field of view on his phone's app, and made sure the battery was full and a fresh 128-gigabyte memory card was slotted inside. He enabled the night vision and the small, infrared LEDs glowed a faint, sinister red. A single, tiny red light on the front of the device confirmed it was recording. His vanishing eye was now open.

That night, lying in bed felt like offering himself as bait. He lay perfectly still, his body rigid beneath the clean sheets, his eyes fixed on the small red light across the room. It was his sentinel, his silent witness. He tried to regulate his breathing, to feign the rhythm of sleep, but his heart was a frantic drum against his ribs.

The house settled around him. A floorboard creaked in the hallway. The wind rattled a windowpane. Every sound, no matter how mundane, was scrutinized, dissected, and ultimately attributed to the unseen thing he shared his home with. He imagined it just outside the door, listening. He imagined it crawling on the roof above his head. Hours passed. The red light of the camera was the last thing he saw before sheer, bone-deep exhaustion finally dragged him into a shallow, dreamless sleep.

Sunlight, warm and bright, streamed through the blinds.

Liam’s eyes snapped open. He was instantly, terrifyingly awake. For a moment, he didn't move, just listened. Silence. He slowly brought a hand to his face, his fingers tracing the tender, healing wounds from two nights ago. Nothing new. The skin was unbroken.

A wave of dizzying relief, so potent it almost made him laugh, washed over him. Maybe it was over. Maybe he’d scared it off. Maybe—

He sat bolt upright, his gaze flying to the bookshelf.

The spot where the GoPro had been was empty.

"No," he whispered, the sound swallowed by the room. He threw the covers off and scrambled across the floor, his bare feet cold against the wood. He reached the bookshelf, his eyes scanning the spot, then the shelves below, then the floor.

It was gone.

Not knocked over. Not broken. It had vanished without a trace.

Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through his initial relief. He dropped to his knees, his hands sweeping under the bookshelf, finding only dust bunnies and a lost pen. He stood up and spun around, his eyes darting to every corner of the room. The window was still locked from the inside. He had locked the bedroom door before going to sleep; the deadbolt was still engaged.

A sleep disorder doesn't get up and hide a camera. A restless night doesn't make an object dematerialize. And a human intruder would have left some sign of entry, would have likely taken his wallet or laptop, not just a GoPro.

The logic was undeniable and horrifying.

This wasn't a random, mindless phenomenon. It was intelligent. It was aware. It knew he was trying to watch it. The absence of new scratches wasn't a reprieve; it was a message. I see you, too. The entity hadn't attacked him because it had been busy with the camera. It had disarmed him, removed his eye, and left him blind once more.

The full weight of it crashed down on him. He was trapped in a cage with something that could move through locked rooms, something that understood the function of a camera and had the ability to simply remove it from existence. His one attempt at control, at gathering evidence, had been contemptuously swept aside. He was utterly, completely powerless.

He leaned against the bookshelf, his breath shuddering in his chest, his mind racing. He had to think. There had to be something, some clue. He looked back at the empty spot on the top shelf, a small rectangle of clean wood in a sea of dust. He stared at it, willing a sign to appear.

His gaze sharpened. There, on the dusty surface right where the base of the camera had rested, was something small and dark. It was almost invisible against the dark wood finish.

With a trembling hand, he reached up and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger. He brought it down into the light slanting through the blinds.

It was a single strand of hair.

It was long, far longer than his own. It was black, a dull and lifeless black, and disturbingly matted, as if it had been unwashed for an eternity. It was brittle, dry, and felt ancient in his fingers. It wasn't Sarah's hair; hers was blonde. It wasn't his.

He held the impossible artifact, this piece of physical evidence left in place of the digital proof that had been stolen from him. It was a calling card. A trophy.

The house was silent, but Liam could feel it. A pair of unseen eyes watching him, enjoying his terror. He wasn't just haunted. He was being studied. He was being toyed with. And the game had only just begun.