Chapter 2: Echoes in the Walls

Chapter 2: Echoes in the Walls

The heavy oak door of Naugle House groaned shut behind Aggie, the sound swallowed by a profound and unnatural silence. The air inside was frigid, a damp, penetrating cold that had nothing to do with the storm raging outside and everything to do with the oppressive weight of the unseen. It smelled of dust, dry rot, and something else… something metallic and faintly sweet, like old pennies and forgotten grief.

Aggie stood in the grand foyer, a cavernous space dominated by a sweeping staircase that coiled into the upper darkness like the spine of some great beast. A thick layer of dust covered everything, yet the air itself felt charged, vibrating with a malevolent energy that made the hairs on her arms stand on end.

She let her gaze drift, allowing her System to overlay the mundane world with its shimmering wireframe of data.

[AETHERIC SIGHT SYSTEM ACTIVATED] [WARNING: ENTERING HOSTILE TERRITORY] [AMBIENT RESONANCE: 9,512.8 (CRITICAL/FLUCTUATING)] [PRIMARY ENTITY: DORMANT… OBSERVING]

The final notification sent a shiver down her spine. Observing. It knew she was here. The apex predator was aware of the mouse that had just stepped into its den. Her goal was clear: find the heart of the disturbance, the anchor point her System had detected, without waking the beast.

Ignoring the looming staircase, she followed a tendril of corrupted energy that snaked across the marble floor. It was thick and viscous in her sight, a river of old pain leading to a set of towering doors at the far end of the foyer. The ballroom.

As she pushed the doors open, the cold intensified. The vast room was empty save for a few dust-shrouded pieces of furniture huddled together like frightened sheep. But to Aggie’s System, the room was anything but empty. In the center of the floor, the data stream coalesced, swirling into a knot of temporal distortion. An echo.

[TEMPORAL ECHO DETECTED. HIGH INTENSITY EVENT.] [INITIATING PLAYBACK…]

The world dissolved. The dusty ballroom was suddenly pristine, lit by the flickering gaslight of a bygone era. Ghostly, sepia-toned figures materialized in the center of the room. A man and a woman. The man was tall and severe, his beard sharp, his eyes possessing a cold fire she recognized from historical portraits. Silas Naugle. The woman opposite him was pale and trembling, her fine silk dress a stark contrast to the terror in her eyes.

“It is the price, my dear,” Silas’s voice echoed, thin and reedy, a recording stripped of its warmth. “Prosperity requires a foundation. A city built to last requires a… permanent investment.”

“But this is not what I agreed to!” the woman cried, her voice laced with hysteria. “You spoke of rituals, of binding the land’s spirit to our will! You did not speak of… of blood! Not an innocent!”

“Innocence is a resource, like lumber or steel,” Silas countered, taking a step forward. His predatory aura was a palpable force even in this spectral memory. “Their sacrifice will fuel our legacy for a century. Your weakness will not jeopardize that.”

He raised his hand and slapped her, the sound cracking through the silence like a gunshot. The woman stumbled back, her spectral form flickering violently. The echo degraded, the images stuttering as the raw emotion of the event warped the playback. It ended as Silas grabbed her arm, his face a mask of merciless resolve, dragging her towards the wall. Then, as quickly as it appeared, the vision vanished, leaving Aggie alone once more in the cold, dusty silence.

Before she could process the grim implications of what she’d just witnessed, the mundane world intruded with brutal force. Headlights swept through the tall, grimy windows, followed by the crunch of tires on the gravel drive. A car door slammed. Moments later, a heavy, authoritative fist pounded on the front door.

Aggie sighed. There was only one person in Slakterquay who still used a knock that could break down a door.

She walked back to the foyer and pulled the heavy door open. Standing on the porch, silhouetted against the driving rain, was Detective Kaelen Vance. His leather jacket was soaked, his jaw was set in a familiar, grumpy line, and his tired eyes held their usual cocktail of skepticism and annoyance.

“Thorne,” he grunted, his voice a low rumble. “Playing ghostbuster on my crime scene?”

“It stopped being your crime scene when you couldn’t find a crime, Kaelen,” she shot back, stepping aside to let him in. “To what do I owe the displeasure?”

He dripped onto the marble floor, his gaze sweeping the foyer with professional disdain. “Got a hit on a missing persons case. A university student, occult nut. His last known GPS ping was on this property line two nights ago. His car was found abandoned a mile down the road. Since you’re the city’s resident charlatan, I figured you’d be drawn to this place like a moth to a flickering, potentially non-existent flame.”

The insult was familiar, a well-worn part of their antagonistic dance. Ever since the case that got her kicked off the force—the one where she’d followed her ‘data’ instead of his ‘gut’ and ended up nearly dead—he’d treated her and her abilities with open contempt.

“I was hired,” Aggie said coolly, crossing her arms. “Julian Croft is paying me to find out why his daughter’s dolls are building effigies of the family dog.”

Vance scoffed. “Old house, drafts, scared kid. Case closed. My team swept this place top to bottom yesterday for the missing student. Found nothing. No signs of forced entry, no signs of a struggle. Just dust and rats.”

Here was her obstacle: his stubborn, infuriating disbelief. And here was her opportunity. "Your team," she said, a challenge in her voice, "doesn't have the right equipment."

She turned and walked back toward the ballroom, knowing he would follow. He was too good a cop to ignore any lead, even one from a source he despised.

“What did you see in here, Thorne?” he asked, his voice echoing in the vast, empty space. “Another one of your… data ghosts?”

“An echo,” she corrected him, walking to the exact spot where the spectral violence had occurred. “A psychic imprint left by a moment of extreme emotional trauma. He struck her, right here. Dragged her.” She pointed towards the wall where the vision had ended. "He said prosperity requires a foundation. A permanent investment."

Vance shone his powerful flashlight on the spot, illuminating a section of ornate hardwood flooring. He crouched, running a gloved hand over the surface. “Nothing. Solid oak. No scuff marks, no blood, no secret panels. My guys went over every inch of this floor.”

“They were looking with their eyes,” Aggie countered. She closed her own, focusing her System. The residual energy of the echo was brightest right under their feet, a festering wound in the house's energy field. “It’s not on the floor. It’s under it. The third plank from the wall. The dark one with the knot in it. Pry it up.”

He looked from the floorboard to her face, his expression a battle between professional duty and personal disdain. With a long-suffering sigh, he pulled a pry bar from a loop on his belt. “If I find a dead raccoon under here, Thorne, you’re buying me a new pry bar.”

He wedged the tip into the seam and leveraged his weight against it. The old wood groaned in protest, then with a sharp crack, the board splintered and came loose.

Vance angled his flashlight into the dark cavity beneath. The beam cut through a century of dust and cobwebs, landing on the rough-hewn subfloor. And on the symbol.

It was etched into the wood, a complex, jagged sigil of interlocking lines and sharp angles, unlike anything from common occult lore. It was stark, alien, and radiated a palpable wrongness. And it wasn't painted on. It was stained deep into the grain of the wood with a dark, reddish-brown substance that had flaked and blackened with age.

Vance fell silent, his skepticism finally, shockingly, faltering. He leaned in closer, the beam of his flashlight unwavering.

Aggie activated her System one last time, focusing on the stain.

[ANALYZING SUBSTANCE…] [ORGANIC ORIGIN: CONFIRMED.] [HEMOGLOBIN DECAY: CONFIRMED.] [CLASSIFICATION: BINDING RUNE. POWER SOURCE: BLOOD SACRIFICE.]

"My God," Kaelen whispered, the words barely audible. He had finally found his crime scene.

Aggie looked at the symbol, then at the detective, and then around the vast, silent house. This wasn’t just a clue. It was a key. A key to the horrifying truth of what Silas Naugle had done here. And it was a piece of physical evidence that bound her, the disgraced spectral analyst, to Kaelen Vance, the by-the-book detective, whether he liked it or not. The house had given up one of its secrets, but Aggie knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that it was guarding far, far worse.