Chapter 6: The Poisoned Well

I barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the humming, shimmering air in the Blackwood Mill. I saw three pairs of vacant eyes snapping towards my hiding place. They knew. They knew I had seen them. I stumbled downstairs the next morning fueled by a night of pure terror, my mind a frantic mess. My only hope, thin and fragile as a spider’s thread, was that the sheer insanity of my story would finally break through my parents’ denial.

They were already in the kitchen. Mom was pouring coffee, Dad was reading the paper at the table, and the thing that wore Charlie’s face was methodically buttering a piece of toast, each stroke of the knife precise and even. The scene was so grotesquely normal it felt like a stage play.

I didn’t bother with a greeting. The words burst out of me, raw and ragged. "He wasn't in his room last night. He was at the old mill. With Toni Maynard and Mr. McCarthy."

Dad lowered his newspaper, his brow furrowing in irritation. Mom stopped pouring the coffee, her hand frozen mid-air.

The Charlie-thing didn’t even look up from its toast. "Raymond," it said, its voice calm and level, a placid pond in the middle of my hurricane. "You must have had a nightmare. I was in my room studying. I have a history test on Friday."

"Liar!" I shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at it. "You were there! All three of you! You were… humming! It was this weird, deep sound, and—"

"That's enough," Dad’s voice was a low growl. He folded his paper with a sharp crack, placing it deliberately on the table. "Raymond, you will not make these kinds of wild accusations. Especially not about your headmaster."

"But it's true! I saw him! His skin—it's like Charlie's! Pale and waxy!"

"Honey," Mom said, and her voice was the worst part. It was dripping with a soft, pitying concern that felt more isolating than Dad’s anger. "You look terrible. You haven't been sleeping well since Charlie came home. We’re worried about you."

My jaw dropped. They weren’t hearing me. They were diagnosing me.

"Remember what Charlie said when he first got back?" she continued, moving towards me, her face a mask of gentle sympathy. "He was worried you’d have a hard time with him being back. He said you might need to reconnect with us. I think… I think he was right. This obsession, this jealousy… it’s not healthy, sweetheart."

Jealousy. The word was a venomous dart, fired from the creature’s own mouth days ago and now lodged deep in my mother’s brain. He had poisoned the well, and now they were drawing from it, offering me cup after cup of tainted logic. They were using the script he had written for them.

"This isn't jealousy!" I yelled, my voice cracking. "This is about the raw chicken! And Rory Keene's arm! And the fact he never, ever fidgets! Don’t you see? None of it is normal!"

I ran from the kitchen, my feet pounding up the stairs to my room. I grabbed my journal—my proof, my meticulously documented log of the creeping wrongness. This would show them. It wasn't just a feeling; it was data. I stormed back into the kitchen and slammed the notebook down on the table, scattering crumbs from the creature’s toast.

"Look!" I commanded, flipping through the pages. "It's all here. The date he got back. The change in his voice. The skin peeling from his neck. The food. It’s all evidence!"

Dad picked up the journal. He flipped through a few pages, his expression hardening from irritation to a cold, profound disappointment. Mom peered over his shoulder, her hand flying to her mouth.

"My God, Raymond," Dad said, his voice dangerously quiet. He closed the journal and slid it across the table as if it were contaminated. "This… this is a diary of hatred. You’ve been documenting every little thing you can find to twist against him. This isn't evidence. This is a sickness."

"He's a growing boy, Raymond," Mom added, her eyes welling with tears. "Of course he's eating more! And his skin? He spent a summer in a different climate! You’re taking normal things and turning them into something monstrous because you can't handle that he's growing up!"

Their explanations were so simple, so infuriatingly rational on the surface, that they circled right back around to being insane. They required a complete and total refusal to see the pattern, to acknowledge the sheer volume of strangeness. They were defending the indefensible, their minds clinging to a normalcy that no longer existed.

Throughout it all, the creature sat there, looking from my mother's tears to my father's anger. It had cultivated the perfect expression of wounded confusion, the innocent victim of my inexplicable cruelty.

"I don't understand," it said, its voice barely a whisper, a masterpiece of manipulative sorrow. "I thought… I thought we were brothers."

That broke them.

"That's it," Dad said, standing up, his chair scraping harshly against the floor. "I'm calling the school. Not to report Mr. McCarthy, but to excuse you. You're not going today. And you’re grounded. No phone, no computer. You're going to stay in your room and think about how you’ve been treating the person who is supposed to be your family."

"You're going to give me your phone, honey," Mom said, her voice wobbling but firm. She held out her hand. "We're just trying to help you."

My last allies. My parents. They were now my jailors, their love and concern twisted into the bars of my cage. Numbly, I handed over my phone. It felt like surrendering my last weapon. They weren't just disarming me; they were blinding and deafening me to the outside world.

Defeated, I turned and walked out of the kitchen. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard Dad’s voice, low and decisive. "I'll take the journal, too. He doesn't need to be feeding this."

I sat on the edge of my bed, the door to my room closed but unlocked. It didn't need a lock. The whole house was now my prison. I heard my parents’ footsteps as they left for work together, their car pulling out of the driveway, leaving me alone in the house with it.

A few minutes later, my door creaked open.

The Charlie-thing stood in the doorway, its head tilted slightly. The mask of the wounded victim was gone, leaving behind the familiar, chilling vacancy. It looked at me, its gaze flat and analytical, the way a scientist might observe a rat in a maze after changing the variables.

It took a single, silent step into my room.

"They only want what is best for you, Raymond," it said, its voice the smooth, passionless monotone it used when it wasn't performing for my parents. "That journal was… very detailed. Very observant."

My blood froze. Dad had taken the journal. It had seen it. It had read it.

"It would be easier for you if you stopped," the creature continued, its eyes fixed on mine. "Easier for everyone. Just… adjust. Accept the new dynamic. It is more efficient."

The words, so sterile and corporate, were more terrifying than any threat. It wasn't angry. It wasn't gloating. It was advising me, as one might advise a faulty piece of machinery to stop resisting its programming.

It held my gaze for another long, silent moment, then turned and walked away, pulling my bedroom door softly shut behind it, leaving me trapped in the suffocating silence of my new cage.