Chapter 8: Peripheral Visions

The silence in Ethan's house had become a living thing.

Three days had passed since the alley, three days since he'd returned to the wreckage of his home because he had nowhere else to go. The motels felt like traps now, public spaces crawled with the sensation of being observed, and his car had become unreliable—sometimes he'd find himself miles from where he'd intended to drive, with no memory of changing direction.

So he'd come back to the broken mirrors and carved symbols, to the house that had become a monument to his failure. At least here, he could see the damage. At least here, the horror was honest.

But the silence was wrong. Houses weren't meant to be this quiet, weren't meant to absorb sound like a living throat swallowing screams. Every footstep seemed muffled, every breath dampened, as if the air itself had grown thick with watching.

And the peripheral visions had started.

Shadows that moved independently of their sources. Glimpses of tall figures in his side vision that vanished when he turned his head. The constant sensation of eyes tracking his movement from impossible angles. Sometimes he'd catch sight of Lena standing at the end of a hallway, perfectly still, perfectly wrong, but when he looked directly, there would be nothing there except the familiar ache of loss.

It was the sounds that finally broke him.

On the third night, as he sat in his destroyed living room with every light in the house blazing, he heard it: a soft scraping from upstairs, like fingernails dragging across wood. The sound of someone—or something—moving through the bedrooms with deliberate patience.

But Ethan knew he was alone in the house. He'd checked every room, every closet, every possible hiding place. The doors were locked, the windows were sealed, and the security system—what remained of it—showed no breaches.

Yet the scraping continued, moving from room to room in a pattern that suggested methodical searching.

Searching for him.

That's when he made the call.

Dr. Marcus Thorne had been easy to find once Ethan started looking. The internet was full of references to his work—academic papers on anomalous phenomena, research into what he termed "perceptual parasites," and a spectacular fall from grace when the university had stripped him of tenure for "pursuing unscientific methodologies."

The reviews were mixed. Half the paranormal community hailed him as a visionary researcher. The other half dismissed him as a fraud who preyed on the desperate and delusional. But he was the only person Ethan could find who claimed to understand what was happening to him.

The phone rang four times before a tired voice answered.

"Dr. Thorne."

"My name is Ethan Hayes. I think I need your help."

A pause. "What kind of help?"

"The kind you can't get from normal doctors." Ethan glanced toward the staircase, where the scraping had grown louder. "The kind involving things that shouldn't exist."

Another pause, longer this time. "Can you describe your situation?"

"My wife was possessed by something. Now it's hunting me. And I think... I think it's inside my head."

"When did this start?"

"Months ago. But it's getting worse. Stronger. I can feel it watching me from inside my own thoughts."

Dr. Thorne's voice sharpened with interest. "Have you experienced temporal displacement? Memory gaps? Perceptual anomalies?"

"All of the above." The scraping stopped abruptly, leaving the house in that unnatural silence. "Can you help me or not?"

"Where are you?"

Ethan gave him the address, and Dr. Thorne promised to be there within the hour. After hanging up, Ethan sat in his blazing living room and waited, trying not to think about what would happen if the doctor turned out to be just another fraud.

The scraping had stopped, but he could feel something watching from the darkened stairway, patient and hungry and utterly alien.

Dr. Marcus Thorne was not what Ethan had expected.

The man who knocked on his door looked more like a college professor than a paranormal investigator—rumpled clothes, wire-rimmed glasses, graying hair that suggested too many late nights spent poring over impossible research. He carried a worn leather briefcase and had the distracted air of someone perpetually lost in thought.

"Mr. Hayes?" He extended a hand. "Thank you for calling. Cases like yours are... rare."

Ethan led him into the living room, where Dr. Thorne immediately began examining the damage with professional interest. He photographed the carved symbols, measured the patterns of destruction, and took extensive notes in a cramped handwriting that looked more like code than English.

"Fascinating," he murmured, running his fingers along one of the deeper carvings. "The degradation pattern is very specific. Whatever did this was systematic, methodical." He looked up at Ethan. "Tell me about your wife."

So Ethan told him everything. The standing vigils, the blood symbols, the impossible photographs, the gradual realization that Lena hadn't been possessed so much as hollowed out and filled with something else. Dr. Thorne listened without interruption, occasionally making notes, his expression growing more grave with each detail.

"How long since you last saw her?" he asked when Ethan finished.

"Three days. But I can still feel her sometimes. Or it. Like it's watching from just outside my field of vision."

Dr. Thorne nodded as if this was perfectly normal. "You're being stalked by what I call a Perceptual Predator. They're rare, but not unknown. Think of them as parasites that feed on attention and observation."

"What do they want?"

"To exist fully in our reality. Right now, your predator can only manifest in peripheral spaces—the corners of your vision, the gaps in your attention, the moments when you're not quite looking. But if it can break down your perceptual barriers completely..."

"It can step fully into the world."

"Exactly. And once that happens, it won't need a host anymore. It will be independently real, capable of affecting the physical world directly." Dr. Thorne's expression darkened. "At which point, it typically begins to reproduce."

The implication hung in the air like smoke. Ethan thought about the videos on his phone, the impossible watchers gathered around his sleeping form, the sense that something vast and patient was orchestrating events beyond his understanding.

"How do I fight it?"

"You don't fight it. You contain it." Dr. Thorne opened his briefcase and pulled out several devices that looked like modified cameras. "The key is constant, multi-spectrum observation. These predators can only exist in blind spots—but if you eliminate all the blind spots, if you create a space where everything is always being watched..."

"You trap it."

"Theoretically, yes. But it's dangerous work. The predator will fight back, will try to break your observation protocols. And if you fail, if you give it even a moment of true inattention..."

A sound from upstairs cut him off—the scraping noise had returned, louder now, more insistent. Dr. Thorne looked toward the ceiling with professional interest.

"It knows I'm here," he said calmly. "It doesn't like outside interference."

As if in response, every light in the house went out simultaneously.

In the sudden darkness, Ethan heard Dr. Thorne moving with practiced efficiency, clicking on flashlights and activating his modified cameras. The devices cast strange, multi-colored light that seemed to reveal details invisible to normal vision.

"Stay close to me," Dr. Thorne said quietly. "And whatever you do, don't look directly at anything that seems out of place. Peripheral vision only—direct observation gives it too much power."

The scraping sound was moving now, no longer confined to the upstairs but flowing through the walls themselves like water. In the strange light of Dr. Thorne's equipment, Ethan could see the symbols carved throughout his house beginning to glow with a faint, sickly luminescence.

"What's happening?"

"It's trying to manifest fully. The presence of an expert—someone who understands its nature—is forcing it to abandon subtlety." Dr. Thorne adjusted one of his cameras, and the glow from the symbols intensified. "This is good, actually. Better to face it directly than let it continue to work from the shadows."

A new sound joined the scraping—a low humming that seemed to come from inside Ethan's skull. The humming grew louder, more insistent, and with it came flashes of impossible images: Lena standing in corners that didn't exist, corridors that stretched beyond the boundaries of the house, eyes that watched from angles that hurt to contemplate.

"It's in my head," Ethan gasped, pressing his hands against his temples. "I can feel it thinking."

"That's how it hunts," Dr. Thorne said, his voice oddly calm for someone standing in a house full of impossible phenomena. "It creates a feedback loop between observer and observed, watcher and watched. The more you try to see it, the more it can see you."

The humming reached a crescendo, and suddenly Ethan could see everything—not just the physical space of his ruined house, but the layers beneath it, the spaces between spaces where the Perceptual Predator had been building its nest. He could see Lena trapped in a cage of mirrors and shadows, could see the dozens of other victims who had been consumed over the years, could see the vast network of watching eyes that stretched across dimensions like a spider's web.

And at the center of it all, he could see himself—not as he was, but as he was becoming. A hollow shell filled with alien hunger, another watcher in the endless chain of observation and consumption.

"Fight it," Dr. Thorne commanded, his modified cameras flashing with strobing light. "Don't let it complete the connection."

But Ethan could feel his will crumbling, his sense of self dissolving into the vast network of watchers. The boundaries between himself and the predator were blurring, and he could no longer tell where his thoughts ended and its hunger began.

Just as he felt himself slipping away completely, Dr. Thorne grabbed his shoulder and spun him around, forcing their eyes to meet.

"Look at me," he commanded. "Not at it, not at the visions, not at the impossible spaces. Look at me, at something real and present and human."

Ethan focused on Dr. Thorne's face, on the concerned intelligence behind his wire-rimmed glasses, on the decades of research and dedication that had brought him here to help a stranger in the darkness. The connection with the predator wavered, its grip on his consciousness loosening just enough for him to remember who he was.

The humming stopped. The lights came back on. The house settled back into its unnatural silence.

Dr. Thorne released his shoulder and stepped back, his expression grim but satisfied.

"You did well," he said. "But this was just a probe, a test of your defenses. The real attack is still coming."

Ethan slumped against the wall, exhausted by the brief contact with the predator's consciousness. "How do we stop it?"

"We don't stop it. We trap it." Dr. Thorne began packing his equipment. "But first, we need to prepare properly. What I'm proposing is dangerous—for both of us."

"What do you need me to do?"

Dr. Thorne looked around the destroyed house, his gaze lingering on the shattered mirrors and carved symbols.

"We're going to turn your bedroom into a cage," he said. "A space where observation is absolute, where nothing can hide in peripheral vision. And then we're going to lure it inside."

He met Ethan's eyes with deadly seriousness.

"But understand this—once we begin, there's no going back. Either we trap the predator, or it traps us. There won't be a third option."

Outside, something moved in the growing darkness, watching the house with patient hunger. The game was entering its final phase, and the stakes had never been higher.

The silence pressed in around them, heavy with anticipation and malevolent intent.

Soon, very soon, someone would be consumed.

The only question was who.