Chapter 5: The World in a Puddle

Chapter 5: The World in a Puddle

Kian’s manic chant, “Things in, things out!” sliced through the cold night air, each repetition more unhinged than the last. He spun in a jerky, broken dance at the edge of the firelight, a puppet whose strings were being pulled by a mad god. His eyes, once sharp and intelligent, were now wide, vacant pools reflecting the flickering flames, seeing nothing and everything.

“Kian, stop it! Please, you’re scaring me!” Chloe’s voice was a raw, desperate plea. She reached for him, but Liam’s arm shot out, barring her way.

“Stay back, Chloe,” he commanded, his voice a low rumble of suppressed fear. He was watching Kian not as a friend having a breakdown, but as an unpredictable threat. “He’s not himself.”

Tears streamed down Chloe’s face, tracing paths through the grime on her cheeks. She couldn’t bear it. This was her Kian—her brilliant, ambitious, arrogant Kian—and he was being dismantled in front of her. His mind, the thing he valued above all else, was shattering like glass. Liam’s shouting hadn’t worked. Her pleading was unheard. Logic had fled this place the moment they’d arrived.

Her desperate gaze fell upon the deck of cards lying on the log, discarded by Elara. A terrible, frantic idea sparked in her terrified mind. A card had done this to him. The bizarre, awful words about the house with bruised windows had sent him spiraling. It was a spell, a curse. And the only way to break a spell was with another one. Fight fire with fire.

“No,” Elara whispered, seeming to read her mind. Elara was pale, her hands trembling as she clutched her camera. She had read a card herself, and Chloe could see the psychic residue it had left behind—a deep, haunted look in her dark eyes. “Chloe, don’t. We don’t know what they do.”

But Chloe was already moving, her devotion to Kian a force stronger than fear or reason. She lunged past Liam’s restraining arm, snatching the deck from the log. Her fingers fumbled, slick with nervous sweat, as she pulled a card from the top.

“I have to fix him!” she cried, her voice cracking with a sob. She spun to face Kian’s gyrating form, holding the card up like a talisman. “Kian! Listen to me!”

He paid her no mind, his chant devolving into a series of rhythmic, guttural clicks and gasps.

With a shuddering breath, Chloe began to read, her voice shaking so badly the words were barely coherent.

“A woman painted a picture of the whole world.”

She paused, swallowing hard against the lump of ice in her throat. The words felt foul, tasting of dust and decay.

“She showed it to her friend. The friend said, ‘It’s beautiful. But you’ve missed something. Where is the puddle from yesterday’s rain?’”

Kian’s frantic movements began to slow. His head tilted, his vacant eyes fixing on her. He was listening. Hope, fragile and foolish, surged in Chloe’s chest. It was working. She rushed to the final line, pushing the words out as if they were poison she had to spit out.

“The woman smiled and said, ‘You’re standing in it.’ The friend looked down.” Chloe’s voice dropped to a whisper. “And it turned into a puddle.”

For a single, beautiful second, there was silence. Kian stood perfectly still. The chanting had stopped. His eyes focused, seeming to look right at Chloe. A slow, wide smile spread across his face.

And then he began to laugh.

It was not the sound of joy. It was not the sound of mirth or relief. It was a high, tearing shriek of a sound, an unhinged cackle that ripped from his throat, raw and full of agony. He clutched his stomach, his body doubling over, convulsing with the force of it. The laughter was a physical assault, a seizure of pure, undiluted madness.

“He—he—he looked down!” Kian shrieked between gasping, wheezing breaths. Tears poured from his eyes, but his face was a rictus of unimaginable pain. “A puddle! The whole world in a puddle!”

Across the fire, Elara let out a choked gasp. Her camera slipped from her numb fingers, hitting the soft earth with a dull thud. Her own face, which had been a mask of frozen horror, suddenly cracked. A single, brittle giggle escaped her lips. Then another. Within seconds, she was consumed by the same affliction. She staggered back, clutching her head as peels of hysterical, agonized laughter tore out of her. It was the sound of a mind snapping, of sanity being shredded into confetti.

“The bruises!” she screamed, her laughter punctuated by sobs. “The bruises are in the puddle! Things in, things out!”

The two of them were lost, their separate madnesses now merged into one horrifying chorus of psychic pain that echoed through the dead, silent street. The twelve—no, thirteen—houses seemed to lean in, a rapt audience drinking in the sound.

Liam stood frozen for a heartbeat, stunned by the sheer horror of it. Then his protective instincts took over. Kian was laughing so hard he was staggering blindly, about to pitch headfirst into the fire. Elara was on her knees, her nails digging into her own scalp, her body shaking violently.

“No!” Liam roared, the sound a raw bellow of defiance against the supernatural assault.

He lunged, tackling Kian just as he stumbled, pulling him back from the flames. Kian fought him, not with anger, but with the spastic, uncontrollable strength of his convulsions. His laughter was a weapon, sharp and piercing. Liam grunted, wrestling him to the ground, pinning his thrashing arms.

“Ela!” he yelled at Chloe, who was standing paralyzed, the card fluttering from her hand. “Help her!”

Chloe stumbled forward as if waking from a trance. She grabbed Elara’s shoulders, pulling her friend’s hands away from her head. Elara was limp, her body wracked with shuddering, laughing sobs, her eyes rolled back in her head.

Liam held Kian down, the awful, piercing laughter still echoing in his ears. In that moment, looking at the two broken people at his feet and the terrified face of his sister, the terrible truth finally landed with the force of a physical blow.

He had been trying to understand it. The car. The extra house. He’d been searching for a logical flaw, a rational explanation. He was wrong. There was no logic. This wasn’t a trick or a mystery. It was an attack.

The cards weren’t jokes. They weren’t art. They were weapons, designed to break the human mind. They were bullets made of words, and they had just fired two devastating shots into his friends, leaving them bleeding on the inside.

The unhinged laughter finally began to subside, replaced by weak, gasping whimpers. Kian went limp beneath him. Elara collapsed into Chloe’s arms. They weren’t fixed. They were shattered.

Liam looked from their vacant, traumatized faces to the truck, their only hope of escape. Then his gaze swept over the silent court, the oppressive darkness, and the thirteen houses that watched them with indifferent, black eyes.

The Patron’s words echoed in his memory: a truly authentic performance, one full of genuine, raw emotion.

She had gotten what she paid for.

A cold, heavy certainty settled in his gut. They had to leave. They had to run. But looking at the two catatonic figures beside the dying fire, he was gripped by the horrifying realization that it might already be too late. The show wasn't over yet.