The red eye on the curtain didn't blink, but Elias couldn't stop staring at it like it might.
His knuckles were white around the crowbar. His other hand gripped the torch so tightly that a tremor ran from his wrist to his shoulder. His pulse was roaring in his ears. Somewhere deep in his gut, a hollow ache had bloomed—a sinking dread that settled like a lead weight.
He couldn't breathe right.
He didn't know what time it was, but he was sure it had been a long day. Arrested in the morning. Poring over dusty records all afternoon. And now this—a dark, broken house in the middle of the most dangerous part of Dunwich. Alone with a man who might bolt at any second. Alone with the echo of a ghost that didn't behave like any ghost he'd ever read about.
His whole body screamed to run. Not walk—run. Out the door, past the puddles, back through the gate. Forget the curtain. Forget the noise. Forget the eye staring at him from the fabric like it knew him.
But then there was the other voice. Louder. Angrier.
You came here for answers. Don't leave without them.
He stood stiff as a board, eyes flicking between Jacko—who was mumbling a prayer again—and the place in the room where the shadow had slithered into nothing. Nothing was there now. Just darkness and dust. But his instincts hadn't failed him before.
He had seen something.
It was all getting to him. Every insane moment. The ghostly noises. The blood that had no body. The bedroom that had cleaned itself. Jacko whispering to gods Elias didn't believe in. Every step forward in Dunwich revealed something stranger. It was enough to make a sane man weep—or scream.
Elias did neither.
He approached the curtain with deliberate steps, like a man about to pull back a stage veil and discover if the audience was still watching.
He took a breath, swallowed the acid rising in his throat, and tugged the curtain aside.
Just a wall.
Cracked paint. Water stains. Nothing hidden. Nothing revealed. The symbol of the red eye had been painted onto the fabric, not the wall itself.
Elias stared at it anyway.
Like the wall might shift. Like something might step out of it. A part of him still expected someone to laugh and say it was all a joke—April fools, Whitaker, go home.
No one did.
Behind him, Jacko whispered something in a dialect Elias didn't recognize.
He turned his torch back on and swept it slowly across the bedroom. The light struggled to reach the corners, like the shadows pushed back. There were no tricks here. No doors. No wires. No speaker system hidden in the drywall.
Still, something had changed this room.
Something was here.
Elias's hands were shaking less now, not because he was calmer, but because the shaking had been absorbed into his breathing, into the rhythm of his steps, into the pulse drumming behind his eyes.
He lowered the crowbar and crouched, shining the light beneath the bed.
A duffel bag.
It was tucked up against the wall, hidden just far enough that it wouldn't be seen at a glance. Elias reached for it cautiously, half expecting something to snap out from the shadows.
Nothing.
The zipper rasped like a whisper in a tomb.
Jacko went silent.
Elias unzipped the bag and opened it.
Inside were belongings—carefully folded and packed. Not stashed. Not hidden. Just kept. Like someone had been planning to leave soon.
A plain black suit, neatly pressed. Functional. Something you wore when you needed to make a good impression. A funeral. A job interview. A quiet wedding.
Next to it, a pair of worn gloves, their stitching still faintly bearing the Deepwell anchor.
Then papers—loose, creased, slightly yellowed at the edges. Elias caught a glimpse of Deepwell's logo on one sheet. An employment letter. Another with large, red stamped lettering across it—TERMINATED.
He didn't read them.
He didn't need to. He knew the story already.
The last thing he pulled from the bag was a photograph. Small, curled at the edges, black-and-white. Probably taken years ago. But the image was clear enough.
Three men, standing in front of a stone plaza. Elias recognized the backdrop instantly. A rail station square from the capital city of Vundora. The same plaza where he'd once met Edward Wren.
The man in the center was Pike—cleaner, younger, almost hopeful.
The two other men were strangers. Dressed casually. Friends, maybe. Colleagues. Nothing about them stood out.
But they stood close to each other. The kind of closeness that came from shared work. Shared risk.
Elias stared at them for a long time.
Did they come to Dunwich together?
Where are they now?
Do they know what happened to Pike? To Maddie?
If Edward had brought Pike here, had he brought the others too?
Were they still in Dunwich?
His thoughts spiraled. Maybe one of them had been here. Maybe they were the ones who ransacked this place. Maybe it wasn't Deepwell's retrieval team. Maybe it was something far more personal.
He tucked the photograph into his coat pocket and stood.
When he returned to the living room, it was clean.
No blood. No glass. No mess.
Jacko let out a strangled noise and bolted out the front door. The slam echoed down the narrow street.
Elias didn't chase him. He stood in the empty room and stared at the place where the puddle of blood had been.
Gone. Like it had never been there.
Just like the bedroom.
He took the duffel bag with him. He didn't look back.
---
Outside, the Orange District hadn't changed. Same flickering lanterns. Same hushed voices. But it felt... dimmer. Like something had pulled back a curtain over the whole world.
The walk back to his apartment felt longer.
He was exhausted. Broken. But his mind wouldn't stop working. Not yet.
He kept thinking of the photograph. Of Edward. Of the two strangers beside Pike.
Of Maddie. Of the sound of mining through the walls.
Of the red eye on the curtain, and the way the house had rearranged itself like it was tired of being observed.
Something in Dunwich had stirred. Something old and hungry.
And Elias had finally gotten close enough to smell its breath.
—