As the hours dragged on, smooth highways surrendered to snaking country lanes, winding like something trying to suffocate the land beneath. The moon hung high in the sky, painting the twisted trees in silver—branches like skeletal fingers clawing at the night as if trying to tear through the veil of stars. I arrived at the towering steel gate of the McGuffey estate, its wrought-iron design looming over me like an accusing figure, casting long shadows that trembled across the cracked asphalt of the approach.
The estate had been taped off, the crime scene markers flapping in the wind, mocking remnants of the terrible thing that happened here. No one had dared to live in it since. The lock on the gate was simple enough to deal with, especially given the bolt cutters Al had packed into my kit. The sharp snap of metal breaking under my hands cried through the night, louder than I expected, as though the place was rejecting my intrusion.
I slipped through the gate and up the drive toward the main house—no, calling it a house was a cruel understatement. Mansion wasn’t even big enough to describe the vast sprawl of it. This place belonged to another time, one of opulence and unbridled excess. It loomed above me like a monument to vanity, an architectural relic from an era that believed itself immortal.
White pillars framed the entrance like bleached bones propping up a decaying giant. The copper railings caught the moonlight, their intricate scrollwork still gleaming despite the wear of time. Memories of lavish parties seemed to hum in the air—art deco laughter, the faint whisper of champagne-soaked sin. Every corner dripped with luxury, mocking the rot festering within.
Instead of the front door, I found a different way in, rounding the estate until I spotted an open window—second floor, slightly ajar, just wide enough to permit a fool with no better options. “This used to be easier,” I muttered to myself. “And windows used to be larger.”
I’m sure that’s it, Jack, Frank chimed in.
A smarter man would’ve laughed at my attempt to scale the wall—every brick was a personal reminder of how much I was no longer that spry kid eager to break the rules. My breath came harder as I reached the window, gritting my teeth while I shoved it open and tumbled in, landing with a muffled thud. The room was cold, shadows dancing, curtains swaying with the slightest night breeze.
Graceful as ever, Frank murmured, his voice buzzing in my skull like static.
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“Bite me,” I hissed back, steadying myself as I rose to my feet. The hallway stretched ahead, long and twisted—one of those endless types, where every door along the way seemed to multiply in the moonlight. The air was heavy here, almost sullen, with the scent of aged wood and decay barely masked by some long-spent perfume. Dust lay in soft layers, undisturbed by any hand, except for something more recent—those streaks of chaos, claw marks gouged along the walls, like someone had been dragged against their will.
I moved forward, reaching the grand staircase. It spiraled downward like a broken spine, each step creaking underfoot, betraying my every move to an unseen audience. At the base of the stairs, the scent shifted—a sharp, metallic tang beneath the dust, clinging to the walls and floor. They told Aylin it was a clear suicide—an open-and-shut case. They wouldn’t let her or any media into the building. How did I know? Because if they had, she would’ve uncovered all the evidence to prove they were lying.
Blood. The sort of dried-brown stain that clung stubbornly to everything, refusing to be forgotten. And it wasn’t just any blood. There was too much of it, splashed in arcs that made no earthly sense—a macabre kaleidoscope staining the once-beautiful wallpaper. Carnage that made their claim of “suicide” an insult to even the most casual observer. But why would the police be covering this up? Who had the power to pull their strings and keep it out of the papers? I knew of only one answer—the Midnight Council.
“You’d think the cops would have cleaned this place up by now,” I muttered, stepping over a patch of congealed gore. It was sticky, resisting my movement as if the house itself was trying to pull me into its dark history. “But this place... it would need to be burned down.”
Got a bad feeling about this, Jack, Frank said, his voice a cold shiver through my brain.
“You don’t say,” I muttered back. I paused at the door to the study—the room where Robert McGuffey had supposedly ended it all. I pushed the door open, the hinges groaning like a wounded animal. The portraits hanging along the walls stared at me—hollow-eyed, frozen smiles that didn’t quite touch their painted expressions. I hated the way they watched, as if judging the intrusion into this monument to someone’s tragedy.
The study was a war zone—furniture overturned, heavy gouges scratched along the surface of the mahogany desk. Blood splattered in gruesome patterns, mingling with shattered glass and upended ink. There were handprints smeared across the walls, dragging marks that led from the desk to the floor, where a dark, coagulated pool had formed. I could see where the cops had tried to clean it up—the streaks left behind by desperate scrubbing, as if they hoped to erase the horror with enough bleach and elbow grease. But this wasn’t something you could scrub away; it clung to the air, thick and wet, turning my stomach with every breath.
A path of destruction led down the hallway, ending with the private study door—locked from the inside, the iron latch still hanging secure. A chilling detail—a paradox of impossible containment. Nothing added up, not with the sheer magnitude of the wreckage.