The town was quiet. Felix walked the backroads with his hoodie pulled up and his hands in his pockets, shoes scuffing along the cracked pavement like he had all the time in the world.
Behind him came the unmistakable rhythm of another pair of footsteps.
He sighed.
"You seriously followed me?"
Harry caught up, breathing a little heavier than he probably wanted to admit.
"I had questions. You ditched school like some mysterious anime protagonist, I couldn't not follow you."
Felix glanced sideways.
"That logic is how people die in horror movies."
"Yeah, well," Harry shrugged, "I've never been accused of having good instincts."
They passed a row of leaning mailboxes and a trailer with a missing door. A dog barked once from somewhere far behind them and then went silent.
The sidewalk ended, turning into gravel and dirt. Weeds pushed up through potholes, reclaiming the road.
Harry looked around as they walked.
"Where exactly are we going?"
"Old Grove."
"I know that" Harry said. "I mean... what are we looking for?"
Felix's voice stayed calm.
"Something the cops didn't find."
That earned him a sideways glance.
They walked in silence for a bit longer. Felix seemed to know exactly where he was going, cutting through a rusted wire fence and ducking under low branches like he'd been out here before.
Eventually, they reached the start of the woods, an overgrown trailhead choked with brush, a collapsed wooden sign leaning into the dirt.
Harry paused just before the tree line.
"You ever hear the stories about this place?" he asked quietly.
Felix didn't answer. He just stepped forward into the shade.
Harry hesitated another second, then followed.
The forest swallowed them.
The farther they walked, the quieter it got. No birds. No bugs. Not even the wind. Just the crunch of leaves beneath their feet and the creak of old trees settling into themselves.
Harry slowed, glancing at the dark spaces between the trunks.
"Okay... this is starting to feel like the kind of place where people go missing."
Felix raised an eyebrow.
"People have gone missing."
"Right," Harry muttered. "That is... super comforting. Thanks for reminding me."
Felix smirked.
"If you want a place to hide a body, or a dark secret, you don't pick somewhere close. You pick somewhere where no one's willing to walk after dark."
They pushed deeper into the woods. The light faded fast beneath the canopy, and the air took on that dense feeling, like the trees were listening.
They passed an old bridge where the guardrails had long since rusted away. Weeds sprouted between the slats of warped wood.
A crooked sign leaned to the side of the trailhead.
OLD GROVE – TRAIL CLOSED
The letters were faded. Someone had scratched the word "HELP" into the post beneath it.
Felix stared at the sign.
"This is where you bring dates in this town, huh?"
Harry snorted and kept walking.
The trees swallowed them quickly. The path underfoot turned to packed dirt, then soft moss. Roots coiled across the trail like sleeping snakes. The deeper they went, the more the world seemed to hold its breath.
Birdsong vanished. The wind stilled. Even the insects stopped buzzing.
It was like stepping into a vacuum.
Harry glanced up at the thick canopy above.
"Shouldn't we, uh... turn back? Sun's going down. Fast."
Felix sighed, rubbing his temple.
"Harry. You literally followed me out here, I didn't ask you to come."
"Yeah, and I've been regretting that decision every five minutes since the Dairy Queen."
Felix blinked, "W-what..? We didn't even pass a Dairy Queen."
"Exactly."
Felix stopped walking.
Harry bumped into him.
"Wha-"
Felix raised a hand, head tilted slightly. The air had changed again.
Heavy. Stagnant. Like they were being watched.
Then..
"Do you feel that?" Felix asked, his voice quiet.
Harry looked around in confusion.
"Feel what?"
Felix's eyes flickered.
Red.
Bright as coals and slitted like a cat.
Harry's entire soul almost jumped out of his body.
"HOLY SHI—WHAT THE FUCK?! DUDE! Your eyes! What the ACTUAL-"
He stumbled back several steps, arms flailing like he was trying to fight off a ghost.
"Are you possessed?! Should I be throwing salt at you right now?!"
Felix didn't respond.
Instead, he calmly rolled up the sleeve of his hoodie.
Etched into the pale skin of his forearm was a sleeve of sigils, dark and curling, glowing faintly like embers under frosted glass. The markings twisted like they were alive, coiling around his arm in intricate loops and razor-sharp lines.
Felix raised his arm.
The air trembled.
Then shimmered.
Like heat off pavement, the world distorted. And with it, the illusion peeled back. A veil of false reality fell away, revealing a rotting wooden cabin, half-swallowed by vines and dirt, hunched low like it had been hiding behind the world itself.
Harry froze.
His jaw dropped.
"No wonder they never found her," Felix muttered. "Witch's magic. Someone cloaked it."
Harry's voice immediately hit new octaves.
"WITCHES?! You're talking about witches now? As in, like, actual spells and cauldrons and broomsticks and other bullshit?! What the fuck is going on?! I just met you today!"
He pointed wildly between Felix, the cabin, and the general concept of reality.
"First, you reverse psychology me into following you into a witch murder forest, and now your eyes are turning red and you're casually explaining magic like you're the Hogwarts guidance counselor!"
Felix turned, totally calm, like this was just Wednesday.
"Deep breaths, Harry."
"I am beyond breathing! I am hyperventilating!"
Harry yanked an inhaler from his pocket with trembling hands, slammed it to his mouth, and took a desperate puff. He wheezed, held it, and exhaled shakily.
"You are insane."
Felix gave a relaxed shrug. "You got me with that one."
Felix placed a hand on his shoulder.
"You're fine. I'm not gonna hurt you. And we're not dying out here tonight, alright?"
Harry blinked rapidly.
"...Why did you say 'tonight' like that?"
Before Felix could answer his eyes flicked toward the trees a second before the voice rang out.
"Don't move!"
They both turned.
Detective Lawley stepped from the trees, gun raised, fury barely leashed behind her eyes.
Felix groaned, eyes fading back to normal.
She looked between Felix and the cabin, then back again.
"What the hell do you think you're doing out here?"
Felix raised his hands half-heartedly.
"Detective Lawley, this is Harry. Harry, this is Detective Lawley. She's great at falling asleep during interrogations and ruining evenings."
Harry blinked. "How do you know her?"
Lawley didn't lower the gun.
"I don't know how you pulled that little mind-trick yesterday, but you're coming with me."
Felix gestured toward the cabin with a dry smile.
"Can we maybe not do the whole handcuff-foreplay thing until after we investigate the creepy murder hut in the ghost-infested forest?"
Lawley's expression didn't budge, but her eyes flicked to the cabin.
She'd seen it now too.
Felix's voice dropped, serious now.
"Whoever took those girls? I think this is where they brought them."
The door creaked open like it had been waiting for centuries.
Dust swirled in the air like ash. The cabin groaned with every gust of wind, wood warped and swollen with rot. The air inside was stale—too stale. Like nothing had breathed here in years.
Harry stepped in behind Felix, clutching a flashlight like it was holy.
"Okay. I've officially seen enough horror movies to know this is where we all die."
Felix pushed further into the dark, eyes scanning every surface.
"No one's dying. Yet."
Lawley followed, gun raised, sweeping corners.
"I swear to God, if something jumps out, I'm shooting it. I don't care if it's a raccoon."
The front room looked like a normal living space—if your normal included occult symbols carved into the floor, dried blood spattered across the walls, and melted candles forming rivers of wax across blackened wood.
Harry's flashlight flicked across a wall.
"Uh… is that Latin?"
"No," Felix said. "Worse. It's Enochian."
"Worse?! What the hell does that even mean?!"
"It means someone here wasn't just dabbling in tarot cards and crystals. This is angelic script. Old magic."
In the corner, a crude altar had been set up: bones arranged in a spiral, a jar of something that looked way too much like teeth, and a pentagram drawn in what definitely wasn't paint.
Lawley frowned.
"Jesus Christ."
Felix tilted his head, squinting at the bloodstained symbol.
"Not exactly the deity this place was working with."
They moved deeper into the cabin.
The floorboards creaked and moaned underfoot. Cobwebs clung to their faces like desperate hands.
In the next room, a single chair sat in the center, surrounded by candles burned down to nubs. Chains were bolted into the floor. Symbols were scratched into every wall—some angry, some pleading.
"This was a ritual site," Felix muttered. "Binding spells. Blood magic. Something or someone was being held here."
Harry looked pale.
"I want to go home. I want to go to algebra class and complain about pop quizzes and never think about this ever again."
Lawley walked to the edge of the room and knelt by something blackened into the floorboards.
"This looks like a scorch mark."
Felix's eyes narrowed.
"Someone was trying to contain something. But the warding's failed. The magic signature is old and brittle. This place hasn't been used in weeks, maybe months. But whoever set it up… they knew what they were doing."
Lawley stood up.
"No bodies. No evidence of the girls. So where the hell did they go?"
Felix moved to a broken window and stared out into the trees.
"That's the question, isn't it?"
Suddenly, Harry's flashlight flickered and died.
"Uh.. NOPE. NOPE."
Felix raised a glowing red hand, casting faint light across the room.
The shadows danced.
From the back of the house came a distant thump. Something heavy. Something dragging.
Everyone froze.
"Okay," Harry whispered, "we definitely overstayed our welcome."
The sound came again but closer this time. Something heavy dragging across the warped floorboards at the back of the cabin.
Felix's head turned slightly.
Harry backed up until he hit Lawley's arm.
"What was that?"
"Stay behind me," she muttered, raising her gun again.
Felix stepped toward the hallway leading to the back room. The air grew tighter with each step, like the house itself was bracing for something.
Then a shadow moved.
Low. Four-legged. A dog with matted fur, and eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
It limped out into view, whimpering once.
Harry deflated.
"Oh my god. It's just a dog."
Lawley lowered her gun half an inch.
Felix didn't move or dare blink.
"Don't let your guard down," he said flatly.
The dog's body sagged unnaturally. Its hind legs twitched in rhythm that wasn't quite animal. Then it spasmed, and the world bent with it.
Its spine snapped backward like a marionette cut loose, joints twisting in all the wrong directions. The creature's back legs extended unnaturally, claws doubling in size, shredding through the remaining flesh like a snake shedding skin. Its snout cracked wide open, not just down the jawline, but splitting up the middle, forming a vertical maw of needle-thin fangs.
Eyes burned red like coals left in the mouth of a furnace. No pupils.
A foul hiss escaped its throat as it grew in size, shadowy musculature bulging with each breath. It pulsed with darkness and hunger.
Thick patches of fur fell away, revealing shifting black flesh, barely stable. Where one claw ended, another began. Its form rippled inconsistently.
Wings sprouted out malformed. Bone-like arches folded against its back, stitched with black tendons and half-melted feathers, like a crow sewn to a wolf carcass by madness.
"...Is that normal dog behavior?!" Harry shrieked.
The thing that had been a dog screamed something between a roar and a broken trumpet as it launched itself into the air.
Lawley fired. Once. Twice. Three times. Four times, before emptying her entire clip into the beast.
Bullets pinged off its hide like rain against steel.
"What the hell?!" she yelled. "Why isn't it going down?!"
Felix ducked the next swipe and casually replied:
"Simple man-made weapons don't do much against low level demons."
"Well that information would've been useful before I started emptying my clip!"
The demonic dog pounced again, bounding off the walls, shattering wood, claws dragging across the floor like knives.
Harry screamed and hit the dirt. Lawley dove behind the table, fumbling for a fresh magazine.
The demon lunged.
Felix moved quickly. His eyes burned bright red.
The air shifted, dropping ten degrees in an instant. A pressure filled the room, like gravity had doubled. Candles flickered to life in the corners.
Felix caught the demon by its neck mid-air.
SLAM.
He threw it into the floor hard enough to splinter the wood.
It roared.
He hit it again. And again. Fists moving in brutal, precise arcs with no wasted movement, just sheer force and rage.
"You done?" he muttered, as it tried to claw away. It screeched in response.
Flames burst across Felix's hand. Hot, hungry, and unnatural. In the blink of an eye, they coalesced into a jagged obsidian dagger, edges still glowing red-hot.
He gripped it tight. No hesitation.
Then he drove it straight into the hellhound's chest.
SHRRRNNK.
A flash of light.
The beast convulsed once, let out a gurgled snarl and then burst into blue flames.
It shrieked as it burned into the floorboards, the fire swallowing its corrupted flesh until all that was left was a dog.
Small. Dead. Just a dog.
The smell of burnt ozone and sulfur filled the cabin.
Harry coughed and slowly peeked up from behind a knocked-over shelf.
"WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL WAS THAT?!"
Lawley's hands were still on her gun. She hadn't fired. She hadn't even breathed.
Felix rolled his shoulders, then knelt by the smoldering corpse.
The smoldering corpse on the floor was just a dog again. No claws. No split jaw. Just charred fur and the faint metallic glint of something around its neck.
He gently pushed aside a patch of burned fur and reached for the small, blackened dog tag hanging from a half-melted collar.
It clinked faintly in his fingers.
"It's an inmortui," he said quietly, mostly to himself. "Undead familiar. Witchcraft 101."
He held the tag up to the light. The engraving was nearly worn away, but he could still make out a name, Teddy.
"They bind a low-level demon to a corpse. Usually an animal. It keeps the body moving. Mindless, loyal, and programmed to kill anything the owner tells it to."
He sighed, pocketing the tag.
"This wasn't just a deterrent. The witch left it here to make sure no one walked out of this place alive."
Lawley looked down at the body, face unreadable.
"You're saying someone made that thing? Like a security system?"
"Exactly."
Still pale and buzzing with adrenaline, Harry muttered… "And that was a low-level demon?"
Felix stood, brushing ash from his pants knees.
"Yeah," he said flatly. "That was the budget version."
"But this was definitely a witch's doing," he said. "Only they can cloak a cabin like this... and create undead familiars."
Harry let out a manic laugh.
"Cool. Cool cool cool. So we just fought a dog-demon from Hell guarding a murder witch's AirBnB. Totally normal Wednesday."
Felix smiled.
"Well, I have good news" he said assuredly. "We're getting close."
"Close to what?" Lawley demanded.
Felix looked up. Hazel eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
"Finding the person who took those girls."