Smaller Windows

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.

My gaze swept across the façade, scanning for potential entry points. Data lit up in my vision—weak spots in the structure, the dull shimmer of reinforced windows, and finally, the faint outline of an open third-floor window.

It highlighted in red: Optimal Entry Point.

The window was just wide enough to permit a fool with no better options.

I gritted my teeth, stepping closer to the wall. My hand reached out, the cybernetic joints whining softly as I tested the first hold. The augmented strength was there, sure, but it came at a price. Every pull of my arm sent a jarring vibration up through my shoulder, a reminder of how much harder my body had to work just to keep up. My muscles burned beneath the weight of the climb.

As I closed in on the third floor, my boot slipped as a chunk of the facade crumbled away beneath me, the stone fragment tumbling noiselessly into the yawning void below. For a heart-stopping moment, I dangled, my fingers clawing desperately for something solid. The world tilted, my vision swimming as I glanced down at the ground, now a dizzying blur of shadow and distance. My stomach lurched.

I hate heights.

I managed to get my grip and finish hauling myself up the side of the house.

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.

“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.

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.

“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 activated my HUD and analyzed the marks for potential causes: animal? humanoid? Unknown.

Fat lot of good you are.

I dimmed the HUD and 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 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.

I moved upstairs, reaching the master bedroom. Odd—everything seemed untouched. A collection of jewelry, a bed made with military precision, and a bare spot on the nightstand, dust rings clearly marking where something had once been. A music box, if I had to guess. But the room didn’t feel… right. As if it were nothing but a stage set after the actors had long since abandoned the scene.

I rifled through the drawers, trying to ignore Frank’s snide remarks—“Oh, sure, because that’s where the clues are, Jack, next to the socks.“ Nothing substantial—expensive silks and satin, unaffected by anything significant.

My attention turned back to the study, something gnawing at my thoughts. I returned, the air even colder now, almost oppressive, pressing down with the weight of what happened here. There—a faint seam in the wall, an imperceptible line only visible when you knew what to look for. My fingers traced along it, feeling for some inconsistency. A small indent gave way under pressure, and the wall shifted aside—a door within a door, sliding into darkness.

I toggled a filter, and the scene shifted. Heat signatures glowed faintly along the edges of the floor, marking where someone—or something—had passed recently. My breath hitched.

Inside, the passageway pressed in, narrow and suffocating—barely wide enough for me to edge through, with shelves crowding both walls, their edges biting into me. The shelves were stuffed, cluttered—artifacts, old books, bizarre relics stacked side by side, drenched in dust and something else—an energy that made my skin crawl. It was wrong, unholy—the kind of magic that left residue on your soul from being near it. The relics whispered secrets from the past, but they were empty—dead echoes. Everything here was nothing but a shell of its former power.

There were jars—dozens of them, filled with murky liquid, things suspended inside that I couldn’t quite make out. Shapes twisted and floated, their forms distorted, like fetuses or things pretending to be fetuses, each one staring back at me with milky, sightless eyes. I felt bile rising in my throat and swallowed it back down, the sour burn stinging my nostrils.

Except for that pedestal—a smooth surface, devoid of dust. Something had been here, and recently taken. My gut tightened, suspicion turning to certainty. My eyes swept the floor, catching the glint of something small and unexpected—a matchbox. Bright red, with garish lettering. Lux, a strip club down on the West Side. The kind of place where secrets were both currency and commodity. I knew it well, and that made my stomach drop.

Next to the matchbox was something else—a poker chip. Black with silver inlay and a sapphire embedded in the center. Sapphire Club. Cat’s place. The sight of it made my jaw tighten. So, McGuffey had a knack for the illegal to go along with his stupid.

As I pocketed the matchbox and chip, silence claimed the house once more, but this time, it was a waiting silence—an expectancy hanging in the air like a held breath.

The walls seemed to close in, and I could almost hear it—the low hum of something alive, something malevolent, lingering inches beyond perception. The floor beneath my feet was soft, as though it would give way at any moment, plunging me into the bowels of the earth. I shook the feeling off, but it clung to me like cobwebs. The stench of blood and rot thickened, the oppressive darkness pushing against my senses. The McGuffey estate wasn’t just haunted—it was damned, and I had a sinking suspicion that whatever was left here wasn’t done with me yet.

I retraced my steps, the creak of the old boards beneath my weight. Each noise sounded like a sinister reminder of what had happened here, or worse, a hint of what was yet to come. The air thickened around me, heavy, like I was wading through something invisible but deeply oppressive. Shadows moved in ways that weren’t quite natural, shifting too quickly, clinging to corners and seeming to breathe on their own.

There was something wet on the banister—dried, crusted blood, fingerprints smudged into grotesque shapes. Whoever had been here before had tried to scrub it off, but some stains don’t leave. They soak deeper, festering in the bones of the house. My hand jerked back, and I wiped it against my coat, swallowing down the disgust that rose up, hot and acidic.

I reached the kitchen—another place of supposed normalcy that had turned into something of a sick joke. Cabinets had been left open, their contents spilled out across the floor—glass shattered, herbs strewn, bags of flour torn open, the white powder mingling with streaks of dark red, coagulating in the corners. The refrigerator door hung open, and the light inside flickered intermittently, casting strange, stuttering flashes across the room. The rotting smell hit me before I even got close—a thick, fetid reek of spoiled meat and decay that made me gag. Something shifted in the fridge, and I dared not look closer.

On the floor, next to the scattered shards of a porcelain plate, was a trail of crimson droplets, leading me onward, like a breadcrumb path meant to lure in the foolish. Frank was silent, and that was the worst part—his usual snark absent, leaving me alone in a silence that seemed to pulse with malevolent intent.

“Don’t like this,” I said, voice a faint scratch, eaten up by the house’s shadows. My eyes followed the trail—it led back to the hall, to a door beneath the stairs I hadn’t noticed before. It was ajar, barely, a thin line of darkness spilling out, like ink spreading across a page.

My fingers touched the handle, and it was cold—unnaturally so. I pulled it open, and the hinges protested, a loud, screeching wail that reverberated throughout the entire house. The darkness within seemed to spread out, rolling over my feet, seeping into the hallway. A chill ran across my skin; a clammy, death-like cold.

I stepped inside. The basement was pitch black, the kind of dark that seemed to swallow the beam of my flashlight. The stairs groaned under my weight, and I descended slowly, each step a commitment I wasn’t sure I could keep. The air was damp, and it stank—of mildew, rot, and something metallic. My light caught on something hanging from the ceiling—a rope, frayed at the end, swinging slightly as if disturbed by an invisible breeze.

Beneath it, the concrete floor was stained—a dark pool, almost black in the dim light. Blood, a lot of it, more than any one person should be able to lose. There were other things here—scratches on the walls, symbols I didn’t recognize, etched deeply into the cement, as if someone had carved them with desperate, bleeding fingers.

A noise came then, from somewhere deeper in the dark—a soft, almost imperceptible shuffle. My light swung towards it, the beam trembling. Something moved out of sight, a shadow slipping away, melting into the black. I swallowed hard, my mouth dry. Whatever had happened here, it had left a mark—a stain not just on the walls and floors, but on the very soul of this place.

The feeling of being watched returned, stronger now. Eyes in the dark, watching, waiting, hungry. I backed away slowly, the beam of my flashlight shaking as I swept it across the basement. I turned, moving quickly up the stairs, the darkness pressing in behind me, almost pushing me forward. I slammed the door shut, breathing hard, the sound slithering through the empty house—alive, and hungry. And I had no doubt that it wanted me. Whatever dark force had claimed this place, it wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot.

The sharp clatter of metal hitting the floor shattered the silence, as piercing as a gunshot in the stillness. Instinct seized me—I ducked behind a desk, my fingers brushing the cool steel of my gun. I strained to hear over the adrenaline roaring in my ears. The shadows in the room thickened, stretching into the kind of darkness that made your gut twist with primal dread. The silence felt… alive, vibrating with a low, insidious hum, as if the whole building was holding its breath.

I stole a glance over the edge. In the dim, rust-flecked light, a figure moved, rummaging through a pile of boxes—no more than a silhouette, all fluid and wrong. They moved too smoothly, almost gliding, like they were less solid and more an idea that hadn’t quite made up its mind. The hairs on my neck stood. The creeping sensation of being somewhere I shouldn’t. It wasn’t just them being here that was wrong—it was them . Like they’d been peeled out of a nightmare and set loose, something that should never have existed in the daylight, let alone here, in this derelict place. The air grew colder, the kind of chill that seeps into your bones, leaving you brittle and ready to shatter.

The figure stilled, head cocked to one side, listening. I held my breath, tried to focus. Then they turned, and for one chilling second, we locked eyes—or I think we did. I couldn’t see their face, but I could feel their gaze, cold and sharp like a knife pressing against my ribs. There was no mistaking it—they knew I was here. A smile might have curled at the edge of their shadowed face, or maybe that was my mind conjuring demons.

The figure bolted, and something snapped inside me—I vaulted over the desk, feet slamming the ground hard, already in pursuit.

They were fast, too fast. The kind of fast that should come with a warning label. They flowed through the shadows, a whisper of movement in the darkened hallways, while I thundered after them, the air crackling with something wrong. Like static electricity before a storm. My legs pumped, muscles straining as I pushed myself harder, chasing the ghost that shouldn’t exist.

Every door we passed seemed to watch, every darkened corner a mouth ready to swallow me whole. My breaths were ragged, the burn of my muscles spreading like wildfire. I rounded a corner and caught sight of them, a flicker, before they slipped into the next room. Each step was a risk—one misstep, and I’d end up god-knows-where, maybe tangled in the thing’s wake. The walls seemed to shift, narrowing, leaning closer, as if the building itself wanted to close in on me, crush me under its weight.

They hit the main room, and I wasn’t far behind, adrenaline narrowing my vision. They made a sudden, desperate dive for the window. There was a split-second where time slowed—the glint of the moonlight, the jagged shards of glass—then everything shattered. The window exploded, the figure going through like it was nothing, disappearing into the night. Glass shards rained down, and I heard myself curse, rushing forward to the broken window.

I caught a fleeting glimpse of them—a blurred shadow sprinting away, swallowed by the dark. They left behind a jagged hole in the world, an emptiness that crawls under your skin like a slow, burning itch you can’t quite reach. My hands trembled as I gripped the window frame, shards of glass biting into my palms, pain barely registering over the pounding of my pulse. I couldn’t let them get away—not now, not after everything.

Blood. Smeared across the glass—dark, shimmering under the moonlight like a perverse constellation. Evidence. Or maybe more. I knelt, pulling a piece of the glass free. Slick with their blood. There were spells for this. Dangerous ones. But then again, “dangerous” was just another day at the office lately. I could almost hear the mocking voice of my old mentor: “Play with fire, get burned. Play with blood, and, well... you know how that story ends.”

The silence in the house shifted as I straightened up, the rush of the chase ebbing out of me, leaving only exhaustion. The wrongness, the creeping sense of being hunted, didn’t disappear, but it took a step back—like a predator deciding, for now, to let its prey run. The shadows seemed to watch, judging, weighing whether I was worth the effort.

I backed out the way I came, careful, my steps deliberate. Whoever—whatever—I was chasing wasn’t going to make it easy. But neither was I. There was someone who could track this blood—if I was lucky, he wouldn’t turn me into a toad for showing up unannounced. He wasn’t exactly the sort of guy you called for casual favors. More like the kind of guy you reached out to when your life was dangling by a thread and you’d run out of better options. The kind of guy who made deals with devils and walked away with a smile.

The chill of the building seemed to cling to me as I made my way back to the window I’d entered through, the shattered glass crunching beneath my boots. I took one last look at the room, the shadows shifting like something alive, something waiting. I needed a drink. And maybe a friend’s shoulder to cry on. Or, if I was lucky, a night where I didn’t end up dodging fists or spells or worse. A guy could dream, right?

I climbed out the window, dropping down into the alley below. The night was cold, biting, and I pulled my coat tighter around me, the bloodied shard of glass safe in my pocket. The city stretched out before me, a labyrinth of darkened streets and flickering neon, the kind of place where nightmares were right at home. Somewhere out there, the figure was running, hiding, and I intended to find them. No matter what.

First stop—a drink. Then maybe a visit to an old “friend.” And after that? Well, there was always another nightmare waiting, another shadow to chase. And I was getting pretty damn good at chasing shadows.