The night had completely fallen over the town. The streetlights turned on, seeping through the gaps in the blind and painting amber stripes of light on the bedroom floor.
Lief stretched, getting out of bed with a lazy slowness, and although his muscles felt totally relaxed, his mind remained strangely alert.
It had been an intense battle.
He looked back, toward the figure lying among the rumpled sheets.
Jennifer was fast asleep, wrapped in the sheets as if in a protective cocoon.
Lief curled the corner of his mouth into a smile of satisfaction, observing the slow rhythm of her breathing.
"Good try," he murmured "but you are going to need much more than that to leave me dry..."
!
He was about to look for his shoes when his heart gave a violent lurch. It was a sensation as if the floor disappeared under his feet and he plummeted.
And something told him that was... his agency.
Clients?
The smile disappeared from his face, replaced by a professional coldness. His base, which he had barely finished mentally materializing yesterday, already had its first visitor?
He wasted no time. He dressed with quick and efficient movements, buttoning his belt while his mind switched gears, leaving behind the warmth of the bedroom to enter business mode.
He walked toward the bedroom door, but his mind was not on the hallway of the house.
He concentrated intensely.
'Devil May Cry. Devil May Cry. Devil May Cry.'
He grabbed the doorknob and turned it.
Upon opening the door, the hallway of Jennifer's house was no longer there. In its place, the space he himself had designed stretched out.
A soft, diffuse red light emanated from a high, empty ceiling, bathing the spacious room in a crimson tone that suggested mystery and danger in equal measure.
And there, in front of his mahogany desk, was someone.
It was a woman.
In the reddish light, Lief could clearly distinguish her features, a face that evoked class and maturity.
She must have been around thirty something years old. She had wavy brown hair falling over her shoulders, framing a face with soft features but marked by an evident tension. Her eyes, large and a deep hazel color, looked at him with a mixture of confusion and panic.
She wore a dark office suit, elegant but wrinkled, as if she had carried the weight of the world on her shoulders all day.
Upon seeing the door open and a young man come out buttoning his shirt cuffs, the woman took a step back, visibly stunned.
Lief did not flinch. He closed the door behind him with a backhand.
Behind him, the wood creaked and faded into the reddish brick wall, as if the entrance to Jennifer's bedroom had never existed.
He walked calmly, ignoring her astonishment, and rounded the desk to drop into his imposing chair. He crossed his legs, interlaced his fingers on the polished surface of the table and observed her.
He did not look like an eighteen year old; his posture radiated the authority of someone who has seen things no one else would believe.
"Hello," he broke the silence first. His voice was calm, mature and lacking any hesitation. "Welcome to my office. How did you get here?"
The woman blinked, intimidated by the sudden authority that emanated from that boy.
"I..." Her voice broke. She cleared her throat and tried again, looking at him with those hazel eyes full of fear. "I do not... I do not know. I was working... Today, during the day, I looked up and saw a... door. A door that should not have been there, in the middle of a brick wall."
She paused, nervously moving her hands.
"It had 'Devil May Cry' written on the glass, and a small sign that said 'Solve all your worries'... At that moment I thought I was hallucinating from stress, that I was going crazy, and I ignored it."
"But after returning home tonight, the more I thought about it, the more I felt that something was wrong. There was a voice in my mind... urging me to look for that exit." Her eyes welled up. "I went to open my closet door to look for something and... and suddenly I was here."
Lief nodded slowly, processing the information.
The mechanism worked perfectly. It saved him the bother of marketing. The office reached those who needed it. Those who need to see the door, see it.
"I understand," he said leaning slightly forward with a faint smile on his lips. "Then, miss, tell me what is tormenting you. But I must warn you beforehand: the scope of my business is... very specific. And my rates are too."
"I only deal with matters that escape logic, those 'unconventional' things that the police cannot touch. And the remuneration I charge is not always money. Sometimes I accept objects of value... or favors." He said with a wink.
!
Upon hearing the implicit reference to the paranormal, the woman's body shuddered visibly. The fear in her eyes became more palpable, but in the depths of that darkness, Lief saw a small spark of desperate hope ignite.
...
"My name is Anna Tate-Garcia."
The woman took a deep breath, forcing her lungs to expand against the stiffness of her chest.
"I am a social worker at the child protection agency."
She paused, lowering her gaze toward her own hands, which did not stop trembling.
She seemed to be ordering the chaos in her mind before daring to verbalize it.
"My husband was a police officer. He died in the line of duty a few years ago... I am raising my two children alone." She swallowed, and the mask of composure cracked a little more. "Recently I was assigned a case. A woman named Patricia Alvarez. There were reports of negligence, so I went to verify."
She closed her eyes for a moment, reliving the scene.
"I found that she had locked her two children in a room behind a locked door. When I managed to enter... the room, the walls, everything was covered with strange symbols. There were candles, painted eyes... talismans to ward off evil..."
She raised her gaze toward Lief, and the guilt on her face became visible.
"I thought it was true abuse... I thought she was crazy and was dangerous," she confessed. "I ignored her pleas. I ignored her warnings that 'they' would not be safe if I took them out of there and I took the children away. I sent them to a temporary church shelter that same night, convinced that I was saving them..."
Her voice cut off and a solitary tear rolled down her cheek.
"B-But... that same early morning, they found the children. Their bodies appeared in a nearby river... both drowned."
"..."
Listening in silence, Lief's expression was inscrutable.
"Since that day... something happened to my house. Something changed." Anna finally let panic take control. "Weird things started happening! My son, Chris, got locked in the car and almost died of fright... he said he saw a woman. A ghost! And my daughter Samantha, while she was playing in the yard, while she was bathing... she also saw her! She saw that woman trying to grab her!"
She leaned over the desk, desperate, searching in those light blue eyes of Lief for some answer.
"It was Patricia... she hates me! She blamed me screaming at the crime scene," she sobbed. "S-She believes that I caused the death of her children and now... now I think she has cursed me. She wants that spirit to take my children to replace hers!"
Upon finishing her story, silence filled the office again.
"..."
Lief reclined slowly in his chair, taking a moment to swivel a little to the left and then to the right while he processed the information in his mind.
The situation was crystal clear.
A mother consumed by resentment had summoned or directed the attention of an entity toward the woman who, inadvertently, had condemned her children. An evil spirit that attacks children. An entity linked to water. A figure dressed in white that cries...
In the folklore of the entire American continent, there existed only one name that met all those macabre conditions.
"The Weeping Woman. La Llorona."
!
Anna raised her head suddenly, her eyes wide with shock.
"... You... you know what it is?"
"It is an ancient tragedy," Lief began to explain. "The legend speaks of a beautiful woman who, blinded by rage at her husband's betrayal, committed an act of madness and drowned her own children in the river with her hands."
He interlaced his fingers while staring fixedly at Anna.
"When she regained her reason and saw what she had done, pain and regret devoured her. She threw herself into the same river and committed suicide."
"But her soul found no rest. She became an evil spirit, condemned to wander eternally near water, crying and asking where her children are."
The red lighting of the office seemed to darken a little as he declared:
"She will take any child she sees. In her madness, she believes they are hers. She will drag them into the water, one by one, to drown them and keep them by her side forever."
"..."
The more Anna listened, her face lost all trace of color and her body swayed, forcing her to lean on the desk so as not to fall.
It was the confirmation of her worst nightmare: she was not crazy...
"..."
Lief observed her reaction, evaluating if the client could handle the pressure.
She seemed about to break, but the need to protect her children kept her standing.
Enough.
"I accept your request."
He stood up abruptly.
"Now, take me to your house."
...
Anna's house was submerged in a suffocating darkness, barely illuminated by the moonlight filtering through the closed curtains.
But the worst part was not the lack of light, but the silence.
Lief stopped in the center of the living room and closed his eyes.
He did not need to see to feel.
He extended his perception sweeping every room, every hallway and every dark corner... and bingo.
A sensation hit him, a sticky humidity.
He could feel the trace of a sadness so deep and old that it felt like drowning in icy water.
That negative energy permeated the walls like invisible mold.
And the source pulsed upstairs. Just above their heads.
Anna stayed glued to his back, her knuckles white from squeezing the small silver crucifix she held in her hand so hard.
The sound of her ragged breathing was the only thing breaking the sepulchral silence.
"S-She... she is upstairs, right?"
"That is right."
Lief opened his eyes and from out of nowhere took out a small glass vial, without a label, the "Spectral Vision" eye drops.
"What is that?" asked Anna.
"Something that will allow you to see reality clearly," responded Lief without giving her time to debate.
With a quick movement he held her chin to force her to raise her head and, although Anna tried to pull away, his grip was implacable.
"Do not move."
Before she could protest, Lief uncapped the vial with his thumb and let a single drop fall directly into her right eye provoking an immediate reaction.
"Ah! My God, it burns!" Anna screamed, bringing her hands to her face while reflex tears welled up immediately. "It burns!"
"Stop whining, it's over," said Lief letting her go. "Blink and look now."
Anna blinked furiously, trying to focus through the pain and tears. And then, the mist dissipated.
The world she knew became superimposed with a grayish and ethereal layer, revealing what had always been there, hidden in plain sight.
Her gaze was magnetically drawn toward the staircase.
On the second-floor landing, standing in the darkness, was a figure.
!
Anna felt her hands turn icy.
It was a woman.... Or so it seemed. She wore a white dress, that hung heavily from her body.
She was soaked.
Water kept gushing from her, falling in dark cascades from her clothes, creating a puddle that expanded over the wood of the upper floor.
A tattered veil covered her face, clinging to her features like a second damp skin.
"Ah...!" The scream strangled in Anna's throat, coming out like a choked shriek of pure terror.
!
The woman's head at the top of the stairs tilted toward them with a dry crack.
"My... children..."
A whisper that did not seem human, resonated throughout the room.
Swish
Instantly she rushed down. Her figure blurred into a white blur, skimming down the stairs with terrifying speed, seeking the life she perceived in the house.
"N-no..."
Terror invaded Anna making her legs give way until she collapsed to her knees, totally paralyzed.
But before that white blur could touch her, a figure stepped in its path: Lief took a step forward, blocking the spirit's trajectory and, far from showing panic, a faint smile formed on his face.
He raised both arms in a cross shape with open palms and, after a flash of light, the familiar weight of steel filled his hands.
Two pistols considered works of art of destruction materialized instantly: one black as a starless night and the other a resplendent silver.
Ebony & Ivory.
He aimed both directly at the veiled face of the figure lunging at them making time seem to freeze.
"I don't know where your children are," he declared, "but don't you even think about touching my client."
________
Time: If you're craving more (and I know you are!), I have just what you need. On my Patreon, you'll find exclusive chapters. Join our community and be the first to discover what happens next!
👉 [patreon.com/Athome790]
Your support fuels me. Thank you for the support! đź’–