Chapter 19: SHE SEES YOU
The corridor stretched forever in both directions.
Stone walls, slick with moisture that couldn't be water. Torches flickered in sconces that dripped rust-colored fluid. The air tasted wrong—metallic and sweet, like blood left too long in the sun.
I'd been here before. Every night for the past month. The same corridor. The same wrongness. The same presence waiting at the far end.
My feet moved without my permission, carrying me toward the darkness where the torches didn't reach. I tried to stop, to turn, to wake up—but dreams don't obey the dreamer. Not these dreams.
She waited in the shadows.
A nun's habit, black and flowing, the veil obscuring what lay beneath. But I could see enough. Glimpses of rotted flesh where a face should be. A smile that was more wound than expression. Eyes that weren't eyes—just darkness looking back at darkness.
She never spoke. That was almost worse. She just pointed at me with a finger that bent in too many directions, and watched, and smiled that terrible smile.
"Soon," something whispered. Not her. Something behind her. Something that used her like a puppet. "Soon, little anomaly. We are all waiting."
I woke gasping, sheets soaked with sweat, the taste of sulfur coating my tongue.
3:07 AM. The clock on my nightstand glowed red in the darkness. Always 3:07. The witching hour. The demonic mockery of the Trinity.
The smell was still here. Faint but present—sulfur and something else, something organic and wrong. It lingered in my apartment like smoke from a fire that had burned somewhere else entirely.
I sat on the edge of my bed, Ed's rosary clutched in my hands, and prayed until dawn.
Lorraine opened the door before I could knock.
"You look terrible," she said. Not unkindly. Just stating fact.
"Thank you."
"When's the last time you slept properly?"
I had to think about it. "Maybe September? Before the Henderson case."
That was over a month ago. The nightmares had started the night after Valak first appeared in my dreams, and they hadn't stopped since. Every night, the same corridor. Every night, the same nun. Every night, I woke at 3:07 with sulfur on my tongue and fear in my bones.
Lorraine stepped aside to let me in. The Warren house was warm as always, familiar now after nearly two years of visits. Ed was in Boston for a lecture series. Judy was at school. We had the place to ourselves.
Tea appeared in front of me before I asked for it. Lorraine sat across the kitchen table, her own cup untouched, watching me with those eyes that saw too much.
"Tell me about the dreams."
I told her.
The corridor. The torches. The nun who wasn't a nun. The pointing finger. The voice that whispered promises I didn't want to understand.
As I spoke, Lorraine's face changed. The color drained from her cheeks. Her hands trembled slightly around her cup—the first time I'd ever seen her show fear so openly.
"Describe her again," she said when I finished. "Every detail. The habit. The face. The way she moves."
I described it again. The rotted flesh. The smile that split too wide. The way she seemed to glide rather than walk, as if her feet didn't quite touch the ground.
Lorraine closed her eyes.
When she opened them, they were wet with tears she wouldn't let fall.
"I've seen her too," she said quietly. "We all have. Everyone who does this work long enough eventually sees her."
"Who is she?"
"Don't ask me that." The words came out sharp. Frightened. "Don't ask me her name. Don't speak of her to anyone. Not even Ed. Especially not Ed."
"Lorraine—"
"Please, Paul." Her hand found mine across the table, gripping tight. "There are things you're not ready to know. Things that knowing won't help. Just understand this: something old has noticed you. The same presence that haunts my visions. It watches those who threaten it. And you—" She stopped. Swallowed. Started again. "You've been noticed."
"Why me? I'm nobody."
"You're not nobody." Her eyes met mine with an intensity that made my skin prickle. "That's exactly the problem. You're something it hasn't seen before. Something it wants to understand. And when it finishes understanding..."
She didn't complete the sentence. She didn't need to.
"What do I do?"
"You keep working. You keep praying. You keep helping people." Lorraine released my hand, picked up her tea, forced herself to drink. "And you don't let fear stop you. Fear is what it feeds on. Fear is what gives it power. The moment you stop fighting because you're afraid—that's when it wins."
I thought about Danny Miller in his pool, dragging me under because I'd gotten careless. About the Morrison demon that had nearly killed me because I'd been arrogant. About Malthus in the artifact room, whispering secrets it shouldn't know.
Wrong soul. Wrong body. Wrong world.
How many demons knew about me now? How many were watching, waiting, planning?
"What if I'm not strong enough?"
"Then you get stronger." Lorraine set down her cup. "That's all any of us can do."
She drove me home as darkness fell over Connecticut.
The radio played oldies—Buddy Holly, Elvis, songs from a decade that felt like ancient history. Neither of us spoke. There wasn't anything left to say.
I watched the dark trees pass outside my window. Bare branches clawing at the gray sky. The world felt smaller than it had that morning. Smaller and more dangerous.
Something old has noticed you.
The words echoed in my head like a curse.
"Paul." Lorraine's voice broke the silence as she pulled up outside my apartment building. "What I said in there—about not telling Ed. I don't mean you should lie to him. Just... wait. Let me handle that conversation. There are things he doesn't know. Things I've protected him from."
"Things about the nun?"
"Things about what she represents." Lorraine's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Ed has his faith. His certainty. I won't take that from him by telling him what I've seen. What we both see now."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to point out that secrets between partners rarely ended well. But I remembered my own secrets—the transmigration, the system, the meta-knowledge I carried like a weight in my chest—and I kept my mouth shut.
"I understand."
"Do you?" She turned to look at me fully. "Because this isn't just about discretion. This is about survival. The thing watching you—it wants you to talk about it. It wants to spread. Every time someone speaks its name, thinks about it, fears it—it grows stronger. Silence is protection."
I thought about that for a long moment.
"Then why did you let me tell you?"
"Because you needed to know you're not alone." A small smile crossed her face—sad but genuine. "And because I'm strong enough to carry a little more darkness. God knows I've been carrying it for years."
I got out of the car. Stood on the sidewalk as she drove away, her taillights disappearing into the evening gloom.
Upstairs, I stood in my empty apartment and looked around at the life I'd built in this world. The case files stacked on my desk. The rosary on my nightstand. The journal Lorraine had given me, half-filled with prayers and notes and observations.
Two years since I'd woken in a hospital bed with a dead man's memories and a system in my head. Two years of ghosts and demons and battles I'd barely survived. And now something worse was coming. Something that had noticed me specifically. Something that was waiting.
I knelt beside my bed, rosary in hand, and prayed.
"Whatever watches me—give me strength to face it when the time comes. Whatever hunts me—let me be ready when it arrives. Whatever darkness gathers—let my light be enough."
Sleep came eventually. The corridor appeared, as it always did. The torches flickered. The nun waited.
But this time, when she pointed at me, I didn't flinch.
"Soon," the voice whispered.
"I know," I answered. "And I'll be ready."
The nun's smile widened. And somewhere in the darkness behind her, something laughed.
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