Chapter 16: Surprise, Oh My God!!!
By the time they made it back to New York, night had settled in thick and quiet, the sky draped in deep, velvety dark.
Both cities sat on the East Coast, sure — but New York and Boston were in different states, and the round trip had eaten up the better part of nine hours.
Which meant that since buying the house the morning before yesterday, Rango had not closed his eyes for close to sixty hours straight.
His fitness was better than most — years of training had built him a body that could take a beating and keep going — but sixty hours without sleep was pushing it, even for him. On the drive back, he'd nodded off more than once, his head dipping forward before he caught himself. Both Ted and M3GAN had offered to take the wheel so he could stretch out in the back seat and actually rest.
But Rango didn't trust either of them behind the wheel. Not after the number of fender benders he'd already written checks for on Ted's behalf. And when it came to driving, Rango had a rule he lived by: the only time he felt safe closing his eyes, even for a minute, was when he was the one holding the steering wheel.
Anyway — by the time he pulled into the driveway, there was an hour and a half left before his next shift at the museum.
After a quick dinner — M3GAN had, as usual, put together something excellent — Rango headed for the bathroom. His nightly ritual before heading to work. A hot bath, a few minutes to decompress, and then back out the door.
He sank into the tub, eyes half-closed, shoulders dropping into the water. Steam curled around him in lazy, slow spirals. For a few minutes, the tension of the past two days just... melted. His expression went soft, almost peaceful, as if the haunted house, the ghosts, the demon, all of it — had temporarily ceased to exist.
The bathroom filled with warmth and quiet. Minutes ticked by.
And then, in the thick cloud of steam, something began to take shape.
A figure. Massive. Broad-shouldered, heavy-set, emerging from the mist like something out of a nightmare. In one hand, a long-handled axe, the blade dark and worn with age.
Moore James.
The name alone carried weight. Decades ago, Moore had been one of the most feared serial killers in New York — a man who had terrorized the city with a brutal, systematic efficiency that left investigators scrambling. In a single night, he had used that axe to slaughter four entire families. When the manhunt closed in, he fled — stumbling, half-delirious, into this villa, which had been abandoned at the time.
He'd come here to end it. To finish his own life in a place where no one would find him.
Instead, his soul had gotten stuck. Bound to the house. Turned into something that couldn't leave and couldn't move on.
Now, Moore stood in the steam, staring at the silhouette behind the shower curtain with a slow, cruel smile spreading across his face.
Just like the old days.
He remembered it perfectly — the way it used to go. Slipping into someone's home in the dead of night. Waiting until they were asleep, relaxed, vulnerable. Then the axe. Quick. Final. The sounds they made — the gasps, the screams — those were the parts he savored.
He gripped the axe tighter. His pulse quickened with anticipation.
One big step forward. His hand closed around the edge of the curtain and he ripped it back.
The axe came down in a vicious arc, aimed straight for the throat — a clean, practiced swing, the kind of motion that had ended lives before.
It never connected.
A muscular arm, thick with veins and corded with muscle, shot up from the water and caught the axe handle mid-swing. Locked it in place like it was nothing.
Then the other fist came.
Rango's right hand was wrapped in a black leather knuckle duster — a cross etched into the surface, faintly glowing with the same blue light that had haunted every ghost who'd made the mistake of showing themselves. The punch landed square in Moore's face with the kind of force that didn't just hit — it detonated.
Crack.
Moore's bloated, ugly features crumpled. More than half his face was gone in an instant, sliced clean off by the impact, thick black smoke pouring from the wound like blood from an open artery. He hit the bathroom floor hard, the axe clattering from his grip.
Rango didn't give him a second to recover.
He was out of the tub in one fluid motion — water streaming off him, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts — and before Moore had even finished hitting the ground, Rango was on him. One knee drove down onto the ghost's neck, pinning him flat. The other hand was already cocked back.
"You want to try that again?" Rango's voice was low, cold, and completely calm.
Crack.
The knuckle duster amplified every punch several times over. Each hit was less a strike and more a dismantling — precise, brutal, and utterly without mercy. Two heavy blows, and Moore's body was already coming apart at the seams, the spiritual structure holding him together fraying like wet paper.
"P-please—" Moore wheezed, his voice barely a sound. "Can't — breathe — let me go—"
Rango laughed. It wasn't a warm sound.
"Let you go?"
He thought about it for exactly zero seconds.
Of all the times these ghosts had decided to mess with him, they kept picking the exact same moment — the bath, the shower, the one five minutes of peace he got in a twenty-four-hour day. The maid ghost, at least, had been easy on the eyes. But this? A rotting, stinking serial killer with an axe?
Every hour of sleep he'd lost. Every time he'd been grabbed, startled, harassed. The fury that had been simmering for two days finally found its outlet, and Rango let it.
He pinned Moore's wrist to the floor with his left foot — crushing it until the ghost couldn't even twitch — pressed his right knee harder into the neck, and started hitting. Methodically. Relentlessly. Each punch with the knuckle duster carved another chunk out of Moore's already wrecked face, black smoke billowing with every impact.
Inside the walls, dozens of ghosts were watching.
They'd seen a lot of things in this house over the past century. They'd seen fear, panic, tragedy, love, betrayal — the full spectrum of human ugliness and beauty, all played out within these walls. But this — watching one of their own get taken apart piece by piece, in real time, by a half-naked man with a glowing fist — that was new.
"This guy is getting worse," one of them whispered, pressing back against the inside of the wall. "Moore couldn't even touch him—"
"We need to leave. Right now. Just being near this is making me sick—"
"Yeah, let's go — if he finds us here—"
"Everyone, calm down."
Dr. Arden's voice cut through the panic like a blade. The ghosts turned to look at their self-appointed leader, who had pressed himself into the corner of the wall cavity with his arms crossed and his jaw set.
"Think," he said, sharp and commanding. "Yes, his methods are savage. But there's one thing he still can't do — and that's find us when we don't want to be found. He's in the open. We're in the walls. We have time. We have the advantage. We just need to be smart about this."
The panicked murmurs quieted — not completely, but enough. Arden was right. As long as they stayed hidden, Rango couldn't touch them. The man could tear himself apart with rage all he wanted. It didn't matter if he couldn't see them.
Could afford to hide. That was the key phrase. They could stay in these walls for decades if they had to. Patient. Invisible. Untouchable.
Arden's expression darkened as he turned the situation over in his mind. "Everyone — back to the basement. We regroup, we reassess. Assassination is off the table. We pivot to poison. That's our play."
"What about Moore? Should we—"
"Save Moore?" Arden's laugh was short and humorless. "Let's focus on saving ourselves first."
He turned and started moving through the wall toward the basement — the place where most of them had originally died, the spot in the house where the energy was heaviest and darkest. The one place where all of them felt the most... solid. The most real.
Crack.
A sound like a tree splitting in half.
Every ghost in the wall froze.
An axe blade punched through the wooden partition from the other side — clean, sharp, sudden. And then a face appeared in the gap.
Rango. Dripping wet. Bare-chested. A cold, almost playful smile on his face. Moore's axe resting casually on his shoulder like it belonged there.
And his eyes — for the first time — were looking directly at them.
"Found you," he said, softly.
"RUN!" Arden screamed.
Every ghost in the wall dissolved into green smoke and scattered — shooting through floors, walls, ceilings, moving in every direction at once, a chaotic explosion of fleeing spirits.
Rango watched them go. Didn't rush. Didn't chase.
He simply lifted the axe off his shoulder, set it gently back against the wall, and started walking — slow, unhurried, barefoot on the creaking floorboards — toward the basement stairs.
He was humming something. A tune without words, light and almost cheerful, completely at odds with what had just happened.
In the basement, every ghost in the villa had crammed themselves back into the same cramped space — the same circle, the same nervous energy, the same desperate, cornered feeling as before.
The relief of having survived another few minutes was written on every face. But underneath it, the fear had grown teeth.
"He — he could see us," someone said, voice shaking. "He looked right at us. He knew we were there."
"That's right. He said something to us. He said hello—"
"Shit. I told everyone we shouldn't have provoked him. What the hell do we do now? We can't leave this house—"
"Quiet. Everyone quiet."
Arden held up a hand, and the room — grudgingly — shut up.
"Listen to me," he said, forcing his voice into something steady. "So what if he can see us? Think about where we are. We're in the basement. The walls are thick. The door is solid wood. As long as we stay in here — packed in, hidden, not moving — he would have to tear this entire house down to get to us." He looked around at the frightened faces. "We hide. We wait. Nothing happens."
For a few seconds, that almost worked. A few of the younger ghosts unclenched slightly, letting out shaky breaths.
Then footsteps. From outside the basement door.
Slow. Deliberate. Getting closer.
And then a voice — casual, almost conversational, with just the faintest edge of amusement underneath it.
"You guys all in there? If nobody says anything, I'm coming in."
Dead silence.
"Scatter!" Arden hissed. "Now! Run first, regroup later—"
He was the first one to move — throwing himself toward the nearest wall, phasing through the wood—
And bouncing straight back.
His body hit the concrete floor and immediately started to sizzle. A foul, acrid smell filled the air as dark rot spread across his spiritual form in ugly, branching patterns, black smoke curling off him in thick ribbons.
"Holy water!" he shrieked, scrambling backward on the floor. "The walls — he sprinkled holy water on the walls!"
The basement erupted.
Ghost after ghost lunged for the exits — the walls, the ceiling, anywhere — and ghost after ghost was thrown back. Every surface had been treated. The holy water burned on contact, searing through spiritual bodies like acid, leaving smoking, disintegrating wounds in its wake.
Some made it two steps before collapsing. Others didn't even get that far.
The room filled with black smoke and the sounds of pain — hisses, groans, cries of shock and agony. Ghosts curled on the floor, clutching at burns that wouldn't stop spreading. A few had already buried their faces in their arms, shaking, because they understood what this meant.
They were trapped.
For a long moment, no one moved. No one spoke. The only sound was the quiet, awful hissing of holy water doing its work.
Then — from outside the door — Rango's voice again. A little annoyed this time, like someone dealing with a mildly inconvenient obstacle.
"Locked? Huh. That's a pain."
Footsteps. Retreating.
A flicker of hope — desperate, paper-thin — rippled through the room. A few ghosts lifted their heads. Maybe he'd given up. Maybe he'd—
THWACK.
The thick wooden door shuddered. A long axe blade had punched clean through it from the other side, biting deep into the wood.
THWACK. THWACK. THWACK.
Again. And again. Each strike tore a bigger chunk out of the door, splintering it, widening the gap inch by inch. The sound was rhythmic, almost casual — like someone chopping firewood on a Sunday afternoon.
The ghosts in the basement didn't move. Couldn't move. They just watched — frozen, packed together, backs against the holy-water-soaked walls — as the hole in the door grew wider and wider and wider.
The axe blade pulled back one final time.
And then a face appeared in the gap.
Rango. Half-naked, still damp from the bath, eyes bright with something that was equal parts fury and sharp, dangerous amusement. The axe dangled loosely from one hand at his side. And on his face — spread wide and completely, utterly unhinged — was a grin.
He looked at them. Every single one of them.
And then, slowly, leaning into the gap in the door like he was delivering a line he'd been saving all night, he said:
"Surprise, motherfucker."
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