Chapter 10 — Two Weeks Before the Confrontation
Father Moreno did not begin the next meeting with questions.
He began with rules.
The team gathered in the church basement the following morning. Thin winter light filtered through the narrow windows near the ceiling and laid pale bars across the long wooden table. The room smelled faintly of dust, candle wax, and old books.
Moreno remained standing.
That alone told the others the tone had changed.
“We have two weeks,” he said.
No one interrupted.
“Two weeks before we return to the house.”
Daniel leaned against the wall with his arms folded. Elias sat quietly with both hands resting on the table. Tomas had already opened his notebook. Cid waited without writing.
Moreno looked around the room.
“This is not a haunting investigation anymore,” he said.
He allowed the words to settle.
“It is a confrontation.”
The word did not sound dramatic in his voice.
Only exact.
Moreno rested both hands on the table.
“That means preparation.”
He turned to Elias.
“Prayer schedule.”
“Morning and evening,” Elias replied.
Moreno nodded.
“Fasting begins tomorrow.”
Daniel raised one eyebrow.
“For everyone?”
“For everyone.”
The answer came without explanation, which was explanation enough.
Moreno then looked toward Cid and Tomas.
“You two continue external observation.”
“Outside the house?” Tomas asked.
“Yes.”
“Every day?”
“Every day.”
Moreno’s voice remained calm, but there was no room inside it for argument.
“Patterns do not stop because we step away from them.”
Cid understood what that meant.
They would keep returning to Loomis Street.
Watching.
Timing.
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Recording.
Waiting.
Moreno opened the Loomis file again.
“The boy is the center of the case.”
No one disagreed.
“The entity has chosen him for attention.”
Elias spoke quietly.
“Because of the board.”
Moreno nodded once.
“Yes.”
He closed the file.
“But we still do not know its nature.”
Daniel glanced toward the ceiling.
“Meaning?”
Moreno answered immediately.
“We prepare for the worst.”
That ended the formal briefing.
The real preparation had already begun.
---
The first week settled into a discipline that felt almost military in its simplicity.
Morning prayer.
Work.
Observation.
Evening prayer.
No alcohol.
No casual distractions.
Fasting every other day.
Moreno insisted on that rhythm not because ritual guaranteed protection, but because discipline strengthened the mind. And the mind was usually the first place something like this tried to break a person.
Cid spent most of those days with Tomas.
They returned to Loomis Street repeatedly, sometimes in the morning while frost still clung to the sidewalks, sometimes late at night when only the streetlights and an occasional passing car disturbed the block.
They recorded everything.
Temperatures.
Interior lights.
Window movement.
Street noise.
Most days the house looked painfully ordinary.
Children rode bicycles past it. A delivery truck stopped once across the street. The snow along the curb softened during daylight and hardened again after sunset.
Nothing moved behind the curtains.
No figure appeared at the window.
No sound carried out through the walls.
Still, Cid never felt at ease standing there.
The feeling was always the same.
Not danger.
Attention.
As if something inside the house already knew exactly where he was and had decided it could wait.
---
The second week changed the shape of things.
Not at Loomis.
At the church.
It began during evening prayer.
The family had joined them that night. The father sat beside the mother. The grandmother held her rosary so tightly the beads left white marks across her fingers. The boy sat at the end of the table with a pencil and paper in front of him.
He had been drawing again.
Moreno noticed first.
“What are you drawing tonight?”
The boy held up the paper.
The stairs again.
The woman again.
But something new had entered the picture.
A doorway.
Moreno studied it for several seconds.
“Where is that door?”
The boy pointed to the drawing.
“At the bottom of the stairs.”
Daniel glanced toward Elias.
“There’s no door there.”
“I know,” Moreno said.
He handed the drawing back.
“Did she tell you about it?”
The boy shook his head.
“No.”
“Then how do you know it’s there?”
The answer came without hesitation.
“I see it when I sleep.”
No one spoke for a moment.
Moreno closed his eyes briefly.
Not in frustration.
In calculation.
Then he resumed the prayer as if the interruption had become part of the work.
---
Three days before they planned to return to Loomis Street, Cid felt the pressure for the first time away from the house.
He was alone in the hallway outside the basement. Tomas had stepped outside to take a phone call. The others were still downstairs.
Cid stood near the stairwell, listening to the muffled sound of prayer rising through the building.
The church felt unusually quiet.
Held.
A faint draft moved through the corridor.
Then he heard something.
Not words.
Not a voice.
A melody.
Soft.
Familiar.
Wrong.
For a moment he could not place it.
Then he knew.
The same tune he had heard earlier in the investigation.
The one that had followed the clocks and the cold.
It sounded distant, as if someone were humming without realizing they were being heard.
Cid turned slowly.
The hallway behind him was empty.
The sound stopped immediately.
When Tomas returned a minute later, Cid said nothing.
Not yet.
---
The final night before they planned to return to Loomis Street, the team gathered again in the basement.
Moreno reviewed the plan one last time.
No improvisation.
No unnecessary talk.
No direct response to anything the entity might say.
“Control is your first defense,” he said. “Emotion is the second thing it will try to break.”
Daniel nodded once.
Elias closed the Loomis file.
Everything was ready.
Almost.
At the far end of the table, the boy had been drawing again in silence. When he finished, he slid the page across the wood.
Moreno looked down.
The drawing showed the stairs again.
The woman again.
But this time she was not alone.
Six small figures stood at the top of the stairs.
Simple stick forms.
But unmistakable.
The team.
Moreno studied the paper carefully.
“Did you draw us?” he asked.
The boy nodded.
Then he said something that drained the sound from the room.
“She said you were coming.”
No one spoke.
The boy lowered his eyes to the drawing.
Then he added, almost gently,
“She’s ready.”
Moreno did not answer immediately.
He studied the page for a long moment.
Then he closed the Loomis file.
Two weeks of preparation were over.
Tomorrow they would return to the house.
