Lightning slashed across the sky so suddenly, so viciously bright, that for a heartbeat it was day again — trees glistening under sheets of rain, puddles swelling like burst veins, clouds crouching low and heavy as if ready to crush the world.

The storm wasn't just raging — it had broken loose, bellowing like a tide before it hits the shore.

Inside the trailer, the air had thickened, clinging to the skin. The lamp on the ceiling flickered fitfully, like an eyelid fluttering before death.

Leticia sat motionless, listening — not to the thunder, but to the silence between the thunder. Her fingers moved over the charms around her neck, one by one, slow and methodical, as though remembering a sequence from an old prayer.

"Do you feel it?" she whispered, voice dry, almost reverent.

William looked up. It took him a moment to realize she wasn't talking about the storm.

Because beneath the thunder there was something else — a faint metallic rattling, steady, deliberate.

Like footsteps in the mud.

"No," he breathed. "Not now…"

Leticia rose.

"They're coming. Faster than I thought." Her eyes darted toward the body on the floor. The trailer seemed to tremble each time its chest rose and fell.

Outside, the wind screamed and a shutter banged against the wall. The next thunderclap wasn't thunder at all — it bent, twisted halfway into a cry so wrong that every hair on William's neck stood up.

"This isn't the storm," Leticia whispered.

The trailer jolted — hard, as if struck by a vehicle.

Dishes crashed to the floor, the lamp swung madly.

William hit his knee.

"What the h—" he started, before another impact cut him off.

Now he could see it. The aluminum walls shuddering under dozens of hits, maybe more.

From under the door crept a smell that hit him like nausea — sweet rot, mud, and something old, something buried.

Like gravecloth after rain.

Leticia lunged to the table, snatched a pouch, and hurled a handful of powder toward the ceiling.

The dust flared — tiny sparks falling like dying stars. For an instant the air broke; shadows wavered across the walls, pale and human-shaped, yet not reflections.

Echoes of people who had never left.

"Jesus… there's dozens," William said, backing away. "Leticia — there's a crowd out there!"

The pounding grew — rhythmic, relentless. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The metal groaned like a living thing. The trailer rocked on its base.

Outside, smeared hands slapped the windows, leaving trails of blackened sludge down the glass.

"This isn't just the dead," Leticia said. Her pupils had blown wide, swallowing the color from her eyes. "It's a summoning. Somebody's calling them. Leading them. Straight to us."

Then the wall bent inward, metal creasing like the lid of a tin can.

Leticia shouted words that burned the air; a jagged circle of light flared to life under their feet.

"Inside the circle! Now!" she cried, yanking William by the collar.

He stumbled in, breath ragged — but not before he saw the window explode beside them.

Something crawled through — drenched in mud, joints twisted backward, moss sprouting where hair should've been.

It lifted its face, and smiled. The mouth was full of weeds and water threads, pulling apart as it tried to form something like joy.

A memory of humanity stretched across a rotting mask.

William's voice broke into a whisper, not meant for her, maybe not meant for anyone:

"Are we in Hell?"

William froze — couldn't even breathe.

The thing that had crashed through the window was still moving, twitching and dragging itself across the wet linoleum. Bones cracked beneath its skin like the snapping of dry twigs. It reeked of swamp water and old blood baked into cloth.

Its eyes — or what remained of them — were two tight knots of roots, quivering faintly as if threaded with a weak current.

"Don't look at its face!" Leticia shouted. "The eyes are threads — through them, he sees!"

The creature crawled forward with a sick, watery chewing sound, joints bending the wrong way. Its spine folded and unfolded in jerks that made William's stomach pitch.

Leticia stood in the circle, hand cutting the air. Her fingers flared with a phosphorescent glow. The protective ring came alive — shining, cracking lines of light running across the floor like glass under strain.

The shadows along the walls stirred, reached outward, as if listening.

"Close the door!" she cried.

William lunged for it — but before he could touch the handle, the door simply burst inward. Rain flooded the trailer, and with it came the rest of them.

A tide of gray, sodden bodies poured inside — moving with awful, insectlike purpose.

Their limbs skidded across the wet floor, their progress jerky but unstoppable. A few scrambled up the walls, sticking like slugs. Out of each skull sprouted woody cords — roots thrusting upward through the ceiling, disappearing into the black storm beyond like live wires.

They stopped at the very edge of the circle — pressed against an invisible wall. The air filled with the stink of scorched flesh; the ward hissed as if in pain, searing their reaching hands.

Then all at once, they turned their heads.

In perfect unison.

"There you are, witch…" they said.

Every mouth moved together, one vast mind speaking through a thousand rotting throats. "We've been searching for you."

The echo hit like a migraine. Shadows deepened until the lightning outside looked too far away to help.

The air thickened, viscous — as if they stood inside something that breathed back.

Leticia lifted her chin, jaw trembling but her eyes were steady.

"Well," she said softly, "hello to you too, bastard. Didn't think you'd crawl out from your swamps."

"We are always near…" the chorus answered, voice rolling through the floor beams. "We live beneath your skin. Beneath your dreams."

The mob surged. Some hurled their bodies against the barrier, making the circle shudder like glass about to collapse. The candle flames spun in tight spirals; the sand along the floor began to liquefy, bubbling like tar.

"Who is that?" William shouted.

"The Southern Lord," Leticia snapped. "One of those who feed the dead with their own soul. He drives them — these are his eyes."

She reached into the air above the circle, tracing signs faster than thought. A dim, blood-colored glow ignited between her palms.

"You think I don't know how to cut your strings, old hound?"

The chorus laughed — deep, metallic, like the hum of earth before a quake.

"You can't kill what grows. We are the roots, witch. We're under every house. We grow from your sins."

William clamped both hands over his ears. The words weren't just sounds — they were inside him. The circle began to ripple, the light bending and trembling with every syllable.

"He's breaking the ward!" he yelled. "What do we do?!"

"You think this stops us?!" the horde howled, voices shredding into static.

"No," Leticia said, her calm like a knife edge. "But it gives me five minutes. Long enough to find you through your own curse."

She crossed her fingers, twisting the light until it screamed. The storm outside seemed to lean closer; thunder rolled deep enough to rattle bone. Everything went dim.

Then — in the center of the writhing crowd — one head swelled grotesquely, skin ballooning like rotten fruit.

Leticia looked straight into its hollow sockets — and something ancient, something living, moved inside her.

"Show me," she whispered. "Show me where you are."

Thunder split the world open.

The creature's skull burst, releasing a black flood that crawled over the floor — and in that pooling darkness she saw it: a stilted house choking in roots. Southern witches circling a fire. Eyeless faces turned upward in devotion.

And in the middle — him. The one who spoke.

"There you are," Leticia murmured. "Now the game changes."

Outside, the dead began to keen. The crowd convulsed, the knot of bodies loosening as if its will had faltered. Yet thunder raged on; the ward flickered and cracked like glass under flame.

Thunder cracked so close it felt as if the whole trailer leapt from the ground.

The light went out — not just dimmed, but died — leaving them strangled in a silence thicker than breath.

When it snapped back with the next flash of lightning, the protective circle was already fracturing. Lines of power glowed like overheated wires, and smoke coiled out of the breaks, alive, tasting the air.

"He's breaking it," Leticia rasped, pressing her hand to a bleeding gash along her arm. "Give me five minutes, William. Just five."

"You've got three," he said — and stepped past the line.

The dark moved.

The first body hit him like a sack full of bones. He twisted, caught its arm, felt the sinews pop and tear under his grip. The rot hit him in a wave — swamp stink, blood long dead, flesh giving way like soaked paper.

The thing still tried to bite, its mouth working blindly toward his throat. William crushed its jaw, ripped it sideways; its skull hit the wall, roots whipping from its eye sockets like torn nerve endings.

"One!" he shouted — mostly to himself.

A second one slithered through the shattered window, then a third, twitching and jerking like marionettes with strings tangled in their own limbs. Something in William shifted — that old, razor grin building inside his veins. His nails widened into claws. Bones stretched, cracked. The animal in him was waking, and it liked this.

He met them head‑on.

Claws sank into wet flesh like knives through clay. He tore through them as if peeling bark, spines snapping like reeds in the flood. They didn't scream, only rasped — and every rasp carried the same low voice, whispering through their throats:

"Why do you fight, beast?"

It came from all around — from the floor, from the walls themselves. A voice thick as tar. "Give her to me. I will forgive your pain."

William spat blood and laughter. "Forgiveness from carrion?" he growled. "You'll choke before you get it."

He kicked one of the corpses into the floor where the ward still burned faintly. It ignited, flesh blackening, stinking of grease and death. The room was a furnace of smoke and rot. Across the trailer, Leticia was down on her knees, tapping her fingers against the floorboards — rhythm sharp, ancient, ritualistic.

"William! Keep them back!" she shouted over the storm.

"Working on it!" he barked, ducking another swipe. His claws shredded air and shadow both.

But the horde kept coming. Their movement was hungry rhythm now — a tide.

Then one shape parted them.

Taller. Broader.

A man's form, but wrong — too wrong. His skin was the color of scorched earth, gleaming like obsidian. Broken horns jutted from his skull, splintered and smoking, and in the empty wells of his eyes, twin flames rolled like molten metal.

William froze only for a second. He knew instinctively — this thing didn't crawl here to feed.

It came to deliver a message.

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