Rain fell softly over the taught cloth of Sarah McGovern's black umbrella as she hurried from her car to the porch awning. It had been a long day at the office, as strange as things were around town—though, they'd been strange for years. Odd homicides were a monthly occurrence, so common and so similar that no one really looked into them anymore. Whoever was doing the killings was doing the town a service, hitting the targets just as they started to go off the deep end. But why so many people in the town were acting out of turn was—unknown. People liked to say there was a crazy ghost in town, that made others crazy as well, but that was from the safety of their own homes with cups of hot chocolate cradled in their laps.

She pushed open the front door and shut it quickly behind her to keep the rain out, before pulling off her wet coat and setting down her briefcase. "Honey? Honey, I'm home."

It was still something they tried to keep quiet. New bodies weren't big news anymore, but they might attract the attention of national TV if they weren't careful. Whenever reporters came by looking for stories, they directed them to little, trivial odd things that nobody cared about. The story that everyone actually agreed on was that somehow, their town was cursed, and nobody felt the need to curse anyone else.

She found her husband reading a newspaper at the coffee table, pages open to the sports section, and she gave him a kiss on the top of the head. "There you are. Did you want to eat out, or did you want me to cook something up?"

"Oh, don't worry about it," he said, closing the pages and getting to his feet, gesturing towards the kitchen. "I thawed out some pizza. I thought you'd be hungry."

"Starved." She followed him, watching as he pulled the pizza from the oven. "You never cook. What's the occasion?"

"No occasion, just thought you'd want some food. It's busy at the lab, then?"

"Busy as always. But not abnormal." She filled her mouth with cheese and pepperoni. "Mm."

"Hey honey, I've been meaning to ask you—have you ever heard of a girl named Pearce? Evyn Pearce?"

Swallowing, she gave him a quizzical look. "Yeah, she's a junior reporter. Comes in sometimes to take a look at the bodies. She's a nice girl. Why?"

"Does she have any friends?"

"Honey, why are you asking? I barely kn—"

"I said, does she have any friends?" His tone was less polite now, more vicious. Aggressive. "Contacts, other than her parents?"

"Honey, you're scaring me." Sarah was on her feet now, but she gasped and backed away when her husband's eyes blinked and opened again a solid, beetle-shell black. "Honey!"

"What do you know of Evyn Pearce?"

Sarah screamed as her monster of a husband stepped towards her, then again as a golden shape shattered the window and knocked him out cold. She was still screaming as she ran down the street through the rain, without a jacket, no longer concerned about keeping herself dry.

The hooded figure stepped through the broken window and picked the projectile up off the floor, eyeing the demon on the floor. "Better luck next time," they muttered, and they drew out a journal and flipped to one of the first pages, reading aloud. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus—«

A few minutes later a smoky shape could be seen exiting the house, and the night's sounds lapsed back to nothing but the chirping crickets and the pattering rain.