Mrs Hobbs gasped bloody breaths on the doorstep. Her life choked and gurgled in her throat, body draining as cold as the porch beneath her.
He couldn't save her.
Will's heart slammed in his chest as he stepped forward, over her body, kicking open the door into the Hobbs residence. His pulse throbbed in his ears, deafening everything but the screams and struggle in the kitchen.
He steadied his gun with numb fingers.
The Minnesota Shrike had killed and abducted eight young women in the last months. This should have been consulting. Just checking up on the residence, helping Jack connect the dots.
He should have called for back-up. Should have explained his hunch to someone, anyone.
Will tightened his grip on the trigger, hands slippery with Mrs Hobbs's insides, ready to shoot.
Hobbs held no knife. Hiis nails sharpened to talons that clawed and perched over his daughter's body, digging into her throat. Eyes beady and dark, fixing on Will as Abigail thrashed in his arms.
Will froze.
He'd expected to chase monsters and to understand them, even if he didn't want to. He didn't expect feathers smearing dark across Hobbs's shoulders, spreading like a virus across his skin. Pale eyes piercing him, not quite human.
A talon wrenched across Abigail's throat.
Will shot.
Shot, shot, shot again. He watched Hobbs crumble, body shrinking to something that was simply human in the end. Curled and broken by the cabinets, as his daughter dropped to the floor, heaving.
The gun hit the kitchen tiles with a dull crack that echoed in Will's mind. His knees gave out beneath him. He clutched at Abigail's throat, like Mrs Hobbs had grasped at his coat. Trying to close her wounds, to keep her existence from seeping away in his arms.
Her eyes darted around the room, over him and her father wheezing his last breaths.
The air stank of murder, so strong that he could taste blood on his tongue.
"Now you see," Hobbs whispered. Life leaving the Shrike too, as he sagged.
Will stared at hands that looked normal now - still no knife on the floor though, that could have done this to Abigail.
Abigail.
Her breath hitched uselessly, gaze locking on his own as he looked back to her. Her lips formed around words or breaths that either way refused to come, blood bubbling in the corner of her mouth.
Panic seized in Will's chest as he tightened his grip, trying to find the right angle. To keeo the blood from spurting beneath his fingers, spreading into the floor around them both. So much blood.
"Stay with me-"
He couldn't save her.
"I told you not to let him get close!" Alana's voice hissed in and out of Will's ears, her and Jack standing outside the hospital room, door closed. They seemed faded, far-away. An ill-tuned radio.
The disinfectant seemed overwhelming, but beneath it all, Will could still smell the stench of blood.
"He's just in shock," Jack said.
Maybe Will was going mad, that was the worst thought. He hadn't told anyone what he saw, the bird-like features merging grotesque.
All they knew right now was that he pulled the trigger ten times.
No one else had been there to offer witness. To see. To help.
The blood had been washed away from his body, but he could still imagine the red sinking into the lines and crevices of his palms, staining them. He dug his nails in to feel the sting. Stared at his knees, utterly cold.
Monsters didn't exist, not monsters like that. Not men that weren't men, in any way but the psychological.
He thought he'd seen monsters. Felt them crawling beneath his skin, weaving spider-webs between his nerve endings. He'd thought he understand, however bad it got, at least the general gist of the horrors in his head.
He thought he'd seen monsters already.
Had he even seen anything real at all?
"It's really a great property, Mr Graham," the estate agent said. His face glistened with sweat in the midday sun, fingers twisting around his file, eyes flitting to the edge of the forest visible through the kitchen window.
The paint peeled off the walls, the front porch creaked - the whole house slowly crumbling into its foundations.
The first trees stretched at the border of the garden, casting half the house in their shadow. Tall, twisted trees, as old as any that Will had ever seen, growing thick.
"Lots of potential, particularly if you enjoy a project." The agent licked his lips. "Plenty of space too, plenty of peace and quiet. It will be lovely when it is made up. I could recommend some good companies-"
Will wiped his glasses as his gaze moved over the stove and across the broad frames of the doors. "You said the building came discounted?"
The agent named the price.
Will could feel the man twitching even if he didn't look. He watched his feet shift out of the corner of his eye, watching him fiddle with his tie, loosening it and straightening it and tightening the knot all over again. Fidgety, uneasy.
The house felt quiet though, peaceful in a way unlike the stillness of graves. No visceral images to claw at his mind, and tug at his nerve endings whilst he slept.
The nearest neighbours lived half an hour's drive away, the nearest town even further.
"I'll take it," Will said.
"Nobody has stayed at that house for longer than three months." Jack's voice rumbled across the phone, not quite accusatory, but the tone prickled and snagged. A thinly veiled frustration, a lack of understanding.
Will rubbed his eyes, suitcases freshly dumped into the living room, dogs snuffling their new surroundings. "There's nothing wrong with the house."
Of course, he'd been aware of the reputation surrounding the building. That there were reasons, beyond its dilapidated state, why the property was so discounted.
"I hope it is good for your health," Jack said. "Nobody else seems to want to come near the place. The agent had been trying to sell it for years, nobody will stay there. Apparently it gives people a bad feeling."
Will exhaled a breath, clamping down on the clench in his gut. "I caught you your killer, Jack. I did what you asked."
Caught him and spent the next four weeks checked into a psychiatric hospital, somehow hoping that what he would see would make sense.
He didn't believe in ghosts or ghouls, but...he needed to know for sure. If something like that could exist, or if he was simply crazy for what he had seen in the Hobbs house.
Nobody had found a knife on the floor, to account for the cuts in Abigail's throat. Further investigation had been launched.
The silence crackled between them.
"You did what was necessary, Will," Jack said. "Hobbs was a killer, he wouldn't have stopped killing-"
"No, Jack."
Too many things hovered, turning to bile beneath Will's tongue.
He scratched Winston behind the ears, until Jack spoke again.
"Tell me when you're ready to come back. We could use your help."
The call cut.
Will dreamed of the woods that night.