After searching the entire ground floor, they decided to venture upstairs. Cautiously, the four ascended the creaking wooden staircase, doing their best to move in formation. That eerie humming still echoed all around, growing more unsettling by the moment. None of them could tell what might be waiting above.
Each step on the worn wooden boards seemed loud enough to wake the dead. Edward led the way, expression grim, eyes fixed on the darkness above.
As soon as his foot touched the final stair, he froze. He raised a hand, signaling everyone behind him to halt. Then his mental voice resonated in their link:
_Did anyone else hear something besides that song?_
_Hear what?_ Joseph responded, his hand gripping the hilt of his sword so tightly that veins bulged along his forearm.
Edward's focus sharpened as he tried to parse the faint noise.
_I hear dogs barking and a woman laughing. It's coming from everywhere at once, like it's surrounding us._
Charles, Joseph, and Andrew exchanged anxious looks. None of them heard anything beyond the haunting lullaby that still sent icy chills through their bones.
_You don't hear it?_ Edward pressed, his face lined with tension.
They each shook their heads, apprehension evident in their eyes.
_We need to be extra careful. We're close, I can feel it. Get ready._
One by one, they stepped onto the second-floor landing. The moment they did, the humming vanished. In its place, Edward alone perceived ghostly canine howls and a woman's murmured chatter. He gestured for them to rearrange their formation—Edward and Joseph, both Ascendants, now took the front, while Andrew and Charles covered the rear. They moved warily along the narrow, unlit corridor.
It was unsettlingly quiet up there, as if sealed off from even the wind and rain outside. The deeper they went, the more Charles felt an aching chill seep into his bones. Though the house was not especially hot or cold, sweat dripped down his temple. The tension built within him, but he clenched his sword and forged ahead.
Suddenly, from up ahead in the gloom, they spotted a faint glow shining from a doorway. A rank odor of blood and rot wafted toward them. The lullaby that had gone silent now grew clear again, growing louder the closer they came to that room.
Edward signaled everyone to halt. Carefully, he peeked inside before withdrawing with quick urgency.
_There's a woman in there,_ Edward conveyed telepathically. _She's singing, and there are two corpses with her._
Charles's stomach lurched. His mouth went dry, a cloying heaviness settling in his gut. He hadn't expected his first true outing with the special unit to be something from a waking nightmare.
_Those corpses…_ Edward continued. _They can move. Their bodies are half-rotted, bones tearing through decaying flesh, and yet… they're still active._
Andrew's grip on his newly acquired revolver grew taut, finger poised on the trigger. Joseph stood rigid with focus.
_We have no clue what they're capable of. Stay sharp._
They all acknowledged with grim nods, inhaling deeply to brace themselves. Edward silently counted them down, and they burst through the doorway together.
The sight caused Andrew and Joseph to recoil. Charles felt his vision blur with horror. In the center of the room, a woman in a bloodstained white dress sat, embraced by two reanimated corpses. A foul stench of decay and iron assaulted them, making each breath a struggle.
Both corpses were tethered by sinister, blood-red sinews. Their faces eerily resembled that of the singing woman. The older-looking corpse twisted its neck toward them, though it appeared only loosely attached by slickened threads. In a rattling, inhuman rasp, it announced, "Our guests have arrived," then turned to stare with dead, hollow eyes.
Charles noticed the corpse's neck was nearly severed, held precariously by those crimson threads, giving it a nauseating bob with every motion. Its jerky movements were painfully unnatural, as if puppeted by an unseen hand.
The woman ceased singing and lifted her head, her hollow gaze sweeping over the intruders. Her pale lips curved in an almost childlike way. "So," she asked sweetly, "are you good people? Or bad?"
No one answered. Edward attempted to probe her mind to glean answers, but he flinched back with a grimace of agony. Bright red blood streamed from his nose, eyes, and mouth. His voice tore the silence—this time aloud, not mental—croaky with alarmed panic:
"Close your eyes, all of you, now!"
At the urgency in his voice, they tried to obey instantly. But Charles, in that fractional second before he could fully shut his eyes, glimpsed something behind the woman—something lurking in the shadows. It looked like a face fashioned from living, blood-soaked sinew, contorting ceaselessly. It grinned monstrously, rows of needle-like teeth stained with scraps of flesh. That single image seared itself into Charles's retinas.
Pain thundered through his skull as if stabbed by a hundred hot needles. Warm blood spurted from his eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth, the metallic tang flooding his senses. Every breath tasted of rust and gore.
Charles fought with all his might to squeeze his eyelids shut, but somehow they refused to close, as though some invisible hook forced them open. The agony escalated, each second worse than the last. Even as blood veiled his sight, he still perceived that monstrous, sinewy grin burrowing into his mind.
In those dire instants, Edward's voice rose again, ragged with suffering: "Hréoda!" A wave of concussive force erupted from his outstretched hand, blasting everyone backward.
Charles felt himself buffeted by the shockwave, flung out the doorway. Pain jolted his body as he crashed to the floor, momentarily unable to breathe.
_Run! Get out!_ Edward's thoughts pounded into their skulls, twined with his own fear and anguish.
Charles mustered what strength he had left, forcing himself upright despite the torment. His lungs burned, but survival instincts spurred him onward. Through his blurred vision and the sticky blood still clinging to his eyes, he stumbled along, hardly able to distinguish reality from hallucinatory horrors.
Somewhere, a malignant laugh echoed in his ears, merging with distant screams—whether from outside or inside his head, he couldn't tell. Weakened, he nearly collapsed with every step, but terror of what might come next propelled him forward.
A putrid, acrid smell intensified. Out of nowhere, a dead dog's carcass launched itself into their path. Half-decayed, bits of flesh sloughed off at each movement. Its skeletal maw dripped thick black saliva. It moved with inhuman swiftness, snarling with jagged jaws ready to tear flesh.
Andrew roared, "Get out of my way!" He charged the undead hound, driving a fierce kick into its torso.
The beast skittered across the floor, colliding hard with a wall, bones snapping audibly. Yet even that didn't stop it. It struggled to rise again.
"But it's dead already! How is it still moving?" Charles cried, horror-laced confusion in his voice.
"I don't know!" Joseph snapped back. "Don't waste time fighting—run!"
They sprinted past the flailing dog. Charles felt the reeking wind of its half-rotted body brush his side, but he had no time to recoil. The strong stench almost made his eyes water. He pressed on, one eye streaked with blood, the other half-lidded by adrenaline.
At last, they hurtled down the stairs, feet thudding. But as they reached the lower landing, they froze in dismay: those same two corpses they had seen hanging in the sitting room were now standing to block their path. The undead pair shrieked with an unearthly pitch, high enough to shatter glass, leaving Charles dizzy and sick to his stomach. Then they lunged, moving unnaturally fast, as though jerked along by invisible strings.
At every step, chunks of rotting muscle and bone flaked off their bodies, the protruding skeleton grinding and clacking with each motion. The stench of decomposition hung thick.
Joseph shouted a trembling incantation, "Hréoda!" Another shockwave pulsed from his hands, crashing into the reanimated corpses and knocking them down. The loud snap of splintering bone accompanied their fall, but the beasts writhed, ready to stand again.
Gritting his teeth, Joseph aimed his mental command, "You are not allowed to stand up!"
The corpses spasmed, then went rigid, pinned by Joseph's telepathic ability. They quivered on the floor, immobile.
"Go!" Edward barked behind them.
They resumed their mad dash, pounding down the final flight of stairs toward the front door. Their heavy breathing thundered in their own ears. Slamming to a halt before it, they discovered the door was locked tight.
"Damn it!" Andrew cursed.
He tried shoulder-barging the door with all his might, muscles bulging unnaturally, veins throbbing along his neck as sweat poured down his face. But it refused to budge.
_Fall back!_ Edward's thought hammered into their minds. He grasped a small leather pouch with a lit fuse protruding from it. There was no time to question where it came from—he tossed it toward the door in an instant.