Chapter 1

The dream was always the same. A pressure on his chest, a smell of rust and spoiled meat, and the sound of dry, rattling breath just inches from his face. Arthur “Art” Pendleton would thrash in the soaked sheets, his sober mind a defenseless playground for the thing that lived in his withdrawal.

But this time, he woke up.

The pressure didn’t vanish. The smell was stronger, a physical presence in the room—a foul mix of old whiskey and something long dead.

His eyes snapped open, adjusting to the deep gloom of the cabin. The only light came from the faint, shifting glow of snow against the window, a blizzard howling its lament into the Canadian night. His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs, so loud he was sure it was the only sound in the world besides the storm.

Then he saw it.

Crouched at the foot of the iron-framed bed was a silhouette blacker than the shadows around it. It was man-like, but twisted, built of nightmare geometry. Long, pointed ears swept back from a hairless head. Its hands, resting on its knees, ended in fingers too long, tapering into sharp, chitinous claws that clicked softly against each other.

And its face… it was grinning. A rictus of needle-like fangs, gleaming with a sickly wetness in the half-light.

Art’s breath hitched in his throat, a strangled little sound. It was impossible. A waking dream. A final, cruel trick of a brain starved of its poison.

The thing’s head tilted, the movement unnervingly swift. A low, guttural voice filled the room, weaving through the moan of the wind. It was the sound of gravel grinding over broken glass.

“Hello, Arthur.”

Art couldn’t move. He was pinned not by force, but by a terror so absolute it froze the very marrow in his bones.

“Three days,” the demon crooned, its voice a familiar, hated whisper from a thousand haunted nights. “You’ve been so… stubborn. But the game has changed.” It uncoiled itself, rising to a stoop, its elongated frame casting a monstrous shadow on the log wall behind it. “I am finally here in your room. You cannot get rid of me now.”

The spell broke.

A scream tore from Art’s raw throat, a raw, primal sound of pure, undiluted terror. It was swallowed whole by the insulation of the logs and the furious white noise of the snowstorm. No one would hear him. No one for miles. He was sixty years old, alone in a rented cabin in the woods, and the ghost that had haunted his sleep for forty-five years was standing at the foot of his bed.

The demon took a step forward, its claws scraping across the wooden floor. The grin never wavered.

Art scrambled backward, his back thudding against the rough headboard. His hands flailed, searching for a weapon, for anything. They closed around the neck of the empty whiskey bottle he’d kept on the nightstand—a perverse trophy of his determination. A final, failing anchor to the very thing that had summoned this horror.

He hurled it.

The bottle sailed through the space where the demon’s chest should have been and shattered against the far wall with a crash that was pitifully small against the storm’s roar.

The demon didn’t flinch. It simply took another step, its shadow falling over him, the stench of its breath—the breath of every forgotten binge, every lost job, every broken promise—filling Art’s lungs until he choked.

It leaned in, its fangs inches from his face.

“There is no bottle to save you tonight, old man.”