Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It seemed like a simple case. Five dead, four witnesses, and a brief confession from the suspect given to one witness before being killed in self defense an hour later by another. By all accounts, pretty open and shut. The only things left to do were inform the families and tie up any potential loose ends and lingering questions, "did the perp know the victims prior, was there any possible underlying motivation in them being targeted," that sort of thing. Not the most exciting case, but after the media blitz of the last "exciting" case she worked on, Lee learned to appreciate the boring ones. That didn't make the next part any easier, though.

"Knock-knock-knock, on the farmhouse door" her mother's voice echoed in her head, like it always did when she had bad news to deliver, as did the sound of a gun being fired in her partner's face on her first official day in the field whenever she went to question a potential witness at their home. Harker knew she had nothing to fear, the person she was going to meet was a fellow officer of the law, a reportedly well-liked and respected detective of the Newark Police Department, but that moment flashed in her head regardless, and she felt her hand move on its own towards her gun, even after three years. Like before, she was able to pull it away before the door opened.

It was somewhat hard to see him through the crack in the door, but the man was in his early 30s, Caucasian, short, brown hair, and a goatee. He looked like he hadn't slept in six days and was running on nothing but adrenaline.

"Joel Collins?" Harker asked.

"Who are you?" he responded as if doing so risked setting off a bomb.

"Special Agent Lee Harker, FBI. I was wondering if I could come in and ask you a few questions?"

"Now's not really a good time."

"It should only take a few minutes, more of a formality than anything."

"I can't... be around people right now."

Harker decided to abandon any attempt of easing him into the conversation.

"It's about your brother."

That got through the wall of nervous energy surrounding him. Joel glanced over his shoulder and considered her words, and his options.

"Fine, but be quick, and the second I tell you to leave, you leave, no questions asked. Understand?"

Confused and a bit concerned, Lee felt the pull of her gun again, but suppressed it and agreed to the terms.

His apartment looked like it used to be a nice place, before whatever issue was plaguing him took hold. Now it was buried in discordant piles of paper, photos, and news clippings. Upon closer inspection, a common theme emerged in the photos and headlines, the subject of each of them was the victim of a graphically violent death, the vast majority of them appearing self-inflicted.

"It's for a case I'm working on," Joel remarked when he noticed his guest's interest in the horrid tableau.

And with that, things began to make a lot more sense. Harker knew all too well the feeling of getting lost in a case. Before she could comment on that feeling, something on the wall next to her caught her eye. A photo that somehow managed to rise above the bloody chaos, depicting Joel playing pool at a bar with two other people, his brother, who, if not for the near buzzcut, would have looked completely identical to him, and a short, thin woman with a prominent mole on her left cheek, who, based on their body language, was likely a romantic partner.

"So what’s R.C. gotten himself into this time?"

"You should have a seat," responded Harker.

Joel let out a brief but heavy sigh and heeded her advice. He knew what that meant. Harker sat on the chair next to him.

"Mister Collins, your brother was murdered."

And there it was. Harker continued, saying that the suspect had already been dealt with, and launching into the rudimentary spiel of questions, but Joel had stopped listening, for something else had drawn his attention. It started as a warm feeling, then a faint crackling, which quickly grew into the sound of a raging inferno. He turned to see Rose sitting next to him, engulfed in flames and with that god-awful smile stretched across her face.

"Looks like you couldn't save him either, Joel," it spoke in a twisted parody of her voice, and Joel's entire body filled with terror.

"You need to leave," he said, cutting Harker off.

"But, Mister Collins, I still have-"

"Did you hear what I said? You need to leave, now!" He stood up and ran to the door, nearly ripping it off the hinges with how fast he threw it open.

"... Okay, is there a later date where we can finish this that works for you?" Harker asked, slowly approaching the door, with the human torch creeping up behind her.

"Sure, whatever. But now isn't safe for either of us."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Urgh, what the fuck did I just s- Wait... Did you say your name was Lee Harker? As in the agent who solved that case about that Satanic doll maker?"

"... Yes," Lee transferred to the New York metropolitan area to try and get away from that case.

"So you know about occult shit, like demon possession and things like that?"

"I have... some knowledge on that, yes."

"You might actually be able to help..." Joel said under his breath, before noticing that "Rose" was now mere inches away from them, leaning in and smelling Harker’s hair. "Fuck! Uh, contact me in, um, two days. OK? I'll answer any questions you want then, but right now, you need to GO!"

He grabbed her by the arm and shoved her out the door. When he did so, she saw it. It was only the briefest of glimpses, but, if it wasn’t for her... rather unique upbringing, what she saw in that split second would have torn her mind asunder, and even then, it was enough to make her leap across the hall in sheer terror. In that brief window of time, Joel Collins was gone, and standing in his place was a horrific, semi-humanoid monstrosity, with no skin, piercing eyes filled with nothing but sadistic malice, and an infinite set of malformed jaws, nested within an enormous, hideous smile.

Before she knew it, the door was already slammed in her face. 

After what couldn’t have been more than a minute, but felt like hours, Harker picked herself up off the floor, staggered her way back outside and to her car. Wherein she simply sat in silence, processing the nightmarish image burned into her brain. She really hoped that after three years, she had finally put this stuff behind her, but it seemed that The Man Downstairs had one more game he wanted to play. About 20 minutes later, she saw Collins exit the building with a police file in one hand and a gun in the other.

Harker did her best to keep her distance as she tailed him. There was a point where it looked like she lost him, but she was eventually able to follow his trail all the way to a small, mostly abandoned neighborhood in Lyndhurst. At first, she only saw his car on the side of the road, but the sound of screaming and gunfire led her to a run-down house on the other side of the street.

Gun drawn, she sprinted to the front door, but stopped herself from charging in when she heard Collins loudly proclaiming to someone that “he didn’t know anyone else was here.” Before she could open the door, Harker saw a car coming down the road that bore a clear enough resemblance to the one already in the driveway to make clear that their respective owners were of the same party. She quickly ducked around the corner of the house, right before they pulled up and saw her. Russian mobsters, by the sound of it, and they weren’t exactly thrilled to see Collins when he poked his head out the door. Harker circled the building, trying her best to find a way out for him while avoiding detection and gunfire herself. By the time she made her way back to the front of the house, Collins had already climbed out of a window and was running at full speed towards the street, so fast that he didn’t see the car until it was too late.

“Fregoli, what the fuck happened!?” one of the gang members barked as Harker cautiously made her way to the crash site. The driver was unconscious, but seemed to sustain no serious injuries, whereas Collins… What was left of him was enough to make Lee’s stomach turn. His body was obliterated by the impact, chunks of limbs and viscera scattered all over the street, and the sheer volume of blood alone was enough to have her taken aback, but the way it was streaked across the pavement in a crimson smile and ran in stark contrast to the freshly fallen snow, brought her back to the day before her 9th birthday, when her childhood home was covered in as bright and white of snow as the neighborhood was now, and elicited the kind of skin crawling shock and dread she hadn’t felt since she found that photo she took of the man who came to visit her on that day; January 13th, 1999, the day that would haunt her forever.

“Hey, who the fuck are you?!?” shouted the mobster, snapping her back to the present. As they once again opened fire, Harker ran back to her car, scrambled inside, and didn’t stop until she reached Arlington. When she was sure that she had lost her pursuers, Lee pulled over to the side of the road and it was then, as the adrenaline subsided, just in the corner of her eye, that she caught a tiny glimpse of a shadowy, horned figure leering behind her in the rear-view mirror, an old friend of a friend, that lives downstairs, eagerly waiting to see what little angel Lee was going to do next. She broke down crying at the sight of it as everything came crashing down on her all at once. It seemed like a simple case…

***

“So what am I looking at here, Harker?” Agent Foster asked.

“It’s what Joel Collins was investigating before his death.”

“A bunch of suicides?”

“A chain of suicides and one murder, each having at least one witness who, four to seven days later, also died by suicide in front of another witness, leading to the pattern repeating. Collins was the latest in the chain, after his ex-girlfriend, a Doctor Rose Cotter, self-immolated in front of him, five days prior, a patient of hers slit her own throat, the week before, the patient’s college professor with a hammer to the face, and so on.”

“Sounds like he got wrapped up in some kind suicide cult.”

“But cults have a leader, a figurehead the members answer to, and a doctrine they follow. They’re organized. With this, each victim seems almost randomly chosen. Relations range from close family members to complete strangers, there’s no strong, consistent commonality between them prior to witnessing the deaths, it’s almost as if they simply get… infected with something that drives them insane before making them take their own life.”

Foster took in Harker’s expression. She hadn't been this on edge over a case in a long time. She sighed and casually tossed the file back onto her desk. “You're not going spooky on us again, are you, Harker? I mean, you're making this sound like it's some sort of curse.”

“Spooky,” that's what they called her after the Longlegs case. Her reports of Kobble using dolls infused with the power of The Devil to possess families and have them kill each other weren't exactly taken seriously. Eventually, the version of the story that was agreed upon and given to the press was that Kobble and his accomplice used the dolls as part of an occult hypnotism practice to influence their victims to commit the murders for them. But even with the watering down, the unusual nature of the case was still like catnip for the tabloid press, running wild with stories of Satan worshiping serial killers threatening the American family. And though the identity of Kobble’s accomplice was kept out of the press release, it was no secret within the Bureau. “ Satan's daughter ” was another popular nickname Lee heard no end of before she transferred, but even on the other side of the country, she couldn't seem to escape her reputation as the “ half-psychic ” daughter of a serial killer.

“When I met him, Collins asked if I had any knowledge on demonic possession, and one of the few consistent elements of the victims' reports is them all claiming to see smiling individuals that they believed to all be the same entity wearing different faces after witnessing the deaths,” Harker eventually responded.

“You witnessed Collins’ death, didn’t you? Have you been seeing these smiling people?”

“... No, ma’am.”

“Well, there you go. Whatever this was, it looks like it ended with him. Even if it didn’t, I’m not entirely sure what you think we should do about it. I mean, we’re the FBI, not the Ghostbusters. Besides, we also have that big sting operation on Monday with that pop star over at UBC, so the Bureau has to prioritize cases that are… more concrete than a random string of suicides.”

It was then that Foster noticed that Lee had been rubbing her arms for the past minute. It was something her autistic son would also do when he was trying to calm himself.

“... Look. You wanna know what I think this is? Collins saw a woman he loved kill herself in a horrific way, that, understandably, fucked him up, and he just lost himself looking for answers and someone to blame. Another consistency I noticed with these victims is that most of them seemed to have a history of mental illness. And trying to find meaning in patterns that aren't really there is a pretty common sign of paranoia, right? Especially after witnessing a traumatic event like these people. It’s sad and not as glamorous or exciting as finding some boogeyman to defeat, but sometimes that’s just how it is. Do you get what I’m saying?”

Whether it was out of wanting Foster to be right or resignation from recognizing that she wasn’t getting anywhere with her, she didn’t know, but Harker nodded in the affirmative.

“When was the last time you took a day off, Harker?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I know what Longlegs did to you, to your family. I can’t even begin to imagine what that must have been like. That’s the kind of shit that’d rock even the hardest veteran. But I want you to know that no one blames you for what happened to Carter and his wife. You couldn’t have possibly known that would play out the way it did. And while your dedication to your work is admirable, it won’t help anyone, least of all you, if you let the work consume you trying to make up for a case that went bad. Take some time off, exorcise a few demons if you need to. The work will still be here when you get back.”

Her words hung so heavy in the air that Lee felt as if they would smother her if she didn’t leave the office as soon as they were said.

***

Even with heating on, Lee’s apartment felt cold. It was the kind of cold you’d feel no matter how many layers you put on. The cold that comes not from the temperature, but from within those who lived there.

Miss Ruby was sitting on the couch, watching TV. On it was a talk show interview with the latest pop star she had recently become obsessed with talking about her upcoming tour. Ruby had asked Harker for tickets, but the concert sold out as soon as they went on sale. She would hate to admit it, but Lee was somewhat relieved by that. Concerts were never something she felt comfortable in.

“How was school?” Harker asked, attempting to bring what warmth she could into the room.

“Fine, how was work?” Ruby responded, the bare minimum of her attention taken away from the screen.

“Fine,” the room remained as cold as ever.

The doll Kobble made for Ruby was taken away as evidence, but even then, it continued to work its magic on her. Ruby didn’t remember anything about what happened the day before her 9th birthday. How Lee’s mother made Carter kill his own wife and try to do the same to his daughter before Harker put a stop to it right in front of her. Anyone else would call that a merciful blessing, but Harker knew the truth. It wasn't done for Ruby's benefit, it was for Lee to pick up where her mother left off and keep the twisted little secret that tore apart her own family from the little girl that now only she knew how to protect. “One last game from The Man Downstairs,” she thought, or so it seemed until five days ago.

“I'll order some pizza later,” was all that Harker added to the conversation before heading to her office. She considered Foster’s words, how the twelve year old Ruby found her asleep on the floor for the past four nights, surrounded by photos of the chain’s horrifically mangled victims, and how, if it wasn’t for her dad giving her a ride, the play date Ruby had with her school friend Riley on the fourth night would have turned into an impromptu sleep-over. Maybe Foster had a point. Harker decided to give one of the case’s more substantial documents another review before putting it to rest, at least for the night, Dr. Cotter’s file on the patient who died in her care before she started showing symptoms of the pattern herself.

Laura Weaver. Age 26 (Lee couldn’t begin to describe the relief she felt when she saw that her birthday wasn’t on the 14th). Grad student. Brought in after having the police called on her for public disturbance. No psych history on file, but the week prior, she was interviewed as the sole witness to her professor bludgeoning himself to death with a hammer. In the recording Dr. Cotter made of their session together, Weaver claimed she was being harassed by a shape-shifting, sinister entity that only she could see before she began screaming and having violent convulsions, which ended abruptly when Weaver smiled at Cotter and slit her own throat with a shard of a vase that broke during her fit. Dr. Cotter ended her assessment by theorizing that the patient was suffering from acute post-trauma psychosis, which may have led to her developing symptoms reminiscent of Fregoli Syndrome.

When she read that last part, Lee felt a tap on her shoulder that sent a chill down her spine. One she knew she shouldn't trust, but couldn't ignore. One she hadn't felt in three years, but wasn’t surprised to feel again with this. It made her remember that same name being said at the scene of Collins’s accident. After a quick search of the criminal database, Harker had found the man who the name belonged to, Lewis Fregoli, a small-time drug dealer and frequent customer of the same Russian mobsters that Collins had antagonized. It was then that she also remembered that not all of the deaths in the chain were suicides. 

With only a quick goodbye to Ruby, Harker rushed out the door.

***

When she arrived at Fregoli’s apartment building, Harker saw someone leave just as she entered. A small woman of South-Asian descent, maybe late 20s or early 30s, and with short, bleach blonde hair. She was wearing a hoodie that partially hid her face, but even with that, something about her seemed familiar enough to momentarily give her pause. The woman was gone before she could get a clearer look at her, so she brushed it off and returned to the matter at hand. "Knock-knock-knock, on the farmhouse door," Harker heard as she approached Fregoli’s apartment, but before she could do the actual knocking, she saw that the door was slightly ajar. She resisted the pull of her gun yet again as she slowly, carefully stepped inside with her hands raised.

“Lewis Fregoli?”

The apartment was dead silent. Every step Harker took was more cautious than the last.

“I’m not with law enforcement. I just want to talk. I believe you may have come into contact wi-” she froze in place at the sight of the carnage. Lying on the floor was Fregoli, his face smashed into oblivion, and next to his body, a barbell weight covered in blood, muscle tissue, and bits of broken teeth. What little of his facial integrity that was still present gave an impression of the terrible expression that she had been dreading to see, if for any reason, because it proved her right that the chain did not, in fact, end with Collins. There was also a pile of fresh vomit in the corner, and a quick, if gag-inducing, examination of the corpse made clear that someone else had been there to witness Fregoli’s death. Harker noticed a cellphone on the coffee table, surrounded by various quantities of illicit substances. It required an ID scan to unlock, and while the prompted face scan was… not an option, his fingerprints were, thankfully, still viable. Lee’s blood ran cold when she saw who the last person he texted was and realized why the woman she saw leave the building looked so familiar. It was the same woman Ruby was watching on TV earlier that day, the same woman who was about to embark on a sold out world tour, the same woman who, in six days, would give at least 20 thousand people a front row seat to her own murder at the hands of the metaphysical parasite she was now host to. International pop singer, Skye Riley.

Chapter Text

“What time are you done with your thing?” Skye texted to Gemma. There was a fly buzzing around her head, and no matter how much she swatted at it, it wouldn’t go the fuck away. Add it to the rapidly growing mountain of things in Skye’s life that seemed hellbent on driving her crazy ever since she saw Lewis kill himself three days ago. After that, she hadn’t been able to stop seeing his face, or at least that freaky-ass smile he had on his face before he smashed it to bits, everywhere she looked. Just an hour ago, she saw it on her assistant Joshua as he was leaving her dressing room at Herald Square Garden. She still couldn’t understand why he’d trash it or believe that her own mother took his side and accused her of relapsing when he said he didn’t do it.

No response yet from Gemma. It had only been a second, but Skye was already considering just calling her. She felt lost in a storm since they started working to get her back on tour, and right now, she really needed an anchor. Before, whenever she felt like this, she’d do a line of coke to take the edge off. But now, she had to fight the screaming urge to drown it all out. Now, Gemma was all she had left. Skye wouldn’t have blamed her for never wanting to talk to her again after how she treated her in the days leading up to the accident. Calling someone an “opportunistic cunt” wasn’t exactly something you could just walk back, even if they’ve been your ride or die since you were twelve. But when she reached out yesterday, Gemma answered, not only that, she spent the night, something she hadn’t done since Skye started dating Paul. She always thought he was a bad influence on her, but like the coke, he helped drown everything out, even if the eventual come down from him was way worse and the vortex of anger and despair trapped within her heart inevitably came back with a vengeance. Skye stopped herself from thinking about it, about him, anymore. She knew where that train of thought would lead her to, and she couldn’t go back there. Not now. For the time being, she’d just text Gemma to “come over after,” and finish preparing for the night’s big event.

It seemed like such a fun idea when she agreed to it. Jack always went all out when it came to his Halloween specials; fun games, costume contests, cool guests sharing spooky ghost stories the show’s writers cooked up, he was the fucking man. But things changed after his wife, Madeleine, died about a year ago. It was actually the same time as Paul, now that Skye thought about it. News of the accident overshadowed that of her passing. Not that she and Jack were competing for most tragic loss, but it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the headlines prioritized the sudden death of a hot, up-and-coming movie star over a stage actress who was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer over a month ago. Regardless, he took it pretty hard and put Night Owls on hiatus for about a month. Jack had never been able to beat Colbert in the ratings, but after he came back, he seemed to have made it his life’s mission to take the Late Night crown, no matter what it took. Sensationalist interviews with controversial public figures, going out of his way to court controversy when covering the latest hot topics in the news, anything to help boost ratings. To his credit, he never sank to outright bigotry in his desperate bids for the top spot. In fact, tonight’s special was partly a fundraiser for an underprivileged youths charity Skye’s label had worked with in the past, which made Jack’s request for her first public performance since the accident to be as the show’s musical guest particularly enticing for her team.

But even with that altruistic bent, Skye could tell his real reason for asking her to come on the show. The special was airing at the start of Sweeps Week, Night Owls ratings have been in freefall for months, and Jack’s contract with the UBC network was set to expire. If he didn’t pull something big tonight, his career would be dead in the water. And luckily for him, there was a Grammy winning pop star, about to embark on a sold out world tour and have the very career resurgence he craved, who had a spot in her schedule open up. “If anyone was an opportunistic cunt,” Skye thought to herself. With everything that’s been going on with her the past few days, Lewis, that scary fan from yesterday, what must have been some kind of horrible leg cramp during rehearsal earlier, Skye seriously considered begging her mom to let her drop out of the show. But when the FBI shows up last minute to turn the whole event into a sting operation to catch a local serial killer who’s apparently a fan of yours, it kind of makes it hard to just walk away. She gave her outfit for the night another look in the dressing room mirror, a sequin dress styled after Freddy Krueger’s red and green sweater and a brown glove with silver rhinestones along the fingers to match. It wasn’t the fancy mirror gown her mom tried to pressure her into, but if she had to do the show, she was at least going to celebrate her favorite night of the year in a way that felt somewhat on her own terms. It was at this moment that she noticed the little girl standing in the doorway.

“Fuck! … Sorry, you startled me,” said Skye, clutching her chest.

The girl had big green eyes that felt like they were staring directly into her soul. She had mousy brown hair and wore a blue dress over a white shirt that had a soft floral pattern on it.

“You’re with that Dr. June lady. Lilly, right?”

“Yes,” the girl answered. Her voice was soft, low, and measured, almost like she was possessed by the soul of a woman who was at least thirty years her senior. “You’re the singer that everyone’s been talking about.”

“I am. Did you want a selfie? Something to show your friends at school?”

“You can’t perform tonight,” the girl’s words felt like ice shooting directly into Skye’s heart.

“Well, it’s kind of my job,” Skye retorted, trying to brush it off.

“No, I mean you’re in danger. Everyone is.”

“What do you- Do you mean The Butcher? You don’t have to worry about him, sweetie. The FBI’s all over this place. They’ll catch him before he even knows what hit him.”

“No. I see what’s inside you… It’s hungry. And it wants an audience to watch it feed.”

Whatever she was talking about sent a chill down Skye’s spine. It was the same kind of chill she felt every time she saw that look on Lewis’s face, on Joshua’s, on Gemma’s even. The look that always followed something that scared the living shit out of her before vanishing without a trace, making everyone think she was losing her goddamn mind. Maybe she was. Who knew if this girl was even really talking to her? Maybe all the talk of ghosts and demons on the news was just getting to her. Ever since the story about that devil-worshiping hypnotist dollmaker in Oregon broke in 2019, it felt like everyone’s been losing their minds. People have been treating the Satanic panic like it’s the latest fashion revival. Every new weird thing was the work of Satan or some other kind of supernatural bullshit. Which, of course, was why the girl was on the show in the first place. She was the sole survivor of some cult that went the way of Jonestown. Dr. June Ross-Michell believed her to be possessed by a demon they summoned, and Jack invited her on the show to promote the book she wrote about her studies of the girl and her “psychic infestation” as Dr. June called it. It’s probably just a load of crap, but Jack wasn’t gonna pass up the opportunity to be the one to interview “The Devil” on live television, even if it was in the form of a 13 year old girl who went through God knows what kind of insane trauma and had already been through three years worth of being poked at like a lab rat. “Opportunistic cunt” echoed in Skye’s head once more. With a somewhat placating smile, she eventually said “Why don’t we see if we can find your, uh, I’m sorry, what is Dr. June to you? Your guardian?”

A knock on the door cut the girl off before she could answer. It was Elizabeth, Skye’s manager and occasional mother.

“Hey, Skye, they’re about to start the presentation,” she said before noticing her daughter’s guest. “Oh, hello. Are we having a little impromptu meet and greet?”

“We were just talking. I’ll be right there, Mom.”

The presentation was… certainly something. The whole cast and crew were given a run down on the operation, a psychological profile on The Butcher drafted by Dr. Josephine Grant, an older, British woman who seemed to be the one running the show, and clear instructions to follow the special’s script as closely as possible to make sure things ran smoothly. With so many moving parts on a set like this, someone could easily slip through the cracks while no one was looking. Being the most high profile and heavily advertised guest of the night, most of the attention was focused on Skye’s performance at the end of the show. Like with at least 70% of the audience, if The Butcher was there to see anyone, it was her. Skye could hear bets being made between the agents and crew as to why a serial killer would be interested in seeing a pop star whose fanbase is mostly teenage girls, ranging from him sizing her up as his next victim to hoping that she’ll help produce his own music album. Skye tried her best to tune it out, she got enough of that kind of talk from the news, her fans, the label, pretty much everyone but Gemma.

During the presentation, she sat next to two other guests, Carmichael Haig, a magician and paranormal skeptic who went viral recently for savagely debunking Zak Bagans’ latest ghost hunting expedition on a podcast, and Christou, a purported spiritual medium, the kind that liked to play up and orientalize his Arab descent to make himself seem more “exotic” and “mysterious” to a white western audience.

“Quite exciting, isn’t it, Ms. Riley? It is not every day where one is directly called to help deliver justice to those who prey on the weak and vulnerable,” Christou said in a clearly fake accent that Skye believed was meant to be Middle-Eastern but sounded closer to Mexican.

Being near him made her think back to when her career was just starting out, and an old record producer that Elisabeth connected her with tried a similar approach to sell her music, before she established her own creative voice. The only acceptable response to him that she could think of was a polite nod.

“Yes, but of course, what would you know about preying on the weak and vulnerable?” Haig asked, venom practically dripping off of every word he spoke.

“Are you likening me to a serial killer, Mr. Haig?”

“Oh, not at all. In fact, I’m glad to see talents such as yours being put to good use for once. Tell me, did they actually ask you to conjure the spirits of this Butcher’s victims, or is that just the story you’re gonna tell to help sell your show after all this is over?”

“You mock me, but believe it or not, the work I do helps people deal with their pain. Take Ms. Riley, for instance,” Christou retorted.

“Oh, God. Please don’t,” Skye thought to herself. If it were any other circumstance, she wouldn’t hesitate to cut Christou off and tell him, loudly, exactly what she thought of him. But a briefing put on by the FBI right before a live holiday special wasn’t the most conducive environment for a blow up like that, so she just had to grin and bear it.

“Paul’s death still weighs heavily on you, sí? The suddenness of it. The unfairness of how random it felt. The guilt over how you survived the accident, yet he did not,” he continued. He placed his hand on Skye’s knee, clearly with intentions of comfort, but it made her want to scream all the same. “But you should know that Paul is at peace now, and he is glad to see you carry on. He wishes to communicate this to you. His heart is full of love, and he is deeply sorry for whatever pain he may have caused you.”

“Oh, please,” Haig shouted. “The details of Paul Hudson’s turbulent relationship with our little songbird were hardly a secret. Do you really expect her to believe that your spiel of hackneyed platitudes is proof of you actually having the ability to commune with the dead?”

“Hey, guys, save it for when the cameras are rolling,” interjected Gus McConnell, Jack’s sidekick for the show.

“If you insist. Wouldn’t want Jack to miss out on what he’s paying for,” Haig said before both he and Christou went off to continue prepping for the show.

“... Thank you,” Skye said as soon as they were out of earshot. The relief in her breath was palpable.

“You know, it’s stuff like that that makes it hard to remember what it was like before… Before Madaline,” Gus said.

“Yeah… I know the feeling.”

“How long’s it been for you? Since the last time?”

“A year. You?”

“It’ll be six months next week. It really is true what they say, about the urge being constant.”

“Hey, you look to be handling it better than I did at that point.”

“Do you want me to get you anything? Soda, sandwich, a raid of the candy bowl? It is Halloween, after all.”

Skye let out a light chuckle. “I think I can get it myself. Thanks, though.”

“Alright. Holler if you need me.”

As Gus left, Skye made her way to the craft services table. Already there was one of the agents, a pale woman, about her age, with big, brown eyes, and strawberry blonde hair.

Skye could feel her staring as she made herself a cup of coffee, almost as if she was trying to find the right words to say.

“I… I don’t know if anyone’s told you this yet, but thank you for agreeing to help with this,” she spoke in a somewhat stilted manner, like she was more used to being in her own head than talking with peers.

“Of course. I weirdly kinda feel like I owed it to you. I mean, Mulder and Scully were my bi-awakening,” Skye said with a bit of a dry laugh.

Rather than reacting in kind, the agent returned to awkwardly staring at her, clearly unsure how to respond.

“I’m joking,” Skye said with as clear and friendly a smile as she could muster. It was something she learned to do with fans who struggled with social cues. “I mean, it’s true, but it’s not why I’m here.”

She nodded in slightly more comfortable understanding and offered a handshake. “Lee Harker.”

“Skye Riley,” she said, accepting it.

As soon as their hands made contact, Lee recoiled from Skye’s touch, and the calm if rather reserved look on her face gave way to one of shock and barely suppressed terror.

“Oh, sorry, did I jab you or something?” Skye said, looking at the jewels on her glove.

“No, it’s just, um… It finally hit me that you’re, well… you,” Harker answered, slowly regaining her composure. “Your music… really helped me after my mom passed.”

“Oh… I’m sorry to hear that, but glad I could help,” Skye said warmly. Meeting fans often felt like she was carving up pieces of herself for them to devour, but hearing stories like this, how the art she made to process her own pain helped someone else deal with theirs, made it all worth it.

“... Look, I… know this is really unprofessional, but would it be alright if I asked for a hug?” She said while scanning their surroundings, as if to see if anyone was watching them.

“Uh, sure…”

What would have been a nice, if somewhat awkward moment quickly turned tense as Skye could feel Harker’s arms suddenly tighten around her like an anaconda, the air rushing out of her lungs as she felt her squeeze.

“Listen to me. You’re in serious danger,” her tone now much more grave.

“What?” Skye’s voice trembled as she tried to catch her breath.

“The things you’ve been seeing for the past three days, the smiling people, they’re real.”

“... How do you know about that?”

“Not here. I’ll meet you in your dressing room before the show starts. Just know that Lewis Fregoli didn’t kill himself.”

Before Skye could ask any further questions, Harker broke off the hug, put on a half-hearted smile, as if trying to act the last bit of their conversation didn’t happen, and walked away. Strangely, when Skye looked at the other people in attendance, the ones whose attention their little interaction drew wasn’t focused on her like it usually was, but on the agent she was talking to.

With the confirmation that she had been looking for, Harker made her way to see possibly the only other person in the building who would have even a remote chance of believing her and know how to best approach what would come next.

“Doctor June Ross-Mitchell?”

She was in the middle of conversing with the young girl about the upcoming show and what to expect from its illustrious host. She turned to Harker, clearly a touch annoyed at being interrupted, which was alleviated when she saw who was talking to her.

“My name is Special Agent Le-”

“I know who you are, Agent Harker,” Dr. June said with a touch of starstruck excitement. “That case of yours has generated some… quite interesting opportunities for my line of work these past few years.”

A part of Harker felt like she should have expected this to happen, she did what she could to hide her disdain for the topic and return to the matter at hand. “I was actually wondering if we could discuss something relating to your work, in private.”

“Is it about Mr. Wriggles?” the girl asked.

“I’m sorry?” Harker tried her best to avoid looking directly at her, because every time she did, all she could think of was what happened on Ruby’s 9th birthday, how Lee just stood there, trembling in fear as she listened to The Devil and Lee’s mother make Carter brutally murder his wife in the kitchen, how she was forced to kill Ruby’s father right in front of her. The girl was even about her age when she was rescued from her own Satan worshiping family, if rescued was even the right word for it in either of their cases. Lee lost count of the nights she was kept up by the thought of Ruby remembering what happened and the fear of what that would mean for them going forward. Lee was all she had left. Ruby was all she had left. She couldn’t let The Man Downstairs have her like he had her mother, but how could she escape him when he sat right on her shoulder, breathing down her neck?

“It’s Lilly’s name for the demon that resides in her,” Dr. June answered.

“... No, I don’t believe so,” Harker said to the girl. With the surge of public interest in the occult in the wake of the Longlegs case, it became exponentially harder to distinguish the work of parapsychologists like Dr. June from that of fear mongers and opportunistic charlatans, but regardless of if the girl was actually host to some otherworldly entity or not, it wasn’t the entity that Harker was worried about.

“Alright, well Lilly, how about you go talk with hair and make up and see if there’s anything else they need to do before we start, while I talk with Agent Harker? It should only take a few minutes.”

“Ok, June. I’ll see you then. It was lovely to meet you Agent Harker,” said the girl as she left them to converse in private.

“Is Lilly the only case of psychic infestation you’ve come across in your work?” Harker asked.

“She’s been the most substantial in terms of research, but no, there have been a few others. Though, nine times out of ten, it turns out to just be someone either having a mental health crisis or looking for attention. Despite what Mr. Haig might tell you, keeping an open mind doesn’t automatically equate to being a gullible fool. Why do you ask?”

“I have strong reason to believe that one of tonight’s guests has come into contact with a similar kind of entity.”

“Is it Christou? Trust me, that man is a total fraud. It’s people like him that give my practice a bad name.”

“No, the singer. Skye Riley.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have pegged her as one to get involved in demonic summonings.”

“She didn’t summon it. It might be more accurate to say that she was infected with it,” Harker said while pulling out her phone. “Now, I haven’t been able to find much information on the entity itself, but I have uncovered a chain of apparent suicides, which I’ve traced directly to Miss Riley, that strongly suggests these deaths are actually the result of an entity like the ones you’ve been studying. I’ve compiled documented evidence to verify all of this,” she added before presenting her phone to June.

“Jesus Christ!” June exclaimed in shock upon laying eyes on the screen.

Harker pulled the phone back to see a photo of a woman whose head had been vertically split in half with a chainsaw. “Sorry, that wasn’t meant to be the first slide,” she said as she began swiping to a much less upsetting part of the document.

“Agent Harker,” said Dr. Josephine Grant, having appeared seemingly out of thin air right behind her. “I’m surprised to see you here. I heard you had taken a leave of absence.”

“I… did, Doctor Grant. I took the past three days off to spend time with my ward. It was… something I really needed,” Harker lied.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe you were originally assigned to this operation. This is a rather strange case to join on your first day back,” Grant inquired.

“I… felt the more hands-off approach of my role would be a good way to ease myself back in. Simply observing the audience to see if any of them fit your profile on The Butcher is a nice change of pace from spending hours pouring over evidence to try and build a case.”

June saw right through that one, Grant picked up on her reaction, and recognized what Harker was attempting.

“I read your file, Agent Harker. Your work on bringing down Kobble was quite impressive. Even if the conclusion wasn’t exactly ideal, you managed to make more progress on that case in one week than I could in twenty years. But The Butcher is not Kobble. There is no evidence to suggest he has any interest in the occult, nothing about his methods are out of the ordinary for a killer of his type. If you truly believe you can be of aid in this operation, you are welcome to provide it. But we are here to catch a serial killer, not indulge in supernatural fantasies. Do I make myself clear?”

“... Yes, Ma’am,” Harker sheepishly answered.

“Good. I’m glad we have an understanding,” Grant said before leaving to finalize preparations for the night’s event.

Dr. June took a good look at Lee. She was clearly embarrassed, but even more clear was her frustration and distress over whatever it was she felt she had to go behind the bureau’s back in order to properly address.

“How about this? You send me the file you have on this… entity, I’ll look it over, and we can reconvene with Ms. Riley after the show.”

***

Skye paced around her dressing room, still trying to process… everything. “Who was that woman? How did she know about Lewis? What the fuck did she mean he didn’t kill himself? And the smiling people, how the hell could she possibly know about that? Could she read my mind? Fuck, was she even real? God, I could use some coke- drink- water! Drink some water!! Stick with the recovery program.” These thoughts raced through Skye’s head like they were competing in the Grand Prix as she pulled a bottle of VOSS water out of the mini-fridge and began gulping it all down in one go. It was supposedly to help her fight the urge to use again, but she always felt sick after doing it. “Maybe choking it down and fighting off the urge to throw up was meant to overpower the urge to get high?” she wondered while she tried to catch her breath, suppressing a small burp as she did so. Whenever people saw “mini-fridge fully stocked with VOSS water” on her rider, they always assumed that she had some kind of sponsorship deal with them, when really, it was recommended by her program’s therapist, saying that drinking heavily from the glass bottle without breaking it or breaking for air served as a sort of acknowledgement of what Skye could and couldn’t control. Though, lately, the “coulds” have been feeling more and more outnumbered by the “couldn’ts”.

A knock at the door snapped Skye out of her own head. Her expectation was that it would be that strange agent, but when she saw that it was Elizabeth, she wasn’t exactly sure if what she felt was relief, but it was at least a return to something resembling normal.

“Hey, how you holding up? You ready for the show?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yeah, I’m… fine.”

She noticed the empty bottle of water in her daughter’s hand and suppressed a look of concern. “I know that this has all been really weird, with Jack kinda stealing your night off, and the FBI showing up at the last minute and dumping all that stuff about The Butcher on you. But you should know that this is a good thing you’re doing.”

“I know, mom, and that I’ve been a pain these past few days. I’m sorry if I don’t seem appreciative of your help. I think all the stress of prepping for the tour and now this is just getting to me.”

“I understand. But I mean… come on. Helping to catch a serial killer? Can you ask for a better career comeback story? Just think of the headlines,” she said with barely contained glee.

“... Yeah. It’s real cool,” Skye murmured unenthusiastically.

Picking up on that, Elizabeth said, “Tell you what, how’bout I clear out some time from your prep schedule, book us a suite at the Four Seasons, and we can take advantage of the spa, relax, and just dry out before opening night? We can even do it after the show, if you want.”

What Skye really wanted was a break. Not just from the show or the tour, but everything; the fame, the fans, the media, even her own mom. She felt like she was drowning in the world of Skye Riley. She needed a break from herself. And it was her hope that after the show, after she performed a quick song, Jack had his interview with “The Devil,” and the FBI found the guy they’re looking for, she could just go home, have Gemma come over, and the two of them could order a pizza, watch some cheesy horror movie like they did when they were kids, and let the world of Skye Riley, superstar just fade into the background. She just had to get through the rest of the night. “Yeah. That sounds good,” she half-heartedly responded.

“Great, I’ll get right on that,” Elizabeth said with a smile. She turned to see that strange woman standing in the doorway, waiting for them to finish. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t see you there, Agent…?”

“Harker.”

“Right. Is there something else we need to go over before the show starts, Agent Harker?”

“Just some things I need to discuss with Miss Riley, in private.”

Elizabeth looked at her in confusion and then turned to her daughter to gauge her reaction to that request.

“It’s fine, mom,” Skye said before adding in a hushed whisper “she’s a fan.”

She nodded in understanding as a somewhat playful smirk creeped onto her lips. “Alright, well don’t let me get in the way of justice,” she said as she exited the dressing room.

Harker closed the door behind her, and with her went any pretense of this being a light-hearted fan meet-up.

“Thank you for meeting with me, Skye. I apologize if I… unsettled you earlier.”

“Unsettled?! You almost cracked my back in half and said a bunch of scary shit about how a guy that I saw bash his fucking face in with a gym weight didn’t actually kill himself!”

“I know, and I’m sorry. There’s no real way to simply… ease you into this.”

“Look, you’re obviously not here to question or arrest me, so how do you know Lewis?”

“I didn’t. He was connected to a… private case I was working on. This is going to sound incredibly far-fetched, but what I said was true. Lewis Fregoli didn’t kill himself. He was systematically infected, possessed, and murdered by some kind of… metaphysical parasite. A parasite that you are now the host of.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Skye wondered again if the person right in front of her was even real.

Harker pulled out her phone, queued up a video, and presented it to Skye. “He posted this on his Instagram four days ago.”

The video was of Lewis in his apartment. He looked scared out of his mind, like he was when she came over that night to buy some Vicodin for her chronic back pain from the accident. The apartment was almost impossibly dark. Skye could only make out the vague outline of the walls and furniture as Lewis crawled through it like he was walking across a minefield. He aimed the camera at a black void in the far corner of the room, and with a hushed, quivering voice, he said “Do you see it? … It just stares at me, smiling.” Then, the sound of the phone dropping on the ground and Lewis screaming at the top of his lungs. After about thirty seconds of silence, Skye heard him say “What the fuck? What the fuck is happening!?” At that point, the video ended, and Skye knew that there was something to what Harker was saying.

“What… What is this?”

“I don’t know,” Harker answered.

“What the fuck do you mean ‘you don’t know?’”

“I mean virtually everyone who knows about this is dead. And if we don’t act soon, you’ll be one of them.”

Skye’s phone started ringing. It was Gemma. Within less than a second, everything Harker had said faded away and all that mattered was answering the call. But before she could, Harker snatched the phone from her hand.

“What the hell? I need to answer that!”

Harker looked at the phone, and then at Skye curiously.

“Miss Riley, no one is calling.”

“... What? N- No, that’s Gemma. She’s my best friend. She said that she would call me,”

Harker took out her own phone, took a photo of Skye’s, and showed it to her. The screen was dark. No one was calling.

“But, Gemma… Sh- She came to my apartment last night. She slept over!” Skye said, her voice shaking in desperate confusion.

“And has anyone aside from you acknowledged this?”

Skye thought to herself. Elisabeth was there that morning. Skye’s alarm didn’t wake her, so she had to pick her up so she didn’t miss rehearsal. Gemma was still there when she arrived, but now she couldn’t remember, “did they say anything to each other?” She racked her brain to think of something, anything to confirm that Gemma, her lifeline, the woman whose friendship she blew up in one fell swoop, whose care and support she so desperately needed after everything, actually reached out to her and accepted her back into her life. But nothing came.

“I… I don’t understand,” Skye said, tears starting to run down her face.

“This parasite, this demon, if it helps you, it infects the host through their mind, and then spends the next week using whatever psychological trauma, or insecurities, guilt, grief, etcetera to torment them to the brink of insanity before taking control of their body and violently killing them in front of a witness, who then becomes the next host. It disguises itself to look like people, like smiling people. Often people that the host personally knows, but only they can see. I’ve documented all of this. I can show you, if you want.”

“... How do you know all this?”

“Let’s just say I… have some experience with entities like this. And experiences like that leave you more… sensitive to their presence. That’s why I reacted the way I did when I shook your hand.”

“Li- Like with that girl? The one Dr. June says is possessed? Before the presentation, she said that she saw something inside me, and that it wanted an audience to watch it-” realization hit Skye like a flaming truck. “Fuck! Fuck, I can’t do the show!!”

“Relax, Miss Riley,” Harker said.

“Relax?! You just said that this thing spreads by killing its host in front of a witness! And in case you forgot, there are at least 100 people out there waiting to watch me perform!”

“And in three days, there will be at least 20,000 people attending your concert. So, if we’re lucky, it won’t pass up the opportunity to kill you then.”

“And if we’re not?”

“... 100 people is easier to contain than 20,000.”

“Well, you work for the FBI, right? Haven’t you told them about this?”

“Do you think we would be having this conversion if they believed me when I did?” Harker dryly responded.

Skye scoffed upon hearing this. “So what am I supposed to do? Quarantine myself? Just wait until this thing kills me?”

“No, I have a plan.”

“Which is?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why the fuck not?!”

“Because if I told you, then I’d be telling it. It may be overconfident in its abilities, but it’s not stupid. And we can’t risk it trying to stop my plan before we have a chance to enact it. So for now we just… carry on with the show.”

“Carry on with the show?”

“I may not be here for The Butcher, but he is here for you. Like it or not, this whole operation revolves around your performance at the end of the special. This entity thrives on concealment, and pulling you out of the show would draw way too much attention and might encourage it to cut your cycle short. Also, I’m on thin ice with the Bureau as is, so I don’t think they’d take too kindly to me jeopardizing a mission of this importance. So, for now… Yeah, carry on with the show.”

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.” Skye exclaimed.

“Look, as far as I’ve been able to find, there have been at least two previous hosts that have managed to avoid being killed by this entity. One of them did it by brutally murdering a woman and passing it onto her friend who witnessed the act, but I doubt you’d be up for that.”

“And the other?”

“We’re going to meet him after the show, along with Doctor June, if she believes it necessary. In the meantime, I'll keep a close eye on you. Make sure our smiling friend doesn't try anything funny. Its power might seem absolute to you, but I have reason to believe that its influence is limited to only your perception of reality. If you want, you can think of me as your designated driver for tonight.”

Skye grabbed another bottle of water from the mini-fridge and chugged the whole thing in one go, to Harker’s mild bewilderment.

“You better be fucking right about all this.”

“If I’m not, then The Butcher will be the least of our worries.”