Graveyard Shift

“You ever notice every shitty call happens right before shift change?” Ramirez said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as the cruiser rolled slowly down the dark residential street. Cole leaned back in the passenger seat and smirked. “That’s because the universe hates cops. Especially you. I’m pretty sure dispatch keeps a list that says ‘Ramirez deserves this one.’”

Ramirez laughed and killed the engine. The cruiser lights faded out, leaving the street washed in dull orange from a flickering lamp. The house across from them crouched, hidden in the dark like a scared animal. Every window was black. The lawn was knee high and dead. “Dispatch says someone called 911 from inside,” Ramirez muttered. “Problem is, this place has been empty for going on damn near five years.”

Cole stepped out, his car door creaking loud in the quiet neighborhood. The moment his boots hit the pavement, something about the air felt off. No wind. No distant traffic. No bugs chirping in the grass. Just a heavy, suffocating silence that pressed into his ears until it almost hurt. “You feel that?” he asked.“Yeah,” Ramirez said quietly as he joined him. Even his usual smirk had faded. The front door of the house hung eased open, maybe two inches. It rocked slowly on its hinges, letting out a faint wooden screech every few seconds. “Dispatch said possible disturbance. Let’s clear it.”

They moved across the yard, flashlights cutting narrow tunnels through the darkness. The porch bowed under their weight, each step popping and groaning like the house was complaining about their presence. Cole nudged the door open with two fingers. “Police department,” he called into the void. The beam of his light crawled over splitting walls, rotting and collapsed furniture, and wallpaper peeling like dead skin after a good sunburn. The air smelled like dust, mold, and something with a faint bitter tinge to it.

They took only a few steps inside before both men stopped entirely, their brave facade quickly dismantling itself. The air in the house felt thicker, almost humid, like the pressure before a thunderstorm. Somewhere deeper in the building a floorboard creaked slowly, stretching the silence until it snapped. Ramirez shifted his grip to his gun. “You remember the news ticker at the station earlier?” he said quietly. “That prison escape.

”Cole nodded slowly. Everyone had seen it flashing across the screen while they filled out paperwork. A long institutionalized serial killer. Decades of murders, brutal efficiency, and a mind so frighteningly sharp some profiler compared it to Hawking. “Yeah.." Cole said under his breath. “Seriously though.. don’t start this shit right now.”

Then the front door slammed behind them, the latch clicking sounding like a 10 pound hammer slamming down, compared to the intense silence inside.

Both officers spun quickly, weapons raised, flashlights barely cutting through the empty entryway. The door handle shook once, then went still. Ramirez grabbed it and twisted hard. It failed to move, not even so much as a shake. “That’s not funny,” he muttered quietly, his voice riddled with nerves.

From the second floor came the slow sound of someone clapping. One sharp clap that echoed thunderously through the dark. Then another. Then another, calm, patient. Like someone acknowledging that the trap laid before them had worked as intended.

Cole’s stomach dropped. “We need to get the hell out, now...” he whispered desperately.

Something moved at the far end of the hallway fast..entirely too fast. Ramirez barely had time to turn before a silhouette stepped up behind him, seemingly from the wall itself and a narrow blade glinted in a ray of moonlight, before tearing clean through the side of his throat. Blood sprayed wildly across the peeling wallpaper as he collapsed, choking, eyes wide with confusion and shock.

Cole screamed and fired down the hall in panic, muzzle flashes exploding against the walls, casings flying wildly as the magazine dried up. The hallway was empty again, no footsteps, no movement. Just Ramirez gurgling profusely on the floor.

Then someone stepped, quietly, out of the darkness behind him.

Cole turned around and the flashlight beam landed on the face of an urban legend.

Recognition hit instantly; the escape alert, the interviews, the diagrams, the monster who treated murder like a science problem. This monster of a man watched Cole the way a scientist watches a lab animal.

“I wondered how long it would take for someone to come inside,” he said softly, almost innocently.

Cole never even felt the floor when he hit it.