We remained hidden for nearly an hour, the strain pressing against us like a suffocating weight. The policemen stood shoulder to shoulder in grim silence, rifles raised, fingers tense against their triggers.
Earlier, their captain had spoken in a low, rigid tone. “No one fires unless I give the command.”
Even now, the muscles in his face were drawn tight with fear.
Abdul leaned slightly toward me. “If that creature rushes us—”
“It won’t,” I replied quietly, though I could not convince myself.
Peter adjusted the night-vision scope with shaky hands. “Battery’s still holding,” he muttered nervously. “Don’t fail me tonight.”
Amit stared at the sensor monitor. “Movement detected,” he whispered. “It’s circling the area.”
The night felt disturbingly wrong. No wind stirred. No insects chirped. The silence itself seemed alive.
Then the beast lifted its enormous head.
Its howl shattered the darkness.
One of the younger officers visibly recoiled. “Ya Allah…” he breathed in terror.
“That thing isn’t natural,” Diljeet murmured without taking his eyes off it.
The sound did more than echo—it vibrated through our bodies, sinking deep into our bones.
The creature’s glowing eyes blazed brighter as it lowered its snout and began prowling slowly across the field.
“It’s tracking something,” Amit said softly. “Watch the route it’s taking.”
Peter swallowed hard. “It’s sweeping the entire ground.”
“Stay absolutely still,” Abdul warned when one officer shifted nervously.
The hound moved within thirty feet of us. Up close, its body looked horrifying—thin as a corpse yet packed with unnatural strength, shadow and muscle stretched tightly over bone. Wisps of steam drifted from its mouth.
Suddenly it stopped.
Its head tilted slightly.
For one dreadful moment, I believed it had discovered us.
“Don’t move,” Diljeet whispered sharply.
The captain tightened his grip on the rifle. “Hold your fire,” he ordered under his breath.
After several agonizing seconds, the beast resumed its slow patrol.
At last it reached the middle of the clearing and halted.
“What’s it doing now?” Peter whispered.
Before anyone could answer, the ground beneath the creature began to glow faintly.
A sickly pale light seeped upward through the soil.
“No…” Abdul murmured in disbelief.
The eerie radiance grew stronger, throwing long skeletal shadows around the clearing.
Without hesitation, the hound stepped forward into the light.
It did not jump.
It did not collapse.
It simply descended, sinking into the glow as though the earth itself had opened to receive it.
Then it vanished.
The light disappeared instantly.
Darkness swallowed the field once more.
For several moments, none of us could speak.
Finally, I turned toward the policemen. “You all saw that… right?”
The captain gave a slow nod, his face pale. “Every bit of it.”
One officer muttered prayers under his breath while another shakily made the sign of the cross.
“It never tried to attack,” Amit said quietly, almost thinking aloud. “It was searching.”
“For what?” Peter asked nervously.
“Or maybe for someone,” Diljeet said grimly.
We gathered our equipment in uneasy silence, adrenaline still trembling through our hands.
“Tonight we review every second of the footage,” Abdul said firmly.
“Every frame,” I agreed.
Back at the temporary base, the air inside felt colder than the night outdoors.
Peter connected the camera to the laptop. “Playback starting,” he announced quietly.
The screen flickered alive in ghostly green night vision.
“There,” Amit said, pointing immediately.
The hound appeared onscreen exactly as we had seen it prowling across the clearing.
Frame by frame, we watched it trace its path.
“Stop,” Diljeet suddenly ordered.
Peter froze the video.
A dark shape stood faintly in the background.
“Zoom in,” Abdul said sharply.
The image sharpened slowly.
A tall black figure stood several yards behind the hound.
A chill crawled down my spine. “That thing wasn’t there earlier.”
“It was,” Amit whispered. “We just never noticed.”
The humanoid figure moved unnaturally, almost gliding as it mirrored the beast’s movements. Two burning crimson eyes glowed even through the night-vision filter.
Peter’s voice trembled. “That isn’t human.”
The figure bent forward slightly, mimicking the hound as though following the same trail.
“Maybe it’s tracking with it,” Abdul murmured.
“Or controlling it,” Diljeet replied darkly.
The footage reached the moment when the pale light burst from the earth again.
The hound descended first.
Then the shadow figure followed.
Just before vanishing into the glow, the figure turned its head directly toward the camera.
Every one of us jerked backward instinctively.
“It knew we were watching,” Peter whispered hoarsely.
The screen faded to black.
Silence filled the room again.
“Play the audio,” Amit finally said.
Peter hesitated before increasing the volume.
Static hissed through the speakers.
Wind crackled faintly.
Then came a strange scraping noise.
And after that—
A low, distorted voice.
“Iew.”
The sound rumbled through the speakers unnaturally, layered as if several voices had spoken at once.
Peter ripped the headphones off immediately. “You heard that too?”
“We all did,” Abdul answered quietly.
Again, faintly from the recording:
“Iew.”
“That isn’t English,” Diljeet said slowly.
“No,” I replied. “But it meant something.”
Amit rapidly typed across his keyboard. “Spell it out phonetically.”
“I-E-W,” Peter suggested.
“Search every language you can,” Abdul ordered.
The minutes dragged painfully as results flooded the screen—ancient dialects, forgotten symbols, obscure linguistic fragments.
Then Amit suddenly froze.
“Wait,” he whispered.
We crowded around him.
“Ancient Egyptian origin,” he read carefully. “Pronounced similarly to ‘Iew.’ Translation…”
He paused uneasily.
“‘To come.’”
The room seemed to tighten around us.
“To come?” Peter repeated weakly.
“Could be an invocation,” Abdul said.
“Or a command,” Diljeet added.
I stared at the darkened screen where the figure had disappeared. “It wasn’t searching for us.”
“It was summoning something,” Amit said softly.
The realization settled over us like ice.
Peter ran a hand through his hair. “So the hound arrives, searches the area, says a word meaning ‘to come,’ and disappears underground?”
“And the shadow thing follows it,” Abdul reminded him.
Diljeet paced slowly across the room. “Something is beneath that field.”
“Buried there?” Peter asked.
“Or imprisoned,” Abdul answered grimly.
Amit suddenly looked up. “What if the hound is only a messenger?”
“Messenger for what?” I demanded.
No one had an answer.
The silence that followed felt heavier than before.
Finally Peter spoke again, his voice low and uneasy. “If something was called… why hasn’t it appeared yet?”
“Maybe,” Abdul said carefully, “because it’s still coming.”
At that exact moment, a faint metallic creak echoed somewhere inside the building.
We all froze instantly.
“That’s probably just the structure settling,” Diljeet said quickly.
Peter looked unconvinced. “Probably?”
We listened carefully.
Nothing followed.
Amit slowly shut the laptop. “This isn’t an ordinary haunting.”
“No,” Abdul agreed. “This is ritualistic.”
“And ancient,” I added quietly.
Diljeet stopped pacing. “Which means someone intended this.”
Peter exhaled nervously. “So what happens now?”
I looked around the room at their exhausted, pale faces and the cold fear lingering in every eye.
“Tomorrow,” I said quietly, “we go back to that clearing.”
Amit stared at me. “To the exact center?”
“Yes.”
Peter blinked in disbelief. “You’re serious?”
“If something was summoned there,” Abdul said firmly, “we need to discover what.”
Diljeet nodded once. “And we face it together.”
The word repeated itself in my thoughts.
To come.
The hound had not appeared for us.
It had called for something else.
And as the darkness deepened beyond the windows, one terrible truth settled inside all of us—
Whatever had been summoned…
It was still on its way.
Author’s Notes:
Author’s Note: This chapter was edited with AI assistance for grammar, readability, and flow.
ns216.73.217.128da2
and then Add to home screen.