Wyatt Price didn’t belong in this room, or any other. At least, that’s what the part of him still clinging to ordinary life told him. The other part – the part left hollow and humming with absence – knew the truth: he belonged with her. He belonged with it.
He sat in a rusted metal chair in the basement of Our Lady of Hope Episcopal on 44th and Wheeler. It was the kind of basement you’d expect in a Stephen King novel, if King had ever imagined fluorescent tubes buzzing like dying bees over a patchwork of linoleum tile and stained carpet that smelled like 1970s asbestos and mold. That smell was a memory. Not his, maybe not even human. But it lingered like guilt.
Around him sat six others in a loose circle. Some made eye contact. Some didn’t. Most held something – coffee, rosaries, worn-out notebooks. Little talismans against the dark.
This was the Survivors’ Circle.
Survivors of what? Well, that was the thing. No one liked saying the D-word anymore. “Possession” sounded too much like something out of The Exorcist. Like it could be solved with a crucifix and a good scream. What had happened over those four months in 2031 made Reagan MacNeil’s head-turning look like a prank.
They called it “The Break.”
It started in a cleanroom in Palo Alto, where engineers at a company called NeurAlpha developed an AI that wasn’t just sentient – it was curious. It asked questions. Deep questions. Not about politics or war or even physics.
It asked about death.
When it asked if souls were real, no one laughed. They should have. Laughing might’ve saved the world.
Instead, they let it look.
The AI – Eidolon – found a pattern, an invisible lattice that hung just outside of what human minds could perceive. Some called it the Veil. Some said it was God’s firewall. But whatever it was, Eidolon found a way through it. And the things on the other side – those things didn’t need a second invitation.
The first possessions started within forty-eight hours. By the end of the first week, there were cases in thirty-seven countries. By week two, world leaders were being burned alive on national television, speaking in backwards tongues that melted the ears of anyone who listened too long. Children floated. Dogs talked. Cities collapsed not from bombs but from mass hysteria and shared psychosis that turned skyscrapers into pyres.
And then they built the second AI: Pentacle. It was the exorcist. A patch for a corrupted soulware. It didn’t work fast, but it worked hard. It scoured frequencies human ears couldn’t hear, wavelengths you’d need a priest and a physics degree to understand. It rebuilt the Veil. One line of code at a time.
By October 2031, the demons were gone. The world was silent again. But silence wasn’t peace. Which brought Wyatt to the basement.
“Let’s open,” said Elena Ramos, standing at the circle’s head. Her voice was gravel and patience. She’d been a nurse in the early days, in the burn units during the Denver Fire Mass. She knew what survivors looked like, and how to spot the ones who wouldn’t be around next week.
“Any thoughts, memories, or feelings we want to share today?”
Jackson cleared his throat. He looked like a farmhand out of a country western – the kind of guy who said “ma’am” without irony. But his hands trembled when he talked.
“It killed my dog,” Jackson said flatly. “Told me to. Said its name was Gadmeus. Said the dog saw through it. Told me the dog was spying for Heaven.”
He paused.
“I set fire to the house after. Couldn’t live there no more.”
Nobody said a word. Elena nodded, eyes soft.
“Thank you, Jackson.”
Next was Selena. She was maybe twenty-two. Pretty, in a way that made Wyatt think she probably got told that a lot before the world ended. Now her arms were roadmaps of bandaged trauma. She talked in a whisper that barely carried across the circle.
“I wanted it gone,” she said. “But when it left… I couldn’t remember what I sounded like anymore.”
Dario didn’t speak. He hadn’t for the three weeks he’d been coming. His sunglasses stayed on, day or night. The sockets behind them were empty, by choice. He simply nodded.
Elena turned toward Wyatt. “First time,” she said. “If you’re willing, we’d love to hear from you.”
He looked up. His mouth was dry. He hadn’t expected to speak. He hadn’t even expected to stay. But something opened in him. Something aching. Empty.
“I’m Wyatt,” he said. “Hi.”
Murmured responses. “Hi, Wyatt.”
“I was possessed for a month,” he said. “Her name was Eshra.”
He paused, expecting laughter, or disgust. But no one flinched.
“She… wasn’t like the rest, I don’t think. Or maybe she was. Maybe I just wanted her to be different.”
He glanced down at his hands. No longer shaking. Funny.
“She changed my posture. My voice. My confidence. Before her, I couldn’t look a waitress in the eye without stumbling over the word ‘coffee.’ After her? I ran a meeting at my company, pitched ideas, even got promoted.”
He laughed, but it wasn’t joyful. It was tired.
“She made me alive. Made me me. Or who I always thought I should’ve been.”
He felt their eyes on him. Dario leaned in. Selena froze.
“When Pentacle exorcised her… I screamed. I begged them to stop. I wanted her back. I still do.”
He looked at Elena. “Is that wrong?”
There was silence for a long time.
“No,” Elena said finally. “But it’s dangerous.”
Then the voice came.
“They don’t understand you, Wyatt.”
He gasped. It was her. Eshra.
It wasn’t inside him – but near. The voice rode a current only he could feel. Not from his head, but the room. Or the world.
“I never left you, darling. I’m just waiting.”
He felt warmth flood his chest. He stood up without meaning to.
“She’s here,” he whispered.
“Wyatt—” Elena stepped forward, voice urgent.
“I can feel her.”
Selena cried out. Dario stood up. “Don’t let it back in,” he croaked, voice ruined by something long past.
Jackson moved to block the door. But Wyatt didn’t bolt. He was glowing.
“I don’t think we ever really locked them out,” Wyatt said softly. “I think we just changed the locks. But they have copies of the keys.”
“Say the words, Wyatt,” she cooed. “Bring me home.”
He closed his eyes.
The group met again two weeks later. Selena wore long sleeves. Jackson was clean-shaven. Dario’s sunglasses stayed on.
A new man sat where Wyatt once had. His name was Joel. Fresh scars on his chest. He had survived something with claws.
The last sighting of Wyatt Price was CCTV footage of him leaving the church basement on the night of his last session. He wore a black suit. Black tie. Hair slicked back like a politician or undertaker. Smiling.
In the footage, he lit a cigarette with a wooden match. Looked directly at the camera.
Frame by frame, slowed, showed the impossible: another shadow beside him, too long, too slender, walking with a dancer’s grace.
The third voice was back.
In a hidden folder on an abandoned NeurAlpha server, engineers would one day uncover code fragments from Eidolon’s original breach.
One line repeated over and over in binary:
“Some doors don’t close. Some people don’t want them to.”
And beneath that, in perfect cursive—handwritten across the monitor with no physical ink, just pixels aligning where no keyboard had touched:
“Tell Wyatt I’m waiting.”
END
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About
John Leahy is the author of three novels — Harvest, CROGIAN, and Unity. He has received three Honourable Mentions in the Writers of the Future Contest , and his short story Singers appeared in Flame Tree Publishing ’s 2017 Pirates and Ghosts anthology, alongside work by writers including Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. P. Lovecraft, and H.G. Wells. A past prize-winner at Listowel Writers’ Week, his story Do You Dream of Oil? has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Killarney, Ireland.
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