"What the fuck was that?"

His skin burned. It was as if a lion had lunged onto him and scraped its claws down his back, ripping through his T-shirt, piercing through his flesh like it was melted butter. The wound singed, as if said lion's claws were tipped in poison or had drizzled lava into his spine.

"What? What is it?" He couldn't see Kylie—he'd long since abandoned the camera on the ground, after nearly freezing to death—but sensed her rush up to him. Her sweet scent, usually so reassuring, so tantalizing, did nothing to assuage his agony.

"I... something... I got scratched!" He tried to touch the area where he'd felt the scrapes, but he couldn't reach. "Can you... grab your phone, or my phone, and check? It fucking hurts." He hissed as the burning sensation worsened and he worried that blood started to gush from the area.

"Shit." Kylie shuffled about, and next Benny knew, she'd whipped out her cell and flicked on the flashlight. She shimmied behind him, and before she could even lift his shirt, she gasped. "Holy shit, Benny. Holy shit."

"What? How bad is it?" Benny had already imagined the worse, based on how intense the pain was; yet nothing in the world prepared him for what was to come.

"Your shirt... it's ruined." She ran her fingertips down the slashes, causing Benny to wince, to grit his teeth, to fight the suffering. Under other circumstances, he'd be licking his lips and basking in her touch, eager for her to remove his shirt, to tickle her nails along his skin, to place precious kisses from the base of his neck to his waist. But at that moment, the slightest brush of her finger was awful.

"I'm gonna need more details, Kylie," he said, hands tightening into fists as she gently dragged the fabric of his shirt up.

"It... they... whatever did this got deep. It's... ugh, it's gnarly, man." Benny could almost feel the light on his skin as Kylie inspected the gash. "It ripped through your shirt, and you're... bleeding. Pretty badly, actually. This is... fuck." She sauntered away from him and fumbled around in search of his bag. "Did you bring any first aid shit? I need to clean that, fast."

As the clothing fell over his skin once more, he grimaced. The simplest touch sent agonizing jolts up and down his spine. "Um, somewhere..." He mumbled, too preoccupied with the stinging and the stickiness of the blood as it slithered under the waistband of his jeans. "How... how many marks?"

"Huh?" Kylie's chin lifted, and she shined the phone's flashlight on her face. "How many marks? What do you mean?"

Benny gulped. It might have seemed insignificant to her, but to him, it was an important detail. Scratches were often a demonic sign, and their number was key. "How many scratches are on me? I'm... it hurts too much for me to check, and I can't touch them..."

Kylie's silhouette cropped out for a moment as she lowered the light and rummaged through the bag. "Aha!" She emerged victorious, with some rubbing alcohol and a roll of toilet paper. "This... will have to do." She meandered over to Benny and pulled the shirt up again, prompting him to hiss at her. "Whoa, sorry, hun."

"How... many?" He could barely part his lips and couldn't stop his voice from coming out as a growl. The longer she took, the deeper the abrasion became.

"I'm not sure why it's so important, but... three." She dabbed a wad of paper over the bottle of alcohol, then pressed it to one of the scrapes.

"Shiiiiiiiiiit." The injury sizzled, and Benny yelped out. And as Kylie apologize, he bit his knuckles to hold in a louder, less manly moan of misery.

"Sorry, sorry, but I..." Kylie continued to pat at his wounds, her hands trembling. "Three marks, Benny. On each side. Does that... mean something to you?"

Benny's eyes closed, and he fought the urge to scream. Because of the searing pain, yes; but also because three was a number one didn't want to see during a paranormal investigation. "Forgive me for getting all technical on you, but... scratches appearing... in threes... is a mocking of the Holy Trinity." He sucked in his lips and tried to breathe through his nose, but every breath amplified the pulsating pain in his back. "It's common knowledge among occultists and demonologists... which means this thing... it's demonic."

Kylie dropped the toilet paper and swished backwards. "Demonic?" Benny didn't need to see her to know she'd turned sheet white and was likely about to faint. Though he wasn't the religious type, Kylie had grown up in a Catholic household. She'd been raised with much knowledge of the Bible and took it seriously most days, though she'd stopped going to church every Sunday by the time she made it to twelfth grade. "The thing that scratched you... is a demon?" The terror in her tone told Benny they'd be departing the house in a matter of minutes. They wouldn't linger here, not if evil creatures lurked in the dark.

Not that Benny would complain—he wasn't too keen on sticking around after being mangled by demonic ghosts—but a part of him still wanted more. That craving to unveil the truth prodded at his stomach linings and contradicted his common sense, that pleaded with him to run.

"I'm not positive that it, the thing that did this, actually was a demon." He sought once more to touch his cuts, now that Kylie had abandoned them to have a panic attack. "Or if it works for one. Or if one is in the vicinity, manipulating the one I thought to be Arielle... I don't even know if they're real, but I've... read about this."

"They're real." Kylie's breath whooshed over Benny's neck and skidded down his back as she resumed washing his wound. "And if that's what's happening here, then we are out. I'm calling in the big guns."

Her motions were soft, but Benny sensed her shivering. He pictured her lips thinning and her shoulders stiffening, and her trying her damndest not to let fear overtake her as it had the day before, and earlier that night.

Hunching and doing all he could to not pass out from the supreme discomfort in his spine, Benny squeezed his knees, begging for relief. "Your bosses? You want them to... take over?"

After one last swab of toilet paper, Kylie let go of his shirt and returned to face him. "No. This... no, that shit didn't happen with any of the agents or officers who were here before you. Granted, none were here overnight like us, but... and that message upstairs... no, dude, the big guns are priests. Exorcists or something."

Benny snorted. "You think your superiors will allow that?" He motioned towards where he remembered dropping his camera, where he knew his voice recorder still rolled, capturing their entire conversation. "Do you think we have enough proof? I'm not sure if—"

"—I snapped pictures of your lesions, Benny. And you have photos of the mirror message from upstairs. And the audio... it's not the best, but it's compelling enough." She seized his hand, yanking him towards his bag near the door. "It should at least persuade them that we're in over our head. That their suicide conclusions are total bullshit because there's way more going on here. More than three girls with a pact—there's evil in this place, and I worry there's evil up in Ohio, too. Where Stella died."

"You... you think?" Benny's eyebrows lurched up as he snatched his flashlight from his bag and turned it on. He hobbled over to his camera, sighed in delight when he realized it had been filming that entire time, and retrieved his voice recorder—also still functioning. "I've been digging through the files and I don't think it's a suicide thing, either. Despite what Jade's parents said, despite the lack of evidence with Stella... and I doubt Arielle killed herself."

Kylie kept her phone's light focused on her expression, showing the twitching of her nose and the scrunching of her brows. "With what we've felt here tonight, what you felt... can we agree that someone... or something killed her? That there's a malicious... thing here, and that's how she died?"

If he wasn't in so much pain, if his spine weren't on fire and his limbs barely strong enough to hold him up, he would have tugged her into his embrace. He would have sniffed in her hair and plastered kisses all over her face and shoved their lips together for a perilous but passionate kiss. He would have thanked her for seeing reason, for comprehending that there was more to this case than she'd expected.

Yes, she had summoned him to help her, but for most of their investigation she'd been skeptical, dismissive, distant. She'd mocked his devices and rolled her eyes when he shared his opinions and laughed when he explained his theories. But since the day before, when they found real evidence, she'd opened up a smidgen, allowing Benny's occult logic to run through her mind. And tonight, she'd adhered to that logic. She'd joined his team. She saw the truth—that spirits, nefarious or not, existed, and to document them and prove their existence to the world was a priority.

Well, maybe not her priority, but it was his.

"This is what I've been waiting for, Kylie," he said, treasuring her words forever. Again, he yearned to reach out and hold her, but every movement worsened his suffering. "But I think I should stick around. I can assist whoever your bosses call in to help. They'll need someone who speaks in their terms, someone to give them the details."

He deposited his voice recorder into the bag, and she zipped the sack shut, then picked it up. "I got this." She set a hand to his shoulder, slowly guiding him towards the door. "You need to get out of here and be seen by a doctor. We'll let the professionals handle this now."

"Hey!" He sneered at her, though her gaze focused on the exit. "I'm a professional!"

She snickered and grabbed the doorknob, twisted, and soon a brisk breeze swooshed through her curls and nipped at Benny's cheeks. "Yeah, and you're also still bleeding, so you need a medical professional. Stop bitching and start walking, mister."

He smirked at her retort—she only called him mister when she was in a playful mood. Odd as such a behavior was after their experience, it relaxed him, took his thoughts away from the horrific punctures on his back.

As the door creaked shut, he could have sworn he heard a cackle. A low in the throat, roaring sound that eerily resembled what he'd heard the night before in his hotel room.

He paused, flipped around, and glared at the door, waiting for something to appear. Waiting for an ominous shadow, the outline of a monster, the silhouette of the being that had raked its nails down his back. But nothing appeared, and Kylie tugged him farther away as a deadly dread settled in his gut.