Chapter 7 — The Preparation
After the recording in the basement, no one argued about what had happened.
Something had answered them.
The altered audio.
The whisper at Mike’s ear.
The sudden cold.
Three clocks stopping one after another.
Dismissing it would have meant dismissing their own work.
So the decision had already been made.
They would return to Loomis Street.
But Pastor Elias reminded them of the question that still mattered most.
“We still don’t know who is being affected.”
The room slowed.
Because he was right.
They had a disturbed house.
They had frightened witnesses.
They had pressure building around a family.
But the center of the disturbance was still unclear.
The house.
The family.
Or one person inside it.
Father Moreno rested a hand on the Loomis file.
“That,” he said quietly, “is what the next three weeks are for.”
Not preparation for a confrontation.
Preparation for truth.
He opened the file again.
“Elias.”
The priest looked up.
“You continue with the family. Not the phenomena—the family. I want sacramental history, prayer habits, sleeping patterns, tensions, grief, secrets. Anything that changes when the house is mentioned.”
Elias nodded.
“Daniel. Speak with them separately. Especially the father and the children. I want what they say when the priest is not the one asking.”
Daniel gave a short nod.
“Dave. Property history. Previous tenants. Neighbors. Police calls. Building repairs. Strip the house down to everything it can explain—and everything it cannot.”
“Done,” Dave said.
“Mike. Retest every piece of equipment. Nothing from Loomis is considered supernatural until you fail to break it naturally.”
Mike nodded.
“Understood.”
“Ruben. Tomas. Rebuild the timeline. Six weeks is not precise enough. I want the first cold night. The first footsteps. The first knocking. When the family stopped sleeping separately. When prayer began affecting the activity.”
Both men were already writing.
Finally Moreno looked at Cid.
“You stay out of the house.”
Cid had expected that.
It still felt like a door closing.
“What do you want me doing?”
“External investigation,” Moreno said. “School records. Neighbors. Extended family. Especially the mother’s side. You look for exposure points—hidden practices, old griefs, conflicts. Anything that tells us whether the disturbance attaches to a place, a family line, or a person.”
Cid accepted the notebook sliding toward him.
Useful.
That word made the instruction easier to accept.
Then Moreno added the rule that changed the room.
“For the next three weeks, no one works casually.”
The men looked up.
“Two days each week you fast until evening. During the final three days before we return to the house, you fast daily. Morning prayer. Night prayer. Confession where necessary.”
He paused.
“No private curiosity. No retelling the case. No replaying phenomena in your head as if repetition gives you control over them.”
Silence followed.
Then he added one final instruction.
“If something happens to you—anything—you report it immediately.”
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No one argued.
After the clocks, arrogance had left the room.
---
The first week belonged to records.
Cid preferred that.
Records did not tremble.
They did not lie because they were frightened.
They simply waited until someone patient enough asked the right questions.
He began at the city library.
Microfilm.
City directories.
Property transfers.
Permit logs.
The Loomis house had changed hands more often than most houses on the block.
Not enough to look cursed.
But enough to look unsettled.
One furnace replacement.
One basement repair.
A plumbing complaint.
An old police disturbance call with almost no detail.
And one child death decades earlier that the team already knew about.
Nothing decisive.
Which was realistic.
If evil were easy to prove on paper, the Church would not need investigators.
---
Across the city, Dave worked the ordinary edges of the case.
Landlord.
Repairman.
Neighbors.
An elderly man two houses down remembered the building before the current family moved in.
“She was always colder than the others on the block,” the man said.
Then he frowned.
“Not haunted cold. Just… wrong cold.”
Dave wrote the phrase down anyway.
Wrong cold mattered.
---
Meanwhile Elias returned to the house without equipment.
No cameras.
No recorders.
Only conversation.
The family had already reorganized their lives around the disturbance.
Meals in one room.
Sleep in one room.
Lights always on.
Doors left open.
No one walking the upstairs hallway after two in the morning.
The disturbance was not only producing events.
It was reshaping behavior.
---
Daniel spoke with the father outside on the porch.
At first the man resisted.
Not because he was hiding anything.
Because he did not want to sound weak.
Eventually he said something Daniel wrote down word for word.
“It didn’t start with terror.”
Daniel waited.
“It started with small adjustments.”
Later Daniel added one line beneath the quote.
Small adjustments become surrender if they last long enough.
---
Ruben and Tomas attacked the timeline.
Did the cold begin upstairs or below?
Did footsteps always follow prayer?
Did the dog avoid the basement first—or the hallway?
Did the daughter’s sleep break before the boy’s?
Families in distress rarely reveal the center of the problem quickly.
They circle it.
Protect it.
Misremember around it.
The first week ended with more clarity—and no answers.
---
The second week belonged to people.
Cid visited the daughter’s school.
The teacher would not release records, but once she understood the church was involved she spoke carefully.
The girl was exhausted.
Grades slipping.
No disciplinary issues.
Just fear and lack of sleep.
Then Cid asked about the younger brother.
The teacher hesitated.
Then she opened a drawer.
Several drawings appeared.
A house.
Stairs.
A dark lower room.
And a woman-shaped figure standing at the bottom.
Nothing impossible.
But the repetition mattered.
“Does he talk about her?” Cid asked.
The teacher paused.
“He says a woman appears in his dreams.”
Dreams.
Not sightings.
Cid wrote that down exactly.
---
Daniel spent time with the children as well.
But he approached them differently.
He played ball with the boy in the church courtyard.
He spoke with the daughter in the parish hall.
No supernatural questions.
Only practical ones.
Which room felt worst.
Which time of night.
Who slept the least.
The daughter feared the upstairs hallway most.
The boy feared the basement.
The difference went into the file.
---
Mike spent the week fighting with machines.
He tested the recorder against battery failure, tape distortion, and interference.
He ran control recordings in the church.
The rectory.
His own apartment.
Every test behaved normally.
Which meant the Loomis recording still refused to become ordinary.
---
By the end of the second week, the case began touching the investigators.
Mike was first.
Late one evening he was labeling equipment when he heard a camera shutter from the sanctuary.
One sharp click.
He checked the church immediately.
No one there.
No camera out.
He checked every case.
All sealed.
He reported it the next morning without embellishment.
---
Ruben’s came two days later.
While reviewing the grandmother’s interview he noticed a sentence underlined twice in pencil.
When I pray out loud, the knocking begins.
He had not underlined it.
He knew his notes too well for that.
The page went into the file.
Pressure on investigators—unconfirmed.
---
Tomas’ event was quieter.
His bedside clock stopped three mornings in a row between two and three.
On the third morning he placed the clock in a grocery bag and brought it to the church.
He did not want it in his house anymore.
---
Dave’s report came from outside the parish.
A warehouse guard asked if the church had staged a play.
Dave said no.
The guard said he had seen a little girl in white standing near the fence at midnight.
Watching the church.
When Dave checked the lot, it was empty.
He wrote it down anyway.
---
Cid’s happened in the library.
He was copying records when the room changed.
Not empty.
Held.
Then he heard the music.
Soft.
Close.
“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”
No one around him reacted.
When he looked down, a pencil line had been drawn through the name he had just written.
Not his handwriting.
He added the page to the file.
Another pressure event.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
---
At the end of the third week they gathered again.
The Loomis file had grown thick.
Property records.
Interviews.
School observations.
Equipment tests.
Pressure reports.
Father Moreno listened without interrupting.
Then he asked the only question that mattered.
“So,” he said quietly, “who is being affected?”
No one answered immediately.
Finally Elias spoke.
“We still don’t know.”
Moreno nodded.
That was not failure.
That was discipline.
“We know the house is involved,” Elias continued. “We know the family is involved. Past practices may have opened something. But the center remains unclear.”
Moreno folded his hands.
“Good.”
No one expected that.
He repeated it.
“Good.”
Then he stood.
“The final fast begins tomorrow. Three days. Confession where needed. No speculation.”
He looked at Cid.
“You remain outside.”
Cid nodded.
“You handle exterior timing, sound observation, and family evacuation if necessary.”
Useful again.
That was enough.
The meeting should have ended there.
But as Cid slid the basement maps into the cabinet—
Three soft taps sounded from inside the drawer.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Not loud.
Just clear enough for every man in the room to hear.
Cid froze with his hand on the handle.
No one moved.
Father Moreno stared at the cabinet.
Then something like anger hardened his expression.
“Good,” he said quietly.
No one understood.
Then he explained.
“It wants to be noticed before we return.”
Silence filled the basement.
He turned to Elias.
“Now we know it knows we’re close.”
That was how the three weeks ended.
Not with answers.
With pressure.
Enough to justify returning.
And still no answer to the question that mattered most.
Who, exactly, was the thing on Loomis Street trying to reach?
