The first night, it’s a fluke. That’s what Malachi tells himself as he limps back from the hospital, head pounding, ribs burning with every breath. He blames the alleyway scuffle—bad timing, nothing more. But the ER nurse’s skeptical look lingers in his mind, just like the echo of Alexis’s voice, that low, velvet promise twisting through his dreams.
The next night, he wakes at 2:00 a.m. to the slap of icy air. His apartment is pitch dark, but the temperature has dropped so sharply his breath fogs before his lips. The shadows churn in the corner, thickening into a shape, a silhouette that resolves into Alexis—her eyes glimmering like embers, her smile razor-thin. Malachi tries to scream, but she’s on him before he can draw a breath, fists landing with the precision of a surgeon and the fury of a storm.
It’s not a dream. Bruised and broken, he drags himself to urgent care again. Two cracked ribs, a black eye, and the knowledge that no lock, no chain, no alarm can keep her out. She comes at exactly 2:00 a.m., every night, relentless as the tide. Always smiling, always silent as she delivers her punishment.
His friends stop answering his calls. He catches his own reflection in a storefront window and hardly recognizes the battered face staring back. Sleep is a distant memory. He sits awake, every night, staring at the clock, dreading the moment when the hands tick to two.
There is no negotiation, no mercy. Alexis listens to his apologies with clinical disinterest before driving a fist into his gut that leaves him retching on the floor. Pleading only seems to amuse her. The police think he’s delusional. The doctors prescribe painkillers. No one believes a demon is haunting him—least of all himself, at first. But the bruises are real. The fear is real. And Alexis is as real as the pain that blooms anew each midnight.
He researches, desperate—the Internet, old books from dusty occult shops, internet forums crowded with the unhinged and the desperate. The answer rises again and again: exorcism. A priest. The right priest. That’s how he finds Vito, a man with tired eyes and a mouth full of warnings. “She’s not just any demon,” Vito says, voice grave. “She marks those who wrong her. The only hope is to face her, with me here, at the exact hour.”
So tonight, Malachi paces his living room, every step a whimper of pain. Shadows stretch long across the gleaming floors. Vito sits at the kitchen table, Bible open, fingers poised in trembling prayer. Midnight passes. One o’clock. The air grows heavier, harder to breathe. The clock ticks down, second by second, toward the hour of reckoning.
A sudden, electric chill slices through the air. The lights flicker, dim, then shudder back to life. Vito stands, voice a whisper: “It’s time.”
The clock hands align: 2:00 a.m. The room plunges into night deeper than any darkness Malachi has ever known. Alexis appears, her form materializing from shadow, her eyes burning with furious delight. She grins—hungry, cruel—and Malachi’s heart hammers in his chest. This time, he has Vito. This time, he hopes, he might survive.
Alexis takes a step forward, her gaze slicing to Malachi, then to Vito. The candles gutter, their flames bending toward her as if compelled by her very presence. The air crackles with energy, a storm about to break.
Vito raises his Bible, voice steady, chanting the ancient words. Alexis laughs, the sound curling through the room like smoke. She moves forward, faster than thought, her hand reaching for Malachi’s throat, fingers icy and unyielding. Malachi’s vision blurs, panic flaring. He has to do something—anything—before it’s too late.