“Police Pleasure Patrols”

Ainis stared at the door long after Warinya left, as if waiting for her shadow to return without her. The bottle in his hand perspired against his fingers. Rain pressed against the window now, harder, not rhythmic, more like scratching. He tilted his head. Not the wind. Too systematic. Like knuckles. Like a warning.

He stood up slowly. The mask was open on the desk, staring back at him with its eye sockets. He folded it once. Twice. Stored it in a drawer beneath files labeled "Noise Complaints" and "Curfew Violations." None of them is real.

The hallway outside his office was quiet. Too quiet for a police station. Just the hum of power not reaching everywhere. A light bulb buzzed overhead, buzz, blink, silence. Buzz again. It all seemed staged, like a museum left open especially for ghosts.

He passed by the locker room. Lockers marred, one hanging ajar like a mouth in mid-scream. Inside: a uniform without a name tag, sleeves torn at the cuffs. He didn't stop. Didn't see whose it was. No one would take it anyway.

His boots rang quietly in the rear hall. The far door that led into the archive basement was open. That door never stayed open. He approached it. Stopped.

There was a hum from below. Low, female. Childlike, but off. Too flat. No melody. Ainis gripped the frame and leaned forward. The darkness down the stairwell was complete. No emergency light. Just the smell: mildew, wax, and something wet left too long. He exhaled, slow and steady, then descended.

Each step creaked like an old secret remembering shape. At the bottom, the humming stopped. Replaced by silence so dense it pulsed. The room was low and expansive, lined with filing cabinets and empty evidence lockers. Light from his phone barely reached the corners. Shadows gathered unnaturally, and movement.

A file drawer opened on its own. He turned around fast. Nothing there. Just a thick binder resting on top of the steel. Its cover was empty. Inside: reports. Real ones. Pages were never uploaded to the digital platform. Handwritten notes in the margins. Names omitted. Dates altered. Photos cut from somewhere else. One of the men in robes was beneath the chapel altar. Another, a girl's face, eyes wide, mouth stitched closed. A signature at the bottom of each page: J. Wilk.

The last sheet had only two words, typed in red: "Don't Blink."

Ainis closed the binder with a slam. The door behind him squeaked. He turned around. Nobody. The lights upstairs had gone out. A shadow crossed the wall that wasn't his.

A cold weight bore into his sternum. He shoved the binder inside his coat and took the stairs two at a time. The door at the top was open now, more than it had been. The station was colder. Lights out. Air denser. Something behind him footsteps, maybe when he turned around, there was only the empty stairwell and the sensation that something else had been breathing beside him.

Outside, the sky had torn open. Lightning frolicked across Ossendrecht's silhouette. The streets steamed with recent rain, but the fog clung like rot that would not lift. His car was gone.

He had no memory of parking it elsewhere. A low siren wailed once, then ceased. Far off. Possibly from the forest. Possibly from something that imitated a siren. Ainis moved. No direction. Just instinct.

Beyond shut stores and windows with curtains too stiff to be fabric. The bakery door was open. Just an inch. He didn't stop. Just noted.

The alleyway alongside the school vibrated with the whir of insects that spring had no room for. A dumpster lid shifted. He kept walking.

By the time he reached the church, he expected silence. What he got was fire.

Not fire. Candles. Hundreds of them. Along the path behind the chapel. Each one set in a hollowed skull, their wax dripping into bone. No wind moved the flames. No air moved at all.

A hooded figure stood at the back door of the chapel. Not Nerijus. Taller. Pailer. Lips dark as bruises, eyes rimmed with charcoal. No voice, just one gesture downward. To the basement of the chapel.

Ainis didn't move. The figure tilted its head. Something wasn't natural in the way the neck bent.

Ainis backed away. He turned onto the street again, heart beating not fast, just steady. Like it was counting down. Like, whatever number it reached would mean.

His phone buzzed in his coat. Unknown number. He picked up out of habit. A voice, childlike, too clear, whispered: "She wasn't the only one marked.".

The phone call ended. He turned around. No chapel. Black trees were where it had been, swaying slowly in the wind, though there was no wind.

When Ainis arrived at his apartment, dawn was still a rumor. Clouds purpled like bruises over rooftops. The lobby of his building smelled of burnt paper. The elevator button shone red. He took the stairs.

On the third-floor landing, boots were left outside 3 B. Not his. Kids' size. Wet. Inside his apartment, silence greeted him like a shield.

He bolted the door behind him. Drew the blinds. Removed the pendant from under his shirt and set it by the sink. In the mirror, his reflection blinked slowly. He scowled. It smiled. He didn't.