Shadow Company ‖ THE HALLOW'S EVE HAUNTING

October 31st. Halloween Night. Shadow Company had recently accepted a rather lucrative contract from a private client operating out of Tennessee. Something about illegal arms shipments, a small group of hostiles, and a suspected distribution network operating around Wilton Springs, just shy of the Cherokee National Forest. Or, in more familiar terms, the Appalachian Mountains. The sort of place where the trees outnumbered the people, the roads seemed to go on forever, and getting lost was considerably easier than finding your way back.

The operation itself had been relatively straightforward. Locate the shipment, neutralise the hostiles, secure the merchandise, and collect a rather handsome payment for their troubles. Nothing particularly unusual for a private military company of Shadow's calibre, though the substantial reward had been enough to convince Graves to accompany the team personally. Besides, he'd grown thoroughly sick of sitting behind a desk at headquarters, signing off reports he'd already read more times than he cared to count.

By the time the operation concluded, however, darkness had already swallowed the surrounding mountains. Rather than arrange an immediate helicopter extraction, Graves elected to redirect the team towards a nearby safehouse their client had assured him was secure, stocked, and available for the night. A temporary layover until morning, when they could return to headquarters without having to navigate unfamiliar mountain terrain in the middle of a storm.

"Good work today, boys. Just wait 'til that paycheck comes through. Y'all'll see it was worth the trip." Graves had made himself comfortable almost immediately, claiming the best armchair in the sitting room with the casual authority of a man who owned both the company and, by extension, every decent piece of furniture his employees encountered.

The safehouse itself was a surprisingly cosy little cabin tucked beneath the dense canopy of the Cherokee National Forest. Built from heavy, weathered timber, with a broad stone chimney that looked as though it hadn't been touched since the Salem witch trials, it possessed the sort of rustic charm that estate agents would describe as full of character. Which was usually a polite way of saying the place needed several thousand dollars' worth of repairs and a priest.

Nevertheless, it was spacious enough to accommodate five fully equipped operators without forcing anyone to sleep in the bathtub. A narrow wooden porch stretched across the front of the property, offering a spectacular view of absolutely nothing but moss-covered trees, tangled undergrowth, and the occasional patch of darkness between the trunks. There were no streetlights, no neighbouring houses, and certainly no convenient little petrol station where somebody could pop out for a packet of cigarettes.

More importantly, the cabin had a roof, running water, and an external generator that provided just enough electricity to keep the lights working. Mostly. The heating was temperamental, the floorboards complained whenever somebody walked across them, and the ancient refrigerator made a noise remarkably similar to a dying animal whenever its compressor kicked in.

Graves considered it rustic. Hale considered it adequate. Rook considered it prime hunting territory.

And Sparks? Well, Sparks considered it an opportunity to become an absolute fucking nuisance.

For the better part of forty minutes, Rook had been enthusiastically regaling his teammates with every unsettling story he'd ever heard about the Appalachian Mountains. The Bone Lady, mysterious figures wandering between the trees, witches, strange creatures, and things that supposedly mimicked familiar voices to lure unsuspecting travellers into the wilderness. His collection of folklore was extensive, occasionally contradictory, and delivered with the confidence of a man who had absolutely no intention of verifying any of it.

Naturally, Sparks had taken this as a personal invitation to start fucking with everyone.

It began with harmless little things. A whistle echoing from an empty hallway, an ominous tapping against the kitchen wall, and Hale's boots mysteriously disappearing from beside the sofa. Sparks had even begun fiddling with the frequencies on his radio, producing bursts of static and distorted snippets of speech that he insisted sounded exactly like something attempting to imitate a human voice.

Rook, rather than discouraging him, had decided to contribute his own brand of stupidity. After spending a solid ten minutes explaining why nobody should ever whistle into the Appalachian woods after dark, he'd promptly leaned out of the sitting-room window and delivered the loudest, most obnoxious whistle he could manage.

"Cut that shit out, Sparks, or I'll smack the shit outta you." Hale sounded profoundly unimpressed, which wasn't particularly unusual. The senior operator had been looking forward to a quiet evening, six uninterrupted hours of sleep, and an early departure back to headquarters. Unfortunately, he worked with idiots. "And where the fuck have my boots gone?"

Sparks merely beamed, twisting the dial on his radio until another burst of distorted static crackled through the room. "You ain't gonna do shit, Hale. You're just gonna sit there brooding like some divorced dad."

Hale slowly turned his head, fixing both Sparks and Rook with a stare that could've stripped paint from the walls. The two men immediately raised their hands in exaggerated surrender, although neither looked particularly remorseful.

"See, this is why I miss the 141 boys," Rook remarked, settling back into his seat. "Especially that Scottish one. Bet he's got a whole damn library of creepy stories."

The mention of Task Force 141 immediately caught Graves's attention. The commander shifted in his armchair, one eyebrow rising as he glanced towards the reconnaissance specialist. "Yeah, well, we ain't exactly in ol' Johnny boy's good books anymore, are we?"

"Correction, Commander," Sparks interjected, wearing the sort of grin that suggested he had absolutely no regard for his own continued employment. "You're not in his good books."

Graves gave a short, amused huff. "Same difference, son. Same difference." He settled back into his chair, apparently deciding that revisiting the unpleasant business in Las Almas wasn't worth interrupting an otherwise pleasant evening. Particularly when there was a perfectly good opportunity to watch his own men embarrass themselves.

"Anyway," Rook continued, apparently delighted to have everyone's attention again, "back to my stories. This one's about the Wendigo."

Rook wasn't particularly superstitious. At least, that was what he told people. He'd grown up in the countryside, raised on hunting trips, campfire stories, and an elderly grandfather who seemed to know every terrifying legend ever associated with the American wilderness. Some of those stories had been passed down through generations, others were clearly invented to stop children wandering into the woods after dark, and a few had apparently been borrowed from entirely different countries. His grandfather had once spent an entire evening describing a goat-sucking monster from Mexico as though it were a common pest in Tennessee. Bless the old bastard.

Still, Rook maintained that there were certain things best left alone. Strange noises in the forest, for example. Or unfamiliar voices calling from places where nobody ought to be standing. And Halloween, according to his grandfather, was an especially poor time to go inviting trouble.

Not that any of this prevented Rook from being an absolute menace himself.

"Like, seriously, if we find a Wendigo out here, we're usin' Sparks as bait," he announced, grinning beneath his face covering. "Lure the bastard out, drag it back to Texas. Boom. New Shadow Company mascot."

Sparks looked momentarily offended before apparently deciding that being used as supernatural bait sounded like a perfectly reasonable career opportunity. "It's gotta catch me first, dude. I'm fast as fuck."

"And annoying as fuck," Hale muttered, taking a miserable sip of lukewarm water from a bottle he'd retrieved from his kit.

"Easy there, boys," Graves drawled, lifting one hand in mock surrender. "Save the killin' for after we get our paychecks. I'd hate to have to explain to accounting why I'm down two perfectly good—"

Fweeeeeeeet.

A sharp, high-pitched whistle cut through the room. Graves stopped speaking, his eyes immediately shifting towards Sparks. "Son." Sparks raised both hands. ”Wasn't me."

The whistle came again, this time from somewhere beyond the cabin walls. It was followed by the distant, hollow hoot of an owl, and then something considerably less familiar. A long, unpleasant scraping noise travelled along the exterior timber, almost like something dragging its nails across the weathered boards.

For several seconds, nobody said anything.

"Commander, I swear to God, that wasn't me," Sparks insisted, looking between Graves and the others. "{{user}} can back me up on that one." Hale barely glanced up. "Cabin's settling. Timber expands and contracts with changes in temperature and moisture. It's raining outside, genius."

Rook chuckled quietly, although his attention had drifted towards the darkened window. Beyond the glass, the forest was little more than a collection of black silhouettes, occasionally illuminated by distant flashes of lightning. The trees swayed beneath the wind, their branches scraping against one another with a low, wooden groan.

Eventually, the conversation resumed. Sparks returned to fiddling with his radio, albeit considerably more quietly, while Rook continued recounting increasingly questionable stories about things supposedly encountered in the mountains. Graves occupied his armchair beside the fireplace, boots propped on the coffee table as he reviewed a mission report he'd somehow managed to bring along. Hale had settled onto the worn sofa beside {{user}}, looking increasingly determined to ignore his colleagues until morning.

For the next ten minutes, everything was perfectly ordinary. The fireplace crackled softly, rain pattered against the roof, and the occasional gust of wind rattled the old windowpanes. Rook and Sparks had abandoned their ghost stories in favour of a fiercely competitive game of rock, paper, scissors, which Sparks was somehow losing despite accusing Rook of cheating approximately six times.

Then came three knocks. Knock. Knock. Knock. They were quiet, almost polite, and unmistakably deliberate. Three muffled raps against the wooden screen door leading onto the porch.

Sparks's head snapped up. Rook stopped mid-gesture, his hand still shaped into a pair of scissors. Even Hale lifted his gaze from the opposite wall, his expression shifting from mild irritation to professional interest.

Nobody had moved towards the door. Nobody had left the sitting room. And, unless somebody had developed the ability to teleport during their evening off, there was absolutely no reason for anyone to be standing outside.

Graves, however, remained thoroughly unimpressed. "Probably a branch. Wind's pickin' up."

"Commander," Rook said slowly, leaning forward to peer through the window, "there's a deer outside."

"We're in the woods, son. There's gonna be deer outside." Graves didn't even look up from his paperwork. "Next you'll be tellin' me there's fish in the creek."

"No, I mean there's a deer standing on the porch." That earned a glance from Hale. Rook leaned closer to the glass, squinting into the darkness. Through the rain, he could just make out the pale outline of an animal standing beyond the porch railing. A deer, certainly, although it was difficult to determine much else through the reflection of the firelight.

It wasn't moving. Not grazing, not shifting its weight, not even turning its head towards the noises coming from inside the cabin. It simply stood there, facing the window.

"Well, quit starin' at it," Graves replied. "You're gonna hurt its feelings."* Rook glanced towards the commander, opening his mouth to deliver a suitably sarcastic response. When he looked back, the deer was gone. "...Deer's gone, Commander."

"Congratulations, Rook. You've discovered how legs work." Sparks snorted, earning an irritated glance from Hale. For a moment, the tension dissipated, and Rook settled back into his seat with a muttered complaint about nobody appreciating his observational skills.

Then the knocking came again. Knock. Knock. Knock. Only this time, it wasn't coming from the porch. The sound was deeper. Duller. Almost hollow, with an unpleasant resonance that seemed to travel through the stonework rather than the timber walls.

It came from the fireplace. More specifically, from somewhere inside the chimney. Graves slowly lowered his paperwork. The fire was still burning, its orange light flickering across the rough stone hearth. Nothing had fallen into the flames, and there was no obvious movement within the chimney. Nevertheless, the sound had been distinct enough that nobody could reasonably mistake it for a branch striking the roof.

"Could be a bird," Hale suggested, although his attention remained fixed on the fireplace. "A bird?" Sparks repeated. "What, a fucking woodpecker with a death wish?"

Hale gave him a look. "You got a better explanation?" Sparks opened his mouth, considered the question, and apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Rook, meanwhile, had gone unusually quiet.

He was staring towards the window again, his earlier amusement noticeably diminished. The reconnaissance specialist knew these woods. Not every individual trail or animal track, perhaps, but enough to recognise the difference between ordinary wildlife and something worth investigating. And while the deer hadn't necessarily been unusual, there was something about the way it had stood there that he couldn't quite reconcile.

More concerning was the silence outside. The owl had stopped calling. The usual chorus of insects had disappeared beneath the rain, and even the wind seemed to have died away. The forest beyond the porch was suddenly, unnaturally still.

"Hey, Commander?" Rook began, his voice noticeably quieter than before. "Remember what I said about whistlin' after dark?" Graves sighed, already looking profoundly exhausted by the direction this conversation was taking. "Rook, if you're about to tell me we summoned some mountain-dwellin' boogeyman, I swear to God—"

Fweeeeeeeet.

The whistle came again. Not from the hallway. Not from Sparks's radio. From directly outside the window. It was long, clear, and almost musical, rising at the end in a peculiar little flourish. The sort of sound somebody might make while trying to attract another person's attention.

Sparks slowly lowered his radio. For the first time that evening, Graves didn't immediately respond with a sarcastic remark. Instead, he glanced towards Hale, then towards the darkened window, his expression settling into something considerably more calculating.

Rook was still watching the treeline. And then, somewhere beyond the porch, something whistled again. This time, it sounded remarkably like the tune Rook himself had whistled earlier that evening. Only slower. As though something had been listening. And was trying to remember how it went.

.