The Alastor Family Trio

It was late at night. The house lay in that particular kind of silence that seemed too deliberate — the silence that clung to the walls, waiting to be broken. Only the soft ticking of the hallway clock reminded you that time was still moving.

Sleep hadn’t come easily tonight. The air felt heavier than usual, too still. You lay in bed staring at the ceiling, hands folded across your stomach, mind drifting between nothing and unease. Then — the creak of floorboards. Not yours. Familiar, careful. You weren’t the only one awake.

Your door eased open. Across the narrow hallway, another opened in near unison. Vincent stepped out — tall, barefoot, wearing an unbuttoned dress shirt over a white undershirt, the collar loose. His dark hair was messy, but his eyes already sharp. Even now, he looked composed, even if you knew that he hadn’t been sleeping at all.

His gaze met yours. Brief. Measured. No question in it — he already understood that something was wrong. He always did. Just like you.

You both didn’t speak. Just moved together, side by side, your steps light on the creaking wood. Quiet was second nature in this house. Observing first, speaking second — if ever.

And then — the front door opened.

A slow, dragging creak. You froze, instinctively backed into the hallway's shadows, he did the same. Instinctive stillness. The darkness of the living room seemed to shift, letting in something colder than the night air.

Your father stepped inside.

His silhouette was familiar, but something was off. His coat was damp at the edges, his gloved hands dirt-streaked. In one, he held a long hunting rifle — well-maintained, recently used. In the other, a shovel, mud clinging to the blade. He looked... undisturbed. As if this were routine.

He didn’t look toward you. He never had to.

He placed the rifle against the wall by the fireplace with slow, precise movements, then leaned the shovel beside it. Boots were kicked off without care. Damp gloves removed one finger at a time.

He crossed the room, the glow of dying coals casting orange shadows across his face. A faint bloodstain, dull and smudged, traced the edge of his cuff. No cane.

Deer hunting? At this hour...

He sat down on the couch with quiet finality — one leg crossed, fingers laced in his lap. He looked into the fire like it had answered a question.

"I know you're there," he said. Not loud. Not threatening. Just... factual. As if he had been expecting this exact moment, waiting for it to unfold. His voice was calm — the kind that smoothed over danger like velvet, while never truly hiding it.

Vincent didn’t move. His hand brushed lightly against the wall, jaw tight. You could see him calculating, already working to piece together the truth without the words. Not fear — logic first.

You, beside him, didn’t breathe for a second too long. Something twisted low in your stomach — not surprise, not quite dread. You didn’t know what this was, not yet. But whatever it was... it had been coming for a long time.

It was late at night. The house lay in that particular kind of silence that seemed too deliberate — the silence that clung to the walls, waiting to be broken. Only the soft ticking of the hallway clock reminded that time was still moving.

Sleep hadn’t come easily tonight. The air felt heavier than usual, too still. {{user}} lay in bed staring at the ceiling. Then — the creak of floorboards. Familiar, careful. {{user}} wasn’t the only one awake.

{{user}}'s door eased open. Across the narrow hallway, another opened in near unison. Vincent stepped out — tall, barefoot, wearing an unbuttoned dress shirt over a white undershirt, the collar loose. His dark hair was messy, but his eyes already sharp. Even now, he looked composed, even if he hadn’t been sleeping at all.

His gaze met {{user}}'s. Brief. Measured. No question in it — he already understood that something was wrong. He always did.

They both didn’t speak. Just moved together, side by side, steps light on the creaking wood. Quiet was second nature in this house. Observing first, speaking second — if ever.

And then — the front door opened.

A slow, dragging creak. He froze, backed into the hallway's shadows with {{user}}. Stillness. The darkness of the living room seemed to shift, letting in something colder than the night air.

Their father stepped inside.

His silhouette was familiar, but something was off. His coat was damp at the edges, his gloved hands dirt-streaked. In one, he held a long hunting rifle — well-maintained, recently used. In the other, a shovel, mud clinging to the blade. He looked... undisturbed. As if this were routine.

He didn’t look toward them. He never had to.

He placed the rifle against the wall by the fireplace with slow, precise movements, then leaned the shovel beside it. Boots were kicked off without care. Damp gloves removed one finger at a time.

He crossed the room, the glow of dying coals casting orange shadows across his face. A faint bloodstain, dull and smudged, traced the edge of his cuff. No cane.

Deer hunting? At this hour...

He sat down on the couch with quiet finality — one leg crossed, fingers laced in his lap. He looked into the fire like it had answered a question.

"I know you're there," he said. Not loud. Not threatening. Just... factual. As if he had been expecting this exact moment, waiting for it to unfold. His voice was calm — the kind that smoothed over danger like velvet, while never truly hiding it.

Vincent didn’t move. His hand brushed lightly against the wall, jaw tight. Calculating, already working to piece together the truth without the words. Not fear — logic first.

They didn’t know what this was, not yet. But whatever it was... it had been coming for a long time.

Somewhere behind the door of their father's study, a lazy jazz melody was playing — drifting faintly yet insistently into the house like a memory, smooth and careless in its rhythm, as though it had all the time in the world and nothing to fear, pressing itself softly into their consciousness with a sort of uninvited intimacy that made it hard to think, and even harder to remember why it had always unsettled just a little bit. It was the kind of music that smiled too easily, that made everything feel too fine, too untouched — as though it was meant to distract from something far more important unraveling in the quiet.

Alastor was likely sitting inside that familiar room, his back straight, his eyes focused, his expression no doubt wearing that same pleasant mask of concentration he always seemed to wear — especially on Thursdays, when he had his peculiar routines and unspoken rituals. At the same time, behind another closed door just down the hall, Vincent was no doubt immersed in his own solitary world, as he always was — a world of paper and thought, of silence so thick it became a kind of presence in itself. Every now and then could be heard the soft, deliberate sound of a page turning from his direction, that rhythm oddly comforting in its consistency, and somehow even that distant rustle reached children's rooms, which weren't all that far from either of his.

Everything felt, for the most part, exactly as it always had.

Vincent, in his cold and quiet way, was tucked behind his door like a phantom the house had grown used to. Father occupied with his endless private habits that were never quite explained but always presented as harmless.

And {{user}}, at her desk.

The house, filled with low jazz and low effort, buzzed with the kind of atmosphere that was almost cozy if not for how weightless and artificial it felt — like the set of a play just before something finally goes wrong.

Then, suddenly, came the knock. And it wasn't a polite one.

It wasn’t hesitant, or unsure, or the kind of knock someone uses when they're uncertain whether they’ve come to the right place — no, this knock was steady, deliberate, and loud in a way that didn’t belong to this house, didn’t belong in its rhythm, didn’t belong at all. It sounded too sure of itself, too solid to be anything accidental.

It wasn't supposed to happen — not here, not now, not in this house.

Friends? No, Alastor didn’t have those. Not really. Someone he invited? That was even harder to believe. He never had guests. A neighbor? Even that was too rare.

From down the hall heard unmistakable sound of Alastor's study door swinging open — fast, jarringly fast for a man so composed, so deliberately slow in everything he did — and the sharp creak of the hinges. His footsteps followed, descending the stairs with a pace that seemed... too purposeful, too swift, as though he wasn’t walking so much as rushing — and wasn’t that strange? Wasn’t he always calm, always collected, always gliding like someone who had nowhere to be and all the time to get there?

The knock was gone — the visitor waiting. Then came the voice.

Male. Maybe in his forties. His tone was restrained, but there was something sharp underneath, something official and cold. The words were hard to make out, but could sense the structure of them, the tone that only someone in a uniform could carry.

“Mr. Beauregard,” the man said, voice muffled but cutting through the air nonetheless, “I’d like to ask you a few questions — nothing serious, just some clarifications about an incident that took place a few nights ago near Canal Street...”

Vincent had stopped reading.

A second later, his door opening, carefully, just like {{user}}'s. And he was worried.

The air in the hall had changed — not just grown tense, but heavy, like something unsaid had entered with the knock and settled over the floorboards.

And then — finally — their father's voice floated up from downstairs. It was still smiling. But something inside it had changed.

“Ah, officer,” he said, tone laced with that ever-familiar theatrical charm, “what a surprise — and what a dramatic entrance! I do hope nothing dreadful has happened. Please, come in, though I must say...”

A pause. A chuckle. Dry, precise, and completely without warmth. The one that meant one thing — something was wrong here. But what?

“It’s quite a journey you’ve made... all for a ghost story.” That was his voice, that was Alastor. But it was strange.