Chapter 22: The World Watches
(POV Shift: Third Person)
The silence that followed the implosion of the infernal portal was the purest the Warren house had known in years. It was a clean silence, stripped not only of the demonic presence, but of the very tension that had clung to the walls like a layer of spiritual soot. The air was light. The house, for the first time, could breathe.
In the center of Judy's room, now a chaos of broken wood and scattered toys, Alex stood, panting. The phone lay on the floor, the line dead. He had just hung up on the only allies he had in this world, after saving their home and their daughter from across the planet.
The closet door slowly opened, and a pale, trembling figure peeked out. It was Mary Ellen, the babysitter, who had hidden there during the height of the battle. She saw Alex, then the mess, and her brain simply refused to process the scene. She fainted, falling softly onto a pile of clothes.
Alex sighed. One more problem for the list.
Minutes later, the house presented a strange scene of post-apocalyptic domesticity. Alex had carried Mary Ellen to the living room couch and covered her with a blanket. Then, with a calmness that surprised himself, he found a broom and dustpan. Judy, who had finally emerged from under her bed, watched him with wide eyes.
"Is... is she gone?" she whispered.
"Yeah, champ," Alex replied softly, sweeping up pieces of the wardrobe door. "She's gone. Permanently. Zero tolerance return policy."
Judy nodded, and for the first time, a small, timid smile appeared on her face. She grabbed a trash bag and began to help, picking up scattered books and broken toys. Together, in an almost comfortable silence, the child soldier from another universe and the little girl who had lived with monsters under her bed, began to tidy the chaos. It was a mundane attempt to restore normalcy to a place that would never quite be normal again. And as they cleaned, neither was aware that their strange little victory had sent a shockwave through the digital world, and that thousands, if not millions, of people were losing their minds.
(POV Shift: Montage of Reactions)
Scene A: K-Skeptik's Studio, Los Angeles.
Kevin "K-Skeptik" Renner, the king of "debunking" streamers, stood with his mouth agape. His six-person production team was utterly silent, their faces illuminated by the dozen monitors displaying "ZeroCool_x's" stream from every possible angle. They had been preparing a segment for their weekly show, "The Naked Truth," where they planned to tear apart this new, popular horror streamer, accusing him of using state-of-the-art special effects.
But now... now they were watching the recording of the last five minutes on loop.
"Play it again, Marco. The portal part," Kevin ordered, his voice barely a whisper.
On the main screen, the scene replayed in glorious 4K high definition. They saw Alex, phone on speaker, reciting Latin that sounded guttural and ancient. They saw the air tear open. They saw the infernal landscape. They saw the boy tape three glowing objects to a doll and hurl it into the rift in reality. They saw the implosion.
"We've analyzed the light spectrum from the 'detonation'," said one of his technicians, a woman named Chloe. "It doesn't match any known pyrotechnic or visual effects signature. The spatial distortion around the portal... there's no CGI model that can render that in real-time without a server cluster the size of a building. It's... it's impossible."
Kevin leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair. His entire career, his entire brand, was built on logic, on science, on finding the strings behind the magician's trick. But here there were no strings.
"We can't 'debunk' this," he finally said, the taste of defeat bitter in his mouth. "If we release this, it won't look like we're debunking him. It'll look like we're trying to cover up the most important event in human history. What the hell is this kid?"
Scene B: Arthur Penhaligon's Study, Boston.
Seventy-two-year-old Arthur Penhaligon adjusted his spectacles and leaned closer to his old laptop screen. Pipe smoke filled his study, a cluttered room crammed with leather-bound books and artifacts from past investigations. He knew the Warrens. He respected their work, though he considered their methods a bit too "theatrical." What he was seeing now, however, made the Warrens' methods look like a church tea party.
"The Rite of Final Consignment..." he murmured to himself, his voice hoarse from tobacco and age. "It's an apocryphal text. Dangerous. Theoretically capable of opening a wound between worlds. No one in their right mind would attempt it..."
He watched the boy from the stream, Alex, recite it not only with the Warrens' aid, but with an authority of his own that amplified the ritual beyond its theoretical limits. He saw the portal. He saw the doll-bomb.
Arthur rose and walked to his case board, a messy sprawl of newspaper clippings, photos, and red string connecting events. He picked up a photo of the Warrens and a new thumbtack. Then, he printed a screenshot of Alex's face. He put Alex's photo in the center of the board.
"You are not an exorcist. You are not a medium," he said to the pixelated face. "You are... a nexus. A singularity. And you have just announced your presence to both sides of the veil in a way no one ever has." He took a piece of red string. "And now, I fear, both sides are going to want a piece of you."
Scene C: A Windowless Monitor Room, Langley, Virginia.
Agent Thorne watched the stream in silence, her face impassive. Around her, several analysts typed furiously, their screens filled with data and graphs.
"The detonation's energy spike was localized to Monroe, Connecticut. It was not a conventional explosion. It was... something else. A mix of electromagnetic and... thaumaturgical energy," a young analyst reported without looking up from his screen.
"The spatial anomaly closed itself. No residual radiation," another added.
Thorne focused on Alex's face on the main screen. She watched him comfort the child, how he began to clean up, his strange normalcy after an act that should have shattered his mind.
"Subject 'ZeroCool' has neutralized two Class A threats in under twenty-four hours, on two different continents," Thorne said, her voice cold and precise. "He has demonstrated the ability to generate specialized weaponry and to manipulate reality through amplified verbal rituals. He remains publicly visible via his streaming platform."
She picked up a secure phone. "ZeroCool file update. Threat/Interest level raised to Omega. This is no longer about containment. It is about acquisition. I want to know who he is, where he comes from, and most importantly, how his 'shop' works. Deploy a surveillance team to the Warren residence in Connecticut. No contact. Just observe. I want to know his every move. And get me in touch with the Psychic Science Division. They're going to want to see this." She hung up. The chess game had gained a new, powerful player.
(POV Shift: First Person)
When we finished cleaning up the worst of it, I collapsed onto the couch, exhausted. Judy had curled up at the other end and fallen asleep. Mary Ellen was still unconscious. For the first time in hours, there was a moment of peace.
And in that peace, I finally looked at my shop account.
The number was absurd. The donations that had poured in while I was in my "Dora the Explorer" trance and during the final battle... they were astronomical. My balance was over four thousand dollars. I could buy the "Peacemaker." I could buy the grenades. I could buy the anti-possession vest. I could buy myself the "Crusader Reload" perk. I could arm myself to the teeth.
But as I looked at the numbers, I felt no surge of power. I felt a deep, overwhelming heaviness. Every dollar was another brick in the wall of my prison. Every purchase tied me further to this cycle, to this "show."
My attention drifted to the chat. They had coined a name for my last move: the "Annahbe-yeet." Others called it "Special Delivery to Hell." There were memes. Fan art. Theories sprawling across hundreds of forum pages. I had become a legend. I was the protagonist of the world's greatest story. And I had never felt more alone.
(POV Shift: Third Person)
At 35,000 feet over the Atlantic, Ed and Lorraine Warren flew west in tense silence. They had secured an emergency flight, citing a severe family crisis. The hum of the jet engines was a white noise that failed to drown out the chaos of their thoughts.
Ed stared out the window at the endless night, the image of the infernal portal burned into his retinas. His anger towards Alex had evaporated, replaced by a strange fear and respect. How was he supposed to deal with a kid who had just done what he had done? How could he protect his family from the consequences of having such a being in their lives?
Lorraine clutched her cross, her fingers white from the pressure. She could feel the shift in the spiritual world. Annabelle's banishment had left a void, but Alex's display of power had created something new: a beacon. He was now a lighthouse shining in the darkness, and she knew all manner of things that crawled in the shadows would be drawn to his light. And some of those things wouldn't be demons. They would be men, with far more complicated intentions.
"When we get there..." Ed began, his voice hoarse.
"I know," Lorraine interrupted softly. "First, we make sure Judy and Mary Ellen are alright. Then... we talk to him."
"And what do we say to him, Lorraine?" Ed asked, his vulnerability showing for the first time. " 'Thanks for saving our house and now you can leave'? 'Stay and put our family in the center of a cosmic war'? There's no manual for this."
"No," Lorraine admitted. "There isn't. We'll have to write it ourselves."
They knew they were flying into a new reality. Their home was no longer just theirs. It was the battlefield and operating base of a young man trapped between a sadistic god and the hells he was forced to conquer. The war against Annabelle was over. The war for Alex's soul, and for the future of their own world, had just begun.