The Echo

Silas locked the heavy iron door and leaned against it, exhaling.

He felt the familiar rush of righteousness. He was the surgeon of the soul. The church would call it heresy; he called it results. Vane would never feel bad about the hit-and-run again. The moral weight had been deleted.

Silas walked back to the table to cover the artifact.

The jawbone was vibrating.

It wasn't a subtle tremor. The stone mandible was rattling against the formica table top. *Tak-tak-tak-tak.*

Silas frowned. "Be still," he commanded, reverting to the closing liturgy. " The feast is over. Sleep."

The rattling stopped.

Silas reached for the velvet cloth.

* Hee-hee-hee.*

Silas froze. The sound was high-pitched, childish, and multi-tonal. It sounded like it was coming from inside his own ear, but he knew exactly where it originated.

The jawbone.

Silas stared at the fossil. The grey stone seemed to be sweating. A dark, viscous liquid was beading on the surface of the bone.

"You are a tool," Silas said, his voice wavering slightly. "You are an instrument of my will."

* Hee-hee-HA.*

The jawbone hopped. It physically jumped an inch into the air and landed with a heavy thud.

Silas backed away, his hand groping for the crucifix in his pocket—a habit he thought he had broken.

The ritual was supposed to transfer the sin into the void. The bone was just the funnel. But Vane’s sin—manslaughter, cowardice, the visceral horror of crushed bone—had been heavy. Too heavy.

The entity wasn't funneling it. It was digesting it.

The laughter grew louder. It wasn't just one voice anymore. It was a chorus. It sounded like a stadium of people laughing at a public execution. The air in the basement began to heat up. The smell of bleach vanished, replaced by the smell of ozone and rotting fruit.

"Silence!" Silas roared, slamming his hand on the table.

The jawbone snapped open. The fossilized hinge, fused for thousands of years, cracked and opened like a hungry mouth.

A wave of force hit Silas in the chest. It wasn't wind. It was sound. Pure, concentrated hilarity.

Silas was thrown backward. He hit the floor hard. He tried to gasp for air, but his diaphragm spasmed.

* Snort.*

Silas clamped a hand over his mouth. His chest heaved. He felt a tickle in his throat, a terrible, itching urge that bypassed his brain and went straight to his lungs.

He wasn't afraid. He was... amused.

* No,* he thought, clawing at his throat. *This is fear. This is terror.*

But his body disagreed. His body thought this was the funniest thing that had ever happened.