Episode 1: The Doll, the Bell, the Suits, and the Girl

“Is it true, Mom? If we confess… they’ll spare us?”

The boy’s voice trembled in the dark, barely more than a whisper. His mother turned, eyes glassy with tears, her face lit faintly by a dying flashlight beam.

“Yes, baby,” she said, tears spilling from her eyes. “Just close your eyes and don’t make any noise, you hear?”

He nodded and sank into the crawlspace, clutching a doll to his chest. His voice cracked as he whispered the prayer he barely remembered.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven…”

His mother dragged a thick slab of cardboard over the opening, sealing him into the darkness. She pressed a trembling kiss to his forehead.

“Don’t move. Don’t speak. Just pray, baby. Just pray.”

Then she stood, wiping her face with the back of her hand. Her breathing steadied.

And she screamed.

“You motherfuckers! COME GET ME!”

She bolted for the hallway. Behind her, figures in suits followed—silent and relentless—not running, never running. Their footsteps echoed with inhuman patience. Two of them. Then four.

She didn’t look back. She just ran.

The church loomed through the fog, a cross silhouetted against the ash-gray sky. She sprinted towards it, her lungs burning.

At the doors stood a man—Pastor Mathers, robes billowing in the wind, arms outstretched.

“Come, my child!” he called. “RUN!”

She collapsed against him, clutching his vestments. He held her for a single heartbeat before she pushed away.

“I can’t stay,” she gasped. “My son’s still at the school. If I go inside, they’ll find him. He’s the only one left out there.”

The pastor looked beyond her. The suits were drawing near, black shoes clicking like metronomes of death.

“I will pray for you,” he said softly. “Go well into paradise.”

“Please,” she said, her voice cracking. “Please keep him safe.”

He nodded, stepped back inside, and closed the church doors behind him.

She turned and ran again.

But her legs were slower now. Her vision swam. She checked her watch.

“Damn it… Forty more minutes… I won’t make it.”

Then—

A sound.

Behind her.

No. Above her.

She froze.

From the rafters of a half-collapsed school outbuilding, something moved—just barely.

A whisper of motion.

And then she saw it.

A suit.

Not stepping into view.

Not climbing.

Just… appearing.

It hung there, like a shadow peeled from the ceiling, faceless and still. Its axe scraped against the concrete as it descended, metal teeth shrieking against stone. Sparks danced like fireflies.

She stood frozen. Her knees buckled.

She knew, in the marrow of her bones, she could not outrun it this time.

The suit tilted its head, slowly. Deliberately.

Then it raised the axe.

The last thing she saw was her own reflection in its gleaming blade.

The axe came down with a wet, splitting crack.

Her skull opened like a flower.

Back in the Crawlspace….

Darkness breathed around him.

The boy clutched the doll tighter, its porcelain face chipped, one glass eye missing. His mother’s kiss still tingled on his forehead. He whispered into the darkness:

“Hallowed be Thy name… Thy kingdom come…”

But his voice was cracking now, not from fear—but from something else.

Sound.

Not footsteps. Not voices.

The bell.

Soft at first. Far away. Then again.

Chime.

His knees pulled to his chest.

Chime.

Louder now. Inside the school.

Chime.

So close it echoed in his ribcage.

He pressed his hand over his mouth. He dared not breathe.

The doll’s head tilted—just a fraction. He didn’t touch it. He didn’t move it.

Did it just look at me?

The cardboard overhead stirred.

Then—light.

A sliver. Just a finger-wide. But it bled into his eyes like flame.

A hand reached down—not human. Too long. Too pale. Too many joints in the fingers.

It tapped the cardboard once.

Knock. Knock.

The boy screamed.

And something screamed back.

A suit, yanked the cardboard backwards, throwing it through a window.

The boy glanced at the sun that was slowly rising. The orange glow of the horizon shone on the suit as it held out its sword.

“…Forgive us our sins as we…”

The last thing the boy felt was the coldness of the sword against his neck.

“…forgive those who…”

Splash.

His head rolled away as blood sprayed from his neck.

The Janitor

Mr. Ellis had locked the utility closet from the inside. It wasn’t smart, but he didn’t know where else to go.

He’d heard the screams and seen the window cracked.

He’d seen the blood trail across the door to class A1. 

He clutched a crowbar to his chest and whispered to himself, rocking.

“The sun will rise any minute now. Just gotta hold on…”

Twenty more minutes.

He paused.

Something was dripping above him.

Not water.

Not paint.

Thicker.

Red.

He tilted his head.

The ceiling vent had something stuck in it.

A child’s arm.

Still twitching.

He screamed, dropped the crowbar—and that’s when the pipe burst.

But it wasn’t water that poured through.

It was hair.

A flood of hair, black and thick and soaking wet, tangled with bone and nails and bits of cloth. It filled the room in seconds, rising like water. He tried to kick open the door, but the hair had weight—it pulled at him, wrapping around his throat, slipping down his nose, his mouth—

He gasped once.

Then twice.

Then silence.

When the door opened an hour later, the room was spotless.

Except for the single eyeball sitting in the mop bucket, floating like a pearl.

The Church

The pews were half full.

What remained of the town’s faithful—some praying, some crying, some too numb to speak—huddled in the candlelit sanctuary. Wind howled against the stained-glass windows, rattling the panes like fingernails on a coffin.

A woman sat near the back.

Mrs. Ellis.

Gloria.

She hadn’t spoken in fifteen minutes.

Her husband, the janitor, had vanished after the second bell toll. He'd said he was just going to make sure no one was trapped in the school. That was over an hour ago.

Now she stood.

“Gloria…” Pastor Mathers stepped toward her from the altar, gently. Tired. “Please. We’ve sealed the doors. You leave now, and we won’t let you back in.”

“He’s still out there,” she said, staring at the doors.

“I know. But it’s not safe.”

“He wouldn’t leave me,” she said, trembling. “He’d be trying to get back here. I know him. He may be a scaredy cat, but he’s smart.” Her voice cracked. “He’s hiding somewhere, I know it. I have to go to him.”

The Pastor didn’t argue.

He only said: “We must stay here. Until sunrise. That’s what she said.”

Gloria turned.

Her face was pale, but burning with rage. “You think that matters now? You think she can save us?”

“Please...”

“You’re just a charlatan,” she spat. “You let this happen. You let that little girl suffer, even when we begged you to leave her alone. And now you hide behind your candles and prayers while this town bleeds. While my husband bleeds.”

Mathers looked down. He said nothing.

She marched to the door.

“This is the price of our sins,” she whispered. “All of us. There’s no salvation left. Not for you. Not for me.”

And she opened the door.

The wind slammed into her, heavy with ash and rot. The street was silent.

The Pastor didn’t stop her.

He only closed the door behind her, slowly.

And locked it.

The Street

Gloria walked barefoot.

The road was cold. Soaked in something dark.

She didn’t call his name. She didn’t make a sound.

She walked like a pilgrim.

Passed by the school. A single swing creaked in the playground. It hadn’t moved in weeks.

The smell hit her fast as she passed the alley. That metallic smell of blood, she had known so well in the past eleven months.

She wasn’t stupid. Her chances of escaping the suits were slim, even less than that. But still, she had to go to him, her husband. Gloria had witnessed a lot of people go crazy after losing their entire families. As a nurse in the only hospital in town, she had seen a lot of death. And with time, she had become desensitized. 

She jumped over the body of a woman whose chest had been torn. To the right, broken pieces of the window laid on the ground outside the classroom A1. The classroom was connected next to the utility closet on the right side.

“He’s in the closet, I know it.”

She climbed the window and stepped in, her feet hitting a pool of blood next to a crawlspace. What she saw changed her whole perception of death. Her breathing ran ragged as she saw the horrors before her. A child’s head was on the ground, his body was still kneeling against the wall, unmoving. Blood spewed from its neck in spurts, dripping down the body connecting to head.

She let out a strangled noise, somewhere between a sob and a gasp.

She vomited violently, mixing blood and bone with the contents of her stomach.

“I’m sorry…” she whispered.

The bell rang again.

Chime.

And all the streetlights blinked off.

Her breath caught in her throat.

She wiped her mouth and went ahead, slowly making the smallest sound. Inch by inch until she made it to the door. There was the utility closet.

The right leg was the first thing she saw, clearly. Black gumboots, the same as his, and not only that, a piece of his uniform.

Folded.

No blood.

Just the shirt. Buttoned neatly. Still warm.

“Martin…?”

The bell rang again.

Chime.

All her strength suddenly left her and she knelt down, hitting the ground.

“No!” she screamed, wailing loudly. "No!"

The glow of the rising sun was growing brighter. If it wasn’t for her screams, she might have made it. 

Ten minutes before the sun was fully up.

It was slowly approaching, the suit, dragging a metal bat across the floor.

It lifted one arm as it got close to her. The bat flew as high as the ceiling.

A hit to the back.

She fell onto the shirt, clutching her neck.

And her husband’s arms rose from beneath the fabric.

Dead. Gray. Puppeted by hair.

She held him gently, muttering something.

As she bled out in his lap.

She would have slowly died from bleeding, but that’s not how the suits operated.

No mercy.

Another hit formed a huge hole on the back of her head, and only the pieces of brain matter could be seen by the time the sun fully rose.