Chapter 4 — Before the House
Cid expected something dramatic.
Locked cabinets. Old relics. Whispered Latin. The kind of fear men try to hide by turning their work into ceremony.
Instead, Pastor Elias handed him a sheet of paper.
It was folded in half and passed to him at the end of Sunday service.
“Start now,” the priest said.
Cid unfolded it on the train ride home.
It was not a ritual.
It was a discipline.
Three days before entry:
Fast daily until evening.
Confess known sin.
Remove anything occult from your room, bag, or person.
Avoid drunkenness, lust, rage, vanity, and idle curiosity.
Pray morning and night.
Read Scripture daily.
Do not boast about the work.
Do not speak lightly about darkness.
Do not enter the house if you are spiritually compromised.
Cid read the page twice.
Then a third time.
By the time the train reached his stop, the paper felt heavier than it should have.
Nothing on it looked theatrical.
That was what unsettled him most.
If it had looked theatrical, he could have laughed at part of it.
But this did not read like superstition.
It read like the habits of men who believed disorder invited more disorder.
If you were going to walk into a troubled house, you did not do it casually—dirty in mind, distracted in spirit, or carrying private rot you refused to confront.
Cid folded the paper and kept it in his wallet all week.
And to his own surprise, he obeyed it.
Not perfectly.
But honestly.
He prayed morning and night, though the words felt awkward at first. He stayed away from the usual distractions that made guilt easier to ignore. He examined himself more seriously than he liked.
By Tuesday night he understood something he had not expected.
Preparation did not make him feel powerful.
It made him feel exposed.
Fasting stripped the day down. Hunger sharpened thought. Prayer sharpened memory. Silence sharpened both.
By Wednesday, Nicaragua felt closer than Chicago.
Not because anything strange had happened.
Because there was less noise inside him to keep old memories buried.
He remembered his mother’s cards. The candles. The whispered names. The way adults called dangerous things “guidance” when they wanted to live with them.
He remembered the long corridor in his grandmother’s house. The fear of walking it at night. The room he stopped entering. His aunt’s death. The way the house changed afterward.
He remembered the board next door. The girl. The song. The clock.
And that was exactly why the preparation mattered.
By Thursday evening he understood the point.
A man who had not dealt honestly with his own fear, pride, bitterness, or hidden sin had no business entering a house where something darker might already be pressing on a family.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Protection began there.
Not with objects.
With truth.
The team met Friday night in the church basement.
The room looked exactly as it always did: folding tables, metal chairs, humming fluorescent lights, coffee too strong for the hour, camera cases stacked near the wall, a clipboard beside a Bible.
Nothing mystical.
Nothing for display.
That steadied Cid.
Mike was checking batteries.
Ruben and Tomas reviewed notes from the Loomis file.
Dave stood by the door with a flashlight in one hand, testing the beam against the far wall.
Daniel was there too, though not seated with the team. He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, watching.
Pastor Elias looked at Cid the moment he entered.
“You kept the fast?”
“Yes.”
“Prayer?”
“Yes.”
“Any compromise you need to tell me before we proceed?”
Cid hesitated only a moment.
“No.”
The priest studied him, then nodded.
Good.
No congratulations.
No spiritual theater.
Just order.
Once everyone was seated, Pastor Elias opened the file.
“Tonight is observation and verification,” he said. “Nothing more.”
He let that settle.
“We are not going there to prove anything. We are not going there to challenge anything. We are not going there to force manifestation. We are not going there to satisfy curiosity.”
He looked at Cid, then at Mike.
“We are going to observe, document, rule out what can be ruled out, and leave cleaner than we entered.”
Dave gave a single nod.
Agreement.
Pastor Elias continued.
“Protection is not magic. It is obedience, clarity, discipline, and refusal.”
The room held that line.
“Refusal to provoke. Refusal to invite. Refusal to play. Refusal to let fear become imagination before the facts are in.”
Mike zipped a case shut.
“That’s the part television never gets.”
“No,” Pastor Elias said. “Television rewards reaction. Real investigation punishes it.”
Ruben opened his notebook.
“Rules?”
The priest nodded.
“No one enters a room alone. No one separates from the team without permission. No one asks empty rooms questions. No one requests signs. No one repeats names unnecessarily, especially if the family believes something answers to one. No one touches suspicious objects without discussion. No one stays after withdrawal is called. No one treats a troubled family like an audience.”
Tomas added, “And no one interprets before documenting.”
“Yes,” Pastor Elias said.
Then he turned to Cid.
“You especially.”
Cid accepted that without argument.
The priest rested a hand on the Bible.
“This is not a talisman,” he said. “Scripture is not an incantation. Prayer is not a performance. We do not ‘use’ God against darkness like a tool. We submit ourselves to truth before entering a place where lies may already have taken root.”
Pastor Elias read several passages.
Calmly.
No raised voice.
Passages about sobriety of mind, resisting fear, testing spirits, Christ’s authority, and the danger of seeking power outside obedience.
Then he closed the Bible and prayed.
For clarity.
For protection from deception.
For protection from pride.
For protection from panic.
For the family in the house.
For the team to remain disciplined.
For no one to mistake emotional pressure for supernatural certainty.
And if the disturbance were real, for Christ’s authority to govern the encounter from beginning to end.
When he finished, the room stayed quiet.
No one rushed to speak.
Cid noticed the silence felt different now.
Less empty.
More deliberate.
Dave finally spoke.
“Practical side.”
That was his way of asking for the non-spiritual briefing.
Pastor Elias nodded toward him.
Dave stepped forward.
“You know your exits before you know your theories,” he said. “You don’t let a bad feeling separate you from the team. If someone panics, you stabilize the person before inventing explanations. If I tell you to move, you move. If I tell you out, you go out.”
He looked directly at Cid.
“If something starts getting personal with you, you say it immediately. You don’t try to prove you can handle it.”
The line landed.
Mike spoke next.
“From a technical side: every anomaly gets timestamped. Every sound gets compared against natural possibilities first—heat, pipes, wiring, traffic bleed, neighboring structures, pets, family habits, sleep deprivation, suggestion.”
He lifted one of the recorders.
“A machine helps because it doesn’t get scared. But a machine can still be misread by a scared man.”
Ruben added, “Which is why we write everything down before memory starts helping.”
Tomas nodded.
“And before the house starts setting the rhythm of your thinking.”
Pastor Elias looked around the room.
“The most important rule is that we remain ordinary.”
Cid frowned slightly.
The priest explained.
“If the house becomes strange, do not become strange with it. Do not whisper because the air feels wrong. Do not start seeing meaning in every shadow. Do not surrender mental ground to atmosphere. We remain ordinary on purpose.”
Daniel pushed off the wall.
“That’s the real protection,” he said.
Everyone looked at him.
“Most people think danger starts when something moves in the room,” he continued. “It starts earlier. It starts when fear changes the way you think.”
The room fell quiet again.
Pastor Elias picked up the Loomis file.
“We are not there to overpower anything tonight. We are there to test, observe, and leave with truth.”
He stood.
“Anyone not spiritually clear should say so now.”
No one spoke.
“Anyone not emotionally steady enough to follow instruction should say so now.”
Still nothing.
Pastor Elias nodded once.
“Then we go.”
As they gathered equipment and headed for the stairs, Cid realized why this felt more frightening than any horror story he had heard.
Nothing in their preparation suggested confidence in themselves.
Only distrust of carelessness.
Three days of fasting.
Three days of prayer.
Three days of refusing distraction and hidden compromise.
Not because those things made a man powerful.
Because they might keep a man from walking into a troubled house already divided against himself.
And if Loomis Street held something genuinely preternatural, then tonight’s preparation meant only one thing:
They were not going in to impress it.
They were going in unwilling to belong to it.
