May Devil Take Your Soul?

ten

The glove compartment opened with a soft, reluctant click—like a mouth parting to speak. Taehyung's hand disappeared into its darkness, fingers searching through the clutter until they brushed against something fragile. He withdrew a small piece of paper, folded so many times that its creases had deepened into tiny canyons. The address written there had faded to near-illegibility, the ink having surrendered to time and the oils of his own anxious fingers.

He stared at it. The numbers seemed to shift in the dim light, as if they were alive and breathing.

Through the windshield, the world was nothing but blackness. His watch read 4:03 AM, but the winter night had wrapped itself around everything so completely that it might as well have been midnight. No moon. No stars. Just an endless, heavy dark that pressed against the glass like something trying to get in.

He started the engine. It roared to life, too loud in the silence.

---

The drive was a nightmare of empty streets and his own reflection—a ghost hovering in the window, hollow-eyed and jaw clenched so tight that pain radiated through his temples. Streetlights slid across his face in rhythmic intervals, illuminating nothing worth seeing.

Thirty minutes. The car rolled to a stop.

The house stood before him like a patient thing. Two stories of dark brick, windows like empty sockets, a gate hanging slightly askew on rusted hinges. The address number—47—was tarnished brass, almost black, as though the metal had been touched by fire.

He stepped out.

The wind hit him immediately—a winter blade that sliced through his coat and swept his dark hair across his forehead. It carried no scent, no sound but its own low moaning. The cold was so absolute it felt aware, pressing against him with invisible hands that knew exactly where to find the warmth.

His face was a mask of barely contained fury. Muscles twitched beneath the skin. He approached the gate, each footstep crunching on frost-killed grass that no one had bothered to maintain.

He didn't knock. He banged.

Three times. His fist connected with the door with enough force to rattle it in its frame. The sound exploded into the night and was immediately swallowed, as though something had opened its mouth and caught it.

Nothing.

He pressed the doorbell and held it. Somewhere deep inside the house, a mechanical shriek began—desperate, insistent, the sound of a thing crying for help that would never come. It rang and rang and rang.

Still nothing. The gate remained closed. The house remained silent.

He rang again. And again. The bell's mechanism began to strain, its cries growing weaker, as if it were dying.

"Mister."

The voice came from his left.

Taehyung spun. His hands curled into fists before he could stop them.

A woman stood in the doorway of the neighboring house, the door cracked just enough to reveal a sliver of her face and the warm light behind her—golden, alive, impossibly comforting compared to the cold tomb he'd been assaulting. She looked to be in her sixties, gray hair pulled back, eyes sharp with something between caution and pity.

She opened the door a little wider, pulling a thin robe tighter around herself. "You're late," she said simply. Her breath made small clouds that vanished into the dark.

Taehyung's jaw worked, but no sound came out.

"The family from this house," she continued, her voice carrying that particular quality of someone who has learned to deliver bad news without ceremony, "they moved out. Yesterday morning. A truck came at dawn, and by noon, they were gone."