The car stopped in front of an iron gate.
Sephirot pushed open the car door. Before him stood an estate enclosed by walls twice a man's height.
The rusted iron gate was tightly locked.
Thick trees enclosed the area, offering shade but also a sense of dead stillness and oppression, cutting it off from the world.
Inside stood a typical Southern plantation house, a villa from the last century.
Sephirot quickly ran through the story Marie Laveau had mentioned.
Soul swapping, stealing young bodies...
Why did this familiar story feel so much like a movie he'd watched in his past life?
He couldn't recall it right away, nor did he care to dig any deeper. They were all about to die anyway.
He walked up to the gate and pressed the doorbell.
After a moment, there was no response from inside, and the intercom remained silent.
He glanced down. At the entrance, a circle of red powder had been sprinkled, stretching along the wall far into the distance.
This was red brick dust, used in voodoo rites to ward off malevolent forces.
With a light tap of his foot, he leaped directly over the high wall and landed steadily on the lawn inside.
A red Beetle was parked in the yard.
At that moment, a young woman in a flimsy tank top was rushing toward the gate in her slippers.
She must have been hurrying over ever since she heard the doorbell.
"This is why I'd never buy a house this big. Walking anywhere is a hassle."
Sephirot muttered.
The woman halted when she spotted a strange man suddenly standing in the yard.
"Who are you?"
Sephirot wasted no words. A flick of his wrist.
A flash of cold light sliced through the air.
But just as the blade was half an inch from her neck, Sephirot stopped abruptly.
The razor-sharp light nicked her neck, drawing a faint bead of blood.
He stopped because he saw an old woman, her face a map of wrinkles, push open the screen door and step out of the villa.
So this old woman was the real target?
And the woman before him must be the new vessel she had chosen, prepared for the soul-swapping ritual.
"Fuck! What the hell is wrong with you?!"
The woman snapped out of her shock and cursed.
But then her vision blurred, and the man with the knife simply vanished into thin air.
She spun around in terror and screamed, "Mrs. Devereaux, call the police!"
But when she registered the scene behind her, the gore made her pupils contract violently, and she covered her mouth in horror.
The old woman's head was gone. Blood shot upward like a high-pressure hose, spraying the hallway ceiling before raining back down.
Beside the corpse stood the man with silver-streaked hair, perfectly still.
He was looking right at her, his large blade untouched by blood.
Such a callous disregard for human life sent a chill down Caroline's spine.
Seeing the man's gaze fixed on her, Caroline turned and bolted toward her little red car.
Sephirot sighed. I haven't even asked you any questions yet. Why run?
He materialized instantly in front of Caroline, grabbed the back of her collar, and lifted her slightly off the ground.
"Help! Ah!"
Caroline shrieked in terror, her hands desperately beating against Sephirot's arm.
"Shut up."
Sephirot stared at her, his voice flat. "Make another sound and I'll make sure you never speak again."
Caroline's scream was abruptly choked off in her throat, her face streaked with tears, makeup smeared into a mess.
"I ask, you answer. Cooperate, and I'll let you go."
Caroline nodded.
Sephirot released his grip and set her down, deciding to confirm the situation first. "Were you hired to take care of an old man who'd had a stroke?"
In his memory, this girl used to be a nurse at a nursing home.
Having seen too many elderly people dying alone in pitiful states, she couldn't bear it anymore, so she quit her job and became a private caregiver for lonely, childless old people.
Caroline huddled in on herself and nodded rapidly.
"And was there a lawyer too?"
She nodded again.
Good, the plot points all checked out.
Sephirot was satisfied with her cooperation and said, "Make the call. Get that lawyer over here."
With all this commotion and still no one coming out to check, the house was probably empty except for the stroke-stricken old man she was caring for.
Caroline instinctively glanced back at the corpse lying in a pool of blood behind her, the fear in her eyes deepening as she remained motionless.
Sephirot frowned slightly. "Once he gets here, you can go."
"Or are you planning to give up your life for that lawyer?"
Caroline trembled violently in fright, only then pulling out her phone to dial the number.
After she ended the call, Sephirot continued, "Until then, you'll follow me."
He walked toward the villa. "Don't even think about running."
He wanted to see what useful secrets were hidden in this house that even Marie Laveau was helpless against.
Entering the villa, he found that the second floor was mostly living space, the air filled with the smell of herbal medicine and that distinct odor of the elderly.
Passing by the room at the very end, he saw that the door was half-open.
Inside, on the bed, lay a completely paralyzed old man.
Hearing movement, he struggled to shift his eyeballs, looking pleadingly at Sephirot.
Sephirot ignored him. Inside that physical shell, it should be the lawyer's soul that resided.
He headed straight for the attic.
In American horror, an attic was practically the same as a cursed back room in one of his old world's ghost stories.
If it wasn't hiding something sinister, the attic might as well not exist.
However, this time, after Sephirot pushed open the attic door, he didn't find anything useful.
In the corner were animal bones and many bizarre objects. Materials for voodoo experiments, perhaps?
In a nearby cardboard box, several vinyl records were stacked.
Sephirot tossed all these things into Silent Hill.
These materials might be useful for Patty to practice with.
Finding nothing in the attic, Sephirot led Caroline downstairs and found the entrance to the basement.
The basement door was locked with an iron chain.
Seeing this, Caroline was about to hand over the skeleton key the old woman had given her earlier, but this man simply kicked the door off its hinges.
Her outstretched hand froze in midair, and she silently withdrew the key.
The basement was filled with mirrors: full-length mirrors, vanity mirrors, round ones, square ones, everything imaginable.
The only eerie detail was that all the mirrors were arranged in a circle, enclosing an empty space in the center.
This must be the scene where they performed the soul-swapping ritual.
Sephirot circled the basement but found no trace of the notebook inscribed with black magic that Marie Laveau had described.
According to her, the notebook's appearance was very conspicuous, with an engraved eyeball on its cover, and it should have been placed near the altar for the ritual.
Returning to the stairs, Sephirot looked at Caroline and asked, "Do you know what that old woman usually liked to do?"
Caroline froze for a moment, then answered nervously, "I've only been here a few days..."
"But she seemed to really enjoy fussing over her plants in a large greenhouse."
"Also, she forbade me from going near there."
"Good."
Sephirot nodded and walked outside.
Behind the villa was a large garden.
The garden was divided into many sections by wooden fences, each planted with flowers, various fruits, and vegetables.
And in the farthest corner stood a white plastic greenhouse.
It was somewhat stuffy inside, but strangely, there were no flying insects.
At the entrance lay a shovel with fresh soil still clinging to it.
Sephirot parted some plants and noticed a patch of earth that had clearly been recently turned over; its color was much darker than the rest, and nothing was planted on it.
He picked up the shovel and dug through the topsoil in a few swift motions.
Beneath the soil, a corner of a coffin appeared.
Digging further, a complete coffin emerged before him.
The coffin wasn't nailed shut, and its surface looked freshly waxed, almost free of clinging dirt. Sephirot lifted the coffin lid, and the sight inside made him frown.
(Translated by yourtl.app)
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TL NOTES — LORE GUIDE
Some references in this chapter come from source universes that may be unfamiliar to some readers. The notes below provide the context needed to understand them without leaving the page.
SOURCE UNIVERSES
The Skeleton Key — A 2005 Southern Gothic horror film about Caroline Ellis, a hospice caregiver hired at an isolated Louisiana plantation house. Its central horror involves hoodoo, red brick dust, a skeleton key, mirrors, and a body-swapping rite called the Conjure of Sacrifice; this chapter adapts that setup by sending Sephirot into the estate early.