They say cold cases don't haunt you—they hunt you. Creep up from the dark, breath on your neck like frostbite, until you're the one shivering in the grave you dug. Me? Isabelle Sami, 28, NCIS probie with a badge that weighs heavier than my regrets and a psych eval scar that itches like a fresh wound. I thought I was ready for the shadows. Academy sims, midnight stakeouts, the whole "serve and protect the fleet" oath. But Blackwood Hall? That's not a case. That's a curse, exhumed from 1987's icy depths, and it's got teeth.It claws in with a storm—the kind that doesn't warn, just devours. November 3, 2025, a nor'easter rips the Chesapeake apart: Winds screaming 70 knots, waves clawing the bluff like drowning hands, thunder cracking the sky open to spill black rain. I'm not on duty. I'm tangled in Kyle's arms on our sagging couch, Virginia Beach bungalow shaking like it's allergic to silence. My husband's a Navy diver—bronze skin etched with Gulf scars, eyes that see ghosts in the deep—and tonight, he's my anchor, murmuring post-mission nonsense about bioluminescent wrecks while his fingers trace the tattoo on my hip: A trident wrapped in Sami script, for the family that stitched me whole after my folks' crash.The phone shatters it—NCIS dispatch, voice slicing the roar like a knife through fog. "Sami, artifact recovery at Blackwood Hall. Storm surge hit the boathouse. Reyes: You're point. Move—tide's a monster."Blackwood. The word alone tastes like ash. Every probie knows the lore: Almaden Court's a vein of madness, five miles of gravel twisting through woods older than the Revolution, oaks gnarled like hanged men. The Hall perches at the end—a hulking Victorian beast, built on a barrow of shipwrecks, where drowned sailors supposedly rise with the gales, dragging the living down for company. 1987: Admiral Harlan Blackwood's gala, Cold War cocktail of spies and sub secrets. Chalice toast laced with belladonna—nightshade's kiss, veins blackening like spilled ink, admiral gurgling "Traitor..." before crumpling amid shattered glass and flickering holo-crests. No killer. Case flash-frozen in '88, suspects thawed into ghosts: Victor the indebted heir, Lydia the venomous widow, Hargrove the fallen SEAL butler, Clara the teenage code-cracker. Why reopen now? Reyes' text buzzes as I shrug into my rain slicker: Storm unearthed the chalice. Thaw it, Sami—or bury it deeper.Kyle's hand tightens on mine, calluses rough as coral. "Almaden? Babe, that's suicide row. Call if the woods bite." His kiss tastes like salt and worry—diver's instinct for depths that swallow whole. I nod, grabbing my kit (tox swabs, Maglite, the Glock that feels foreign in my grip), and bolt into the gale. The Charger's headlights punch futile holes in the black; wipers flog the deluge, but Almaden devours the road after the first hairpin. Gravel snarls under tires, branches rake the roof like nails on a chalkboard—scraaaape—each one a whisper: Turn back. Turn back. No bars on the phone, radio spitting static laced with phantom voices—garbled Morse? Or my pulse thundering in my ears? The fog rolls in thick as burial shroud, coiling through the canopy like spectral fingers, and suddenly, the air changes. Colder. Sweeter. Like lilies rotting in a vase.The Hall rears up without mercy: Turrets stabbing lightning-forked clouds, eaves dripping like open wounds, ivy throttling the stone in a stranglehold that pulses—throb—in the strobes. Windows shatter-mouthed, some boarded, others gaping to black voids that watch. My boots squelch the overgrown lawn, mud sucking like a grave, toward the boathouse—a rotting leviathan on stilts, pilings groaning as waves batter below. Surge has torn the dock asunder, exposing a silted pit where the chalice gleams: Silver stem barnacle-crusted, bowl tilted like a beggar's cup, naval etchings (trident coiled 'round anchor) mocking the muck.I drop to knees in the slurry—boots flooding, rain needling my neck like accusations—and pry it free. The schlorpechoes unnaturally loud, chalice heavy as guilt in my gloved palms. Tox kit beeps: Atropine positive, belladonna's bite pristine after 38 years. Watertight seal—submarine tight, Kyle would say. But as I bag it, the sweet rot intensifies, blooming from the Hall's porch. Creak. Not storm. Footsteps. Heavy, deliberate, wet soles dragging on splintered boards—thud... drag... thud—closing from the shadows. My beam whips up: Empty porch. But the air thickens, fog parting like a curtain to frame... him. Tall silhouette in the doorway, hooded slicker sheeting rain, face obscured but for eyes—gleaming, wrong, like oil on water. It tilts, head cocking with a crackle of static, and the rasp slithers out: Saaami... why dig? He's sleeping...My blood ices. Not wind. My name. How? The psych eval scar burns—that sim where the "hostage" whispered my doubts, turning the room to vertigo. I lunge back, boot snaring a root—crack—down into the pit, muck swallowing my scream, chalice skittering from numb fingers. The figure leaps—a blur of shadow and storm, hand outstretched like a drowning man's grasp. Lightning explodes: Face illuminated for a heartbeat—gaunt, waterlogged, eyes Blackwood's—blue veins spidering the whites. Then gone. Swallowed by fog that laughs, low and wet.I claw out, gasping silt, Glock drawn and trembling—beam sweeps void. Radio: "Sami! Report—storm's jamming everything!" Reyes, frantic edge bleeding through."Chalice... secured. Residue confirmed." Voice shakes; I steady it. "But boss... something's here. Watching."Static swallows his laugh—hollow. "Ghosts don't spike caviar, kid. Lab it. And haul ass—that driveway's a widowmaker in this."The sprint back's hell: Woods alive, branches grabbing—one tears my sleeve, drawing blood like a lover's bite. Charger roars to life, gravel spraying accusations, Almaden uncoiling behind me like a serpent sloughing skin. Home: Kyle's porch light a lighthouse, him bursting out mid-stride, hauling me into arms that smell of brine and safety. Over cold pizza (his ritual: Pepperoni confetti, cheese moat), I shatter—chalice on the table, shadow's rasp looping in my skull. Saaami... Kyle pries the story, jaw tightening at the seal: "Diver-grade, Iz. From a sub wreck—holds air, holds secrets. That floppy slot in the stem? Cold War vintage. Whatever's on it surfaced for you."Floppy. Clue #1. His eyes spark—diver's fire, chasing abyss ghosts—but the rasp haunts us both. Sami family pic on the fridge mocks me: Kyle's grin, Tatum's spider prank, Fox's flex, Stacia's tabby glare, Carmela B.'s knowing smile. My secret weapon. Tomorrow, archives. But sleep? Stolen in fits, dreaming of blue-veined eyes and a chalice that drinks back.Flashback—to etch the terror eternal: November 14, 1987. VHS hisses like a serpent's breath, grain devouring the frame. Blackwood Hall throbs under crystal blaze—chandeliers weeping light on '80s excess: Power shoulders, cigarette haze, holo-crests projecting Trident oaths like ectoplasm on mahogany. Admiral Harlan Blackwood, 62, a monolith in whites, seizes the chalice—stem concealing sins, bowl brimming ruby port. "To shadows eternal," he thunders, voice booming over defectors' murmurs and caviar clinks, "our depths devouring the dawn!" Glasses chime like bones: Ensign Victor, 24, wolfish with Vegas debts, toasts too fervent, eyes devouring the admiral's signet. Lydia Voss (curse the name's echo), 32, CIA's silk-wrapped scorpion, sips with a serpent's smile, her gaze slithering to the Soviet whisperer in alcove gloom. Hargrove, 28, butler forged in SEAL fire, decants with lethal poise—discharge doom already scripted in his stare. Clara, 16, brace-faced rebel, crouches covert, Commodore keys clacking hacks into ham-wave voids. The swallow. The seize—throat convulsing, chalice tumbling in a crimson arc. Blackwood jackknifes, veins erupting black rivers across his face, eyes ballooning storms. "Traitor... in our mi—" Gurgle. Crash. Holo-crests convulse to anarchy, static shrieking as guests swarm the corpse. Shards glitter like accusations. Fade to '88 tombstone: Case sealed, killer adrift in time's undertow.*Dawn bleeds gray through curtains; Kyle's arm anchors me. The rasp lingers: Why dig? Because the dead don't rest easy, shadows. And Blackwood's just whet its appetite.Your move, haunt hunters: Who's the '87 phantom who poisoned the toast? Vote. Confess your chills below. Sami signing off—lights on, doors locked.
