Miles's deep, resonant voice—laced with an air of absolute control—echoed through the empty apartment.
Carried by the invisible web of internet signals, his words acted like a shot of adrenaline.
They pierced straight into the hearts of the thousands of viewers watching the stream, and more importantly, reached Susie, who was on the verge of a total breakdown on the other end of the screen.
However, no matter how steady Miles's aura was, the atmosphere of pure terror in the livestream continued to spread with furious speed, like ink bleeding into water.
The eerie crying—sounding like nails scraping against a rough chalkboard or wheezing from a broken bellows—didn't stop.
Instead, the "Pika... Pika..." echoed increasingly clearly through the old house's empty living room as time ticked by.
It was accompanied by the faint, rough "rustle" of fabric dragging across the cold wooden floor.
That thing was roaming the living room!
[Viewer "Midnight Watchman": Bro wtf! That sound is insane! I've got goosebumps everywhere! This ain't a Pokémon, it's a literal curse!]
[Viewer "As Timid as a Mouse": Streamer, stop capping! This is no joke! Tell her to jump out the window and run! It's right at the door!]
[Viewer "Wild Electabuzz": I'm fully hiding under my blankets rn! Who gets it, chat? I'm here for an appraisal stream but getting horror movie vibes!]
[Viewer "Frontline Drama Watcher": I'm terrified but I can't look away! W Stream! We just broke 3k viewers, everyone waiting for the jump scare!]
[Viewer "Outlaw John Doe": Chat protect me! Begone demons! Streamer, if you actually appraise this thing, I'm dropping a massive donation tomorrow!]
[Viewer "No Midnight Drinking": Susie is pale as a ghost. You can literally hear her teeth chattering. RIP. Master, do something quick!]
[Viewer "Tough Guys Cry Too": Bruh, something just popped under my bed and I jumped! 10/10 immersive horror experience!]
Susie was stretched to her absolute limit, like a taut bowstring ready to snap at the slightest vibration.
She bit down hard on her pale lower lip, clutching the Pichu in her arms.
The little Electric-type Pokémon had stopped trembling, entirely stiff with sheer terror.
"M-Master Miles..." Susie's voice was barely a mosquito's hum, tears welling fiercely in her eyes.
"What... what should I do? I don't dare go out... I really don't..."
"Susie, look into my eyes," Miles stated plainly.
He leaned forward slightly, his deep, dark eyes piercing through the camera lens as if carrying a strange magic, locking directly onto her panicked gaze.
"Take a deep breath. In this world, no unknown terror can defeat humanity's courage to seek the truth."
"Didn't you want to know what this monster is—the one that's been tormenting you and Pichu so badly you couldn't sleep?"
"The truth is just one door away."
"With me here, and the thousands of viewers in the chat keeping you company, you aren't fighting alone."
Miles's tone was gentle but left no room for doubt, like a general issuing final orders to a frontline soldier.
"Go to your bag or closet right now and find a pair of sunglasses."
"The darker the better. Any glasses that can block a large area of your vision and reduce light intake will work. Keep your movements light, and put them on!"
"S-Sunglasses?"
Susie was completely bewildered by this illogical request.
In a life-or-death supernatural crisis, shouldn't she be looking for a peach wood sword, garlic, or a crucifix?
What was the point of sunglasses? To look cool?
But she had completely lost the ability to think independently; Miles's words were absolute gospel to her.
Swallowing hard, she fought past the weakness in her legs and crept out of bed.
Barefoot on the cold floor, she held her breath and tiptoed to the vanity, pulling open a drawer to rummage through it with trembling hands.
Soon, she produced an oversized, pitch-black pair of women's aviator sunglasses that covered half her face.
"F-Found them. What next?" Susie held the sunglasses up to the camera, her voice distorting from extreme anxiety.
"Put them on," Miles commanded. "Then, think carefully. Is there a floor-length mirror or a large reflective glass surface in your living room?"
Susie slipped the sunglasses on.
Her vision instantly plunged into darkness, making the already dim room pitch black.
She racked her brain to recall the old house's layout and nodded.
"Yes... By the shoe cabinet in the entryway. There's a huge full-body mirror right across from the living room sofa."
"Perfect." Miles snapped his fingers, his gaze sharpening.
"Walk to the back of the bedroom door. Gently turn the handle and open a gap just wide enough to slip your phone's camera through."
"Remember, absolutely do not look for the source of the sound with your naked eyes!"
"Point your camera at that full-body mirror in the living room! We will use the reflection to catch a glimpse of it!"
[Viewer "Keyboard Holmes": Holy shit! Is this some ancient exorcism ritual? Sunglasses? Mirror trick? This is wild!]
[Viewer "First Man of Scientific Ghost Hunting": Mirrors are gateways to the dead. Bro is cooking! Is he using the mirror so she doesn't get cursed?!]
[Viewer "No Midnight Drinking": Big brain play with the sunglasses! No eye contact equals no aggro! Master's IQ is off the charts!]
[Viewer "Wild Electabuzz": This is ten thousand times more thrilling than just opening the door! Absolute cinema!]
[Viewer "As Timid as a Mouse": I'm holding my phone at arm's length. If a jump scare happens, my phone is going out the window!]
[Viewer "Frontline Drama Watcher": High-energy warning! Spam the chat!]
[Viewer "Lost Little Deer in the Woods": God protect us... Please let nothing go wrong!]
Susie pressed her lips tightly together, her erratic heartbeat thudding in her chest like a war drum.
With her left arm clamped around the paralyzed Pichu and her right hand holding the phone, she edged toward the old wooden door, stepping as carefully as if she were walking on knife blades.
Out in the living room, the bizarre, raspy "Pika... Pika..." continued to echo through the empty space.
The scratching sound of rags dragging across the floor sounded less than five meters away from her door.
Creak—
Susie reached out with her trembling left hand and gently turned the rusted metal doorknob.
Accompanied by a metallic screech that sounded deafening in the dead of night, the wooden door slowly opened, leaving a gap about four inches wide.
A draft of night air, thick with the smell of old mildew and a bone-chilling cold, instantly slithered through the crack, making the hairs on the back of Susie's neck stand on end.
"Hold your breath. Slip the camera through and find the mirror," Miles's voice acted as a stabilizing anchor in her earpiece.
Gritting her teeth, Susie slowly maneuvered the phone's camera through the crack in the door.
Relying on memory, she angled the lens toward the full-body mirror in the entryway.
The living room lights were off.
Only the pale moonlight filtering through the unclosed curtains cast long shadows across the floor.
The stream's feed shook violently at first, betraying Susie's frantic trembling.
But the moment the image finally stabilized on the reflection in the mirror... the thousands of viewers glued to their screens simultaneously gasped.
There, in the corner of the living room reflected in the glass, standing right on the border where the moonlight met the darkness, was a thing.
It indeed possessed the silhouette of a Pikachu.
But just as Susie had described earlier, it was absolutely not the kind of "cute creature" any sane human could accept!
Its body looked like a sack made from cheap, coarse, dirty burlap, sloppily stitched together and slumping weakly on the floor.
The lower half was completely swallowed by the shadows, obscuring whatever feet it might have had.
On the crude burlap head, a wavy, bizarre mouth and two hollow, dead-fish eyes were haphazardly painted on with black pigment.
Under the moonlight, those drawn-on eyes seemed to project an abyssal malice, staring fixedly into the empty air.
Behind its body, a withered, blackened stick—looking as if it had been burned in a fire and soaked in mud for a decade—was jammed in at an awkward angle, acting as a crude imitation of a Pikachu's signature lightning-bolt tail.
But none of that was the most terrifying part.
What made everyone's scalp tingle and their stomachs churn in sheer horror was that the monster's "neck" was entirely broken!
The burlap head with the bizarre painted features hung limply to the right at a physics-defying ninety-degree angle, nearly touching the floor!
Amidst the bone-chilling, mournful cries of "Pika... Pika...", something slowly slithered out from under the frayed hem of the monster's rags.
Like surging, black sludge, an entirely shadowy, ghostly claw extended outward.
Trembling, the black phantom claw reached up with agonizing difficulty toward the broken burlap head, as if trying to prop its own snapped skull back into place.
As it pushed the head up, the coarse fabric made a series of sharp, folding crunches that, in the quiet night, sounded exactly like bones being brutally snapped!
[Viewer "Begone Ghost in Red": WTF AHHHH!!! I'm out! Unplugging my PC! What in the actual hell is that?!]
[Viewer "No Midnight Drinking": I'm gonna puke! What is that black hand?! It's literally just dark aura! That's a straight-up demon!]
[Viewer "Wild Electabuzz": My brain is short-circuiting! It's holding its own head! Using a ghost hand to prop up a broken neck! Nightmare fuel 100%!]
[Viewer "Outlaw John Doe": Call the cops rn! This is way beyond Pokémon! Run girl, a door ain't stopping that!]
[Viewer "Lost Little Deer in the Woods": Mom pick me up I'm scared! Its eyes are painted but it's staring right at us! Malice off the charts!]
[Viewer "Frontline Drama Watcher": Streamer?! Say something! You said it was a Pokémon! What Pokémon holds up its own broken neck?!]
[Viewer "Tough Guys Cry Too": GG. This VOD is going straight to the top of internet unsolved mysteries!]
Just as the livestream chat descended into totally uncontrollable madness from extreme fear...
Suddenly!
A massive, glaringly red system warning box popped up right in the middle of Susie's phone screen!
[System Maximum Level Warning! Current livestream feed suspected of containing severe violations such as terror, horror, and gore! Platform AI automated moderation triggered! Streamer, please adjust the feed immediately to comply with platform rules, or this channel will be permanently and forcibly banned in ten seconds!]
The blinding red warning box hung over their heads like the Sword of Damocles, making the hearts of everyone in the chat lurch violently.
Miles frowned slightly as he looked at the warning on his screen.
'Good lord.'
The appearance of this ragdoll was so shocking that it actually terrified the platform's state-of-the-art AI moderation into flagging it as gore?
Just how illegal was this thing's face?
"Admin! Have mercy!"
Miles didn't panic. He leaned close to his microphone and shouted to the platform's backend moderators.
"This is absolutely not some underworld footage promoting superstitious terror!"
"Look closely, this is a perfectly normal, legally compliant Pokémon appraisal segment!"
"This is a monumental scientific moment—the discovery of an unknown new species!"
"If you ban my stream, you'll be hindering the development of the Federation's Pokémon academic community!"
This half-truth, using a tiger's skin for a banner, actually had an unexpected effect.
Or perhaps, a human admin had intervened, noticed the terrifying surge of traffic in Miles's stream, and considered his previously accumulated official backing.
Just five seconds after the red warning appeared, a scene occurred that left everyone both crying and laughing ..
The live feed wasn't cut.
Instead, on Susie's camera, the bizarre "Pikachu" reflected in the mirror—the one with the broken neck using a black claw to prop up its head—was suddenly slapped with a mosaic blur so incredibly thick that even its silhouette was obscured!
This brute-force manual pixelation by the official platform admin not only instantly shattered the suffocating Uncanny Valley terror but also bizarrely introduced an intense wave of comedic relief.
[Viewer "No Midnight Drinking": Pfft... LMAO! Live censorship! Admin knows how to save the stream!]
[Viewer "Outlaw John Doe": VIP treatment! AI flags it and an admin personally blurs the ghost to save the VOD? Streamer, are you the CEO's son?]
[Viewer "Wild Electabuzz": I'm dead. Terrified a second ago, but now watching that clump of pixels squirm... it's kinda cute?]
[Viewer "Frontline Drama Watcher": Streamer's connections are insane! Pokémon Bureau agent, billionaire confidant, deep-state researcher... and now platform admins give him face!]
[Viewer "Keyboard Holmes": Hold up... if the admin verified it isn't a real paranormal event... could this thing actually be a Pokémon, just like the Master said?!]
Upto 20 chapters ahead on patreon :-
patreon.com/Vristikk