The Return of The Phantom General

The Lost Son, The Monster Returns

The bullet flew. But before it could touch Caleb's skin, a pitch-black shadow hand emerged from the ground, catching the bullet in mid-air as if catching a fly. The shadow hand crushed the bullet into metal powder.

Julian watched as Caleb's shadow on the snow expanded, swallowing the light from the streetlamp. From within that shadow, horrifying grins began to emerge. Hungry ghostly faces, their tongues lolling out, licking towards Julian's feet.

"You... you are demons!" Julian threw his empty pistol. His sanity cracked.

He no longer saw Caleb as a human. He saw a Devil in human form ready to swallow his soul. His expensive dress pants were instantly soaked. The sharp smell of urine filled the cold air.

"Mercy! Don't eat me! Don't eat me!"

Julian turned and ran. He no longer cared about his car. He didn't care about his pride. He limped through the thick snow, screaming like a child chased by a monster from under the bed.

"Sir! Wait for me!" Boris, the tattooed bodyguard, scrambled to follow his employer, leaving the corpse of his friend still folded on the snow.

In seconds, the street was quiet again. Only the sound of the wind and Lisa's muffled sobs behind her coat remained.

Caleb let out a long sigh, his eyes returning to normal. The red tint in the air vanished. The hallucination disappeared.

"It's over," Caleb said quietly. "You can open your eyes, Lisa."

Lisa opened her eyes slowly. She saw Julian's back disappearing into the distance. "They... they ran?"

"Bad people are always cowards when facing something more evil than themselves," Caleb replied flatly. He bent down, picked up Julian's gold pistol lying in the snow, and snapped its barrel with one hand as if it were made of a cracker.

Lisa looked at her brother with a mix of awe and horror. "Brother, what happened to your eyes earlier? Why did they look so terrified?"

"Just a magic trick, Lisa. Psychological effect," Caleb lied, though he knew his sister wasn't stupid. He helped Lisa up. "Let's go inside. We have to see Mom."

As they stepped into the dark and musty apartment lobby, Caleb glanced back briefly.

Where he had stood, the shadow of his body on the snow did not follow his movement. The shadow remained still.

The shadow formed a face grinning widely, its teeth sharp and unnatural.

 The eyes of the shadow stared at Lisa's back with a terrifying hunger.

"One more..." the shadow whispered, its voice hissing softly like a snake on ice, audible only to Caleb. "You promised to feed us, General... We need one more... that one is still warm..."

Caleb paused for a moment, his hand clenched tight until his knuckles turned white.

"Shut your mouth," Caleb hissed without turning, his voice very low and dangerous. "Or I will eat you first."

The shadow chuckled softly, then melted and merged back into the darkness of the night, following its master's steps into the building.

"Watch your step, Brother. The floor in this hallway is rotten wood. If you step too hard, your foot could go through to the basement."

Lisa Thorne warned as she turned the key to the apartment door.

Caleb stepped inside. His eyes swept the cramped room in a blink. Peeling wallpaper, termite-eaten wooden furniture, and a pile of bills with red stamps on a small dining table propped up by a thick book.

"Who is it? Lisa? Are you home, dear?"

The voice sounded weak and trembling, coming from a dimly lit corner of the room. A thin old woman sat in a rocking chair covered with a worn blanket. Her eyes were covered with thick cataracts, perfectly white, staring blankly at the door. Her once jet-black hair was now white and thin, falling out from stress and malnutrition.

Caleb froze. His heart, which usually beat steadily, suddenly pounded. That was his mother. Martha Thorne. The woman who used to sing while baking apple pies in the kitchen of their warm old house now looked like a living skeleton wrapped in wrinkled skin.

"Mom...?" Lisa hurriedly ran to her mother, kneeling beside the rocking chair. "Mom, there's a guest. Someone who... someone we've been waiting for a long time."

Martha frowned, her trembling hand groping the air. "Guest? We don't have guests, Lisa. Unless that debt collector came back. Tell him to leave. Tell him I'll sell my old kidney next week."

Caleb stepped closer. The sound of his heavy military boots on the wooden floor was distinct. He knelt slowly in front of his mother, bringing his face level with the old woman's.

"It's not a debt collector, Mom," Caleb whispered. His throat felt dry. "It's me. Caleb."

Silence.

Only the sound of the wind howling outside the cracked window.

Martha's hand stopped in the air. Her mouth opened slightly, trembling violently. "Ca... Caleb?"

"Yes, Mom. I'm home."

Martha's thin hand slowly touched Caleb's face. Her rough fingers traced her son's strong jaw, then moved up to his cheek, and stopped when touching the rough skin around Caleb's eyes. She couldn't see, but her fingers read his face like Braille. She felt a different texture on his skin.

"Your face..." Martha sobbed softly. Tears dripped from her blind eyes. "Your face feels rough, son. And cold. Very cold. Like ice."

"There's a snowstorm outside, Mom," Caleb lied gently, holding his mother's hand. He didn't dare say that the cold wasn't from the weather, but because half of his soul had died on the battlefield.

"Five years, Caleb..." Martha sobbed, hugging her son's neck tightly. "They said you ran away. They said you were a criminal. But Mom knew... Mom knew her son wasn't a bad person. Where have you been, son? Why didn't you ever call?"

Lisa stood behind them, wiping her own tears while preparing warm tea from used tea bags that had already been brewed twice.

Caleb lowered his head. Shadows of his past swirled in his mind. Bloody battlefields in the Middle East, secret experiments, rituals summoning spirits in forbidden caves, and piles of his friends' corpses.

"I was working, Mom," Caleb answered briefly.

"What kind of work makes you disappear without a word? Did you become a mercenary?" asked Martha worriedly.

Caleb smiled faintly. "No. That's too rough. I work in... Waste Management."

Lisa choked on her own saliva while pouring hot water. She stared at her brother in disbelief.

"Waste Management?" repeated Martha, confused. "You mean... a garbage man?"

"Something like that," Caleb answered calmly. "I clean up waste that is hard to decompose. Waste that is rotten, toxic, and harmful to the environment. Dirty work, but the pay is decent and someone has to do it."

Lisa shuddered. She knew exactly what kind of "waste" her brother meant. She had just seen one piece of "waste" folded in half in front of the apartment earlier.

"Thank goodness... at least it's honest work," Martha sighed in relief, leaning her head back. "As long as you don't steal or hurt people, Mom is happy."

Caleb didn't answer. He just rubbed the back of his mother's hand, secretly channeling a little energy to make the old woman's breathing easier.

"Brother," Lisa cut into the moment. She placed a cracked teacup on the table. "We have to talk. Julian Sterling... he won't just let what happened earlier slide."

Caleb stood up, his face flat again. "What is the total debt?"

"Five million Francs," Lisa answered quickly, her tone desperate. "Initially just borrowed five hundred thousand for Mom's failed eye surgery. But they changed the contract. Interest on interest. We will never be able to pay it off in a lifetime, Brother! My salary as a tutor is only enough for food and rent for this place."

"Five million," Caleb muttered. "A small number for the life of a family."

"Small?!" Lisa almost shouted, then lowered her voice so her mother wouldn't hear. "That's a lot of money! Julian said earlier he wanted... he wanted me to..."

"I know what he wants," Caleb cut in. His eyes flashed briefly. "He won't get anything."

"We have to run to Italy or France tonight," Lisa started pacing in panic, stuffing clothes into plastic bags. "Julian has power with the police. He can twist the truth of what happened earlier. He will accuse you of killing his bodyguard!"

"Let him accuse," said Caleb casually. He picked up a rotten apple on the table, crushing it in his hand. "I won't run, Lisa. Running only makes you prey. We will stay here."

"But the debt!"

"I will negotiate," said Caleb.

"Negotiate?" Lisa laughed hollowly, hysterically. "With what? We have no money! What are you going to negotiate with? Trash?"

Caleb looked at his sister intently. "I will pay them."

"You're crazy..." whispered Lisa. "They are mafia masquerading as bankers, Brother. They have hitmen, they have the law in their pocket."

"And I have something worse than the law," Caleb walked to the window, staring outside. "Rest, Lisa. Take care of Mom. I have to go out for a bit to buy... cigarettes."

"Don't lie to me!" Lisa stopped him. "You're going there, right? to Julian's place?"

Caleb didn't answer. He just opened the apartment door. The night wind howled in, bringing with it soft whispers only he could hear.

"Hungry... Master... We are still hungry..."

Caleb closed the door behind him, leaving the warmth inside the apartment for the deadly cold of the night.