Back to Twilight for a Visit

The video had been shot with a portable recorder carried by the SWAT team. The footage shook a little, its rough, found-footage texture lending it an even more visceral sense of realism.

On-screen, the mansion's door had long since rotted. It let out a piercing creak as they pushed it open, stirring up clouds of dust.

The team members held powerful flashlights, sweeping their beams through the dim hallway and illuminating peeling walls and scattered debris.

"Stay alert. Maintain formation."

The captain's voice came through their earpieces, his orders calm and steady. In the video, the team advanced cautiously, their footsteps ringing clearly through the empty mansion.

Suddenly, several shambling figures emerged from the darkness ahead.

Their faces were paper-white, utterly bloodless. With vacant eyes and stumbling steps, they looked deeply unsettling.

"What are those things? Zombies?"

A team member's hushed question came through the earpieces.

Just then, a team member named ET stopped abruptly and jerked his head up.

"A baby's crying! Upstairs!"

Before the captain could give an order, ET charged up the stairs with his gun, heedless of everything else, his footsteps hurried and erratic.

"Damn it, stop him!"

The captain barked the order, but it was already too late. The remaining team members could only hurry after him while keeping watch on the strange "zombies" around them.

The team members moved forward to restrain one of them and tore the rotting flesh from its forehead.

Beneath that patch of skin, the footage revealed a gruesome, bloody hole. It was empty inside; the brain was gone.

"No brain. Something's controlling it."

The team member's voice trembled with disbelief. The camera tilted upward, illuminating the ceiling.

An irregular hole gaped there, its edges charred black, as though something scorching hot had crashed through it.

The team climbed the