(POV Shift: Third Person)
Three weeks had passed. Three weeks of a strange, tense normalcy. The Warren house in Monroe, Connecticut, had been repaired. The hole in the living room, courtesy of their neighbor's Ford Galaxie, was patched and in the process of being repainted. The car's bill had been discreetly paid via an anonymous transfer of a considerable sum, a gesture Ed and Lorraine attributed to the only possible source, though they dared not say it aloud. Judy was safe, though quieter than usual, and her babysitter, Mary Ellen, was on an indefinite paid vacation in Florida, courtesy of the same anonymous transfer, to recover from what her therapist had diagnosed as an "acute psychotic episode."
The artifact room was silent. Annabelle's display case, now empty, had been removed and replaced by a blank space that screamed louder than any cursed object. The evil was gone. The house was at peace.
But the peace was a thin layer of ice over an ocean of unanswered questions. Between Ed and Lorraine, Alex's name was a tacitly forbidden topic. It was a shared trauma too strange, too large to be discussed. How do you begin to talk about a kid who jumps over cars, drinks your best wine, and opens portals to hell before disappearing on command from a god he calls "grumpy"? There was no manual for that.
They decided to do what they always did when the world became too strange: they took refuge in their work, in their routine. They agreed to give a lecture at a prestigious nearby university's psychology and religious studies department. The topic: "Evidence of High-Level Demonic Infestations: A Case Study of Harrisville and Enfield."
It was a way to regain control, to reassert their own narrative. They would present the cases as they had lived them, with a small, but necessary, editorial omission. The "associate" who helped them, the one who took the crucial photographs, would remain anonymous. In their eagerness to return to normalcy, to package chaos into a coherent PowerPoint presentation, they had made a crucial mistake. They had filed Alex's photographic evidence, the Polaroids, without looking at them closely. They assumed, logically, that the photos would reflect the terror they had witnessed. They couldn't have been more wrong.
(POV Shift: Third Person - The Lecture Hall)
The lecture hall was packed. Over three hundred students and faculty members filled the tiered seating, a mix of believers, skeptics, and the morbidly curious. The atmosphere was one of respectful academic silence, charged with a morbid fascination.
Ed Warren was in his element. He stood behind a wooden podium, his voice resonating with the authority and charisma of a preacher and a showman. Beside him, Lorraine sat in a chair, serene and elegant, nodding occasionally, ready to offer her unique perspective. Behind them, a large projector screen was blank, waiting.
"Good evening," Ed began. "My wife and I are here today to discuss the nature of evil. Not as an abstract concept, but as a tangible, measurable force. A force that infests places. And sometimes... people."
He started with the Harrisville case. He described the Perron family, their torment, the unexplained phenomena. His narrative was masterful. You could hear a pin drop as he described the clocks stopping at 3:07 AM, the smell of rotting flesh, the "hide-and-clap" game that terrorized the girls. He painted a picture of desperation and fear that held the audience captive.
"We identified the entity as the vengeful spirit of a woman named Bathsheba Sherman," Ed continued, his voice dropping to a grave tone. "A witch who had proclaimed herself a servant of Satan. Her malevolence was so strong it manifested physically. And at the climax of our investigation, in the basement of that house, at the heart of her power, we managed to witness a full manifestation. It was a vision of pure terror. Fortunately," he paused dramatically, "our associate on the case, a specialist in capturing anomalous evidence, was able to obtain a photograph at that precise moment. Projector operator, first slide, please."
The projector light flickered on, illuminating the screen.
(POV Shift: Third Person - The Photographic Chaos)
The image that appeared on the three-meter-high screen was a Polaroid, slightly faded from reproduction. And in it, indeed, was the spectral, furious figure of Bathsheba, floating in the basement's darkness, her face contorted in hatred. It was a genuinely terrifying image.
But she was not alone.
Beside her, perfectly in focus and brilliantly lit by the flash, stood Alex. He was standing, a cheeky grin on his face, one arm flexed in a classic bodybuilder pose, and with the other hand, he was making the "devil horns" gesture behind the witch's head.
There was utter silence in the auditorium. A silence of profound and absolute confusion. Students looked at each other, unsure how to react. Was it a joke? Some kind of performance art? A couple of students in the front row let out nervous giggles.
Ed, who was not looking at the screen but at the audience, frowned, confused by the reaction. Lorraine leaned forward, narrowing her eyes.
"Let us continue," Ed said, trying to regain momentum. "The second case is more recent. Enfield, England. A demonic infestation centered on young Janet Hodgson. Here, we faced not a human spirit, but something far older. Something that used the spirit of a man named Bill Wilkins as its puppet."
His voice regained its power. He described the flooded house, the inverted crucifixes, the figure of the "Crooked Man." The audience fell silent again, the strange first photo momentarily forgotten.
"At one point," Ed said, "the entity manifested as one of the family's worst nightmares. The Bride. A terrifying figure with a knife. Again, our associate was there. Next slide, please."
The second photo appeared. The Bride was there, in her blood-stained dress and raised knife, an image of pure bridal terror. And beside her, stood Alex. This time, he was on one knee, in the classic marriage proposal pose, offering the demonic apparition an imaginary flower with an expression of comical, exaggerated longing on his face.
This time, the laughter was not contained. It started as a murmur and grew into open guffaws from a dozen students. Ed and Lorraine spun sharply to look at the screen. Their eyes widened. All color drained from Ed's face.
"That... that's not..." he stammered.
Desperate, he hit the projector button, hoping the next image would be normal. "The main entity... the one posing as a nun..." he began to say, but his voice trailed off.
The most blasphemous image of all appeared on the screen. The tall, terrible figure of Valak, the Nun, stood in the center, her yellow eyes burning. And peeking over her shoulder, in a perfect photobomb, was Alex's grinning face, cross-eyed and sticking out his tongue.
The auditorium erupted. The laughter was now uncontrollable. Students pulled out their phones to photograph the screen. The dean of the psychology department buried his face in his hands. The Warrens' reputation, built over decades of serious, dangerous work, was crumbling into a surreal farce.
Ed, his face red with fury and humiliation, began to frantically cycle through the slides. Each one was worse than the last. A photo of the possessed samurai, with Alex beside it striking a kung-fu pose. A photo of Annabelle's rocking chair, with Alex sitting in it, waving at the camera with a goofy grin. It was a complete collection of the most absolute disrespect for the forces of hell.
At the back of the auditorium, two figures watched the scene without a hint of humor. Investigator Arthur Penhaligon slowly shook his head, a strange mixture of horror and admiration on his face.
"Brashness..." he murmured. "The level of brazenness is astronomical. He treats hell as if it were his personal playground."
Beside him, Agent Thorne watched everything with cold, analytical intensity. She made a note on her device.
"It's not just brashness," she said quietly. "It's a declaration of dominance. Predators often play with their food. Subject 'ZeroCool' is not merely fighting these entities. He is mocking them. He is establishing psychological superiority." She turned to Arthur. "Tell me, Mr. Penhaligon, in all your experience, have you ever seen a human being display such disdain, such a lack of primal fear, in the face of evil of this magnitude?"
Arthur took a moment, looking at the image of Alex making a silly face behind the most feared demon he knew.
"No," he finally replied. "Never. And that, my dear agent, is what makes him more fascinating and, by far, more dangerous than any of the demons he purports to hunt."
On stage, Ed slammed the projector off, plunging the room into dimness and the echo of laughter. The lecture was over. But the legend of Alex, the ghost who mocked ghosts, had just been born into the world, leaving the Warrens amidst the ruins of their own credibility.