Night Teeth Ethan Campbell Night teeth Ethan Campbell An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book Night Teeth Night Teeth Ethan Campbell Ethan Campbell An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Night Teeth T he city had died without warning. One moment, traffic lights blinked crimson and gold across Ashford Square and in the next ...nothing. No buzz of neon signs, no hum of the electric grid, not even the distant rattle of subways. Just silence. Heavy, cavernous silence that seemed to press into the lungs like ash. Jonah Cross stood on the rooftop of the aging Bri- arstone Complex, hands gripping rusted railings as he stared at the blacked-out skyline. Even the stars refused to show. It was as if something had swal- lowed the light. He wasn’t alone. Ethan Campbell “I told you,” murmured the voice behind him. Soft. Gravel-laced. Female. He turned. Layla Venn was staring at the darkness like she could read it. Or like it was reading her. “I said it wouldn’t just be a blackout. Something walked through the veil.” Jonah gave a small scoff. “You’re still saying this is ghosts?” “No,” she replied, with a slanted smile that held no humor. “Worse. The kind of things that make ghosts.” * * * * * It started with the pigeons. Dozens of them, exploded across the square. Not mauled, not slashed, just... inverted. Beaks inside out. Feathers twitching like hands had rummaged beneath their skin. No footprints. No blood trails. Just the remains. “I fought in Kandahar,” Jonah muttered as they crouched near the mess on 6th Avenue. “I’ve seen IEDs. This ain’t that. This is something else .” Layla nodded, pressing her gloved fingers into the Night Teeth cracked pavement. Her eyes glazed over, pupils dilat- ing until only the black remained. “Something’s hunting.” She swallowed, as if her throat had tightened. “And it’s not alone anymore.” * * * * * By night two, the city had become a crypt. Windows gaped like hollow eyes. Street corners curled in on themselves with shadow. The only light came from candles and flashlights, held in shaking hands. Most people stayed indoors. The smart ones didn’t. Inside, it could crawl under doors. Slip through cracks. Jonah had seen it himself, a silhouette that cast no shadow, a whisper that made the air hot , not cold. He’d emptied a full magazine into it. Nothing. Just a hiss and something like laughter “We need answers,” he growled, driving the butt of his rifle into the floor to keep sane. Layla lit a stick of sage. “We need the Library.” “What, books?” Ethan Campbell She looked at him. “Not books. Records. Some things leave echoes . You hear screams. I see ink.” * * * * * The Ashford Public Library had become a cathe- dral of cobwebs and mildew. Inside, the silence was oily, and every step echoed too loud. Layla led them through the stacks, fingers trail- ing across leather-bound spines. “It doesn’t kill right away. It eats memories first. You forget where you are. Then who you are.” “And then?” “Then it knows how to mimic your face.” Jonah stopped dead. “Say that again.” She turned to him, voice barely above a whisper. “It doesn’t want to just stalk us. It wants to become us.” * * * * * They found it on the second floor. A page torn from an old civic log. It showed a failed military experiment buried beneath the city, Project Eidolon. Unmanned probes sent into dimensional Night Teeth pockets discovered in sinkholes. Most came back... but not empty. “‘Resonant Frequencies destabilized between lo- cal perception and conceptual identity.’” Layla read aloud. “Translation: We pulled something through. Something that doesn’t obey physics.” Jonah’s hand clenched around his rifle. “Something that wears our fears like clothes.” Then they heard the laughter. * * * * * It moved like static. Like half a body pressed against glass, smeared and twitching. Jonah fired again, and again. Muzzle flash lit the corridor like lightning, brief glimpses of impossible geometry: limbs where there should be none, eyes that blinked inward, a mouth filled with teeth that sang “Get behind me!” he shouted. Layla’s eyes went white again. She chanted some- thing broken and old. Ethan Campbell The creature screamed . Not from pain. From hun- ger. The walls pulsed. The tiles cracked. And Layla began to bleed . From her eyes. Her ears. Her fingers. “I see it, Jonah,” she croaked, “I see what it wants...” “Hold on!” He grabbed her, dragging her down the emergency stairwell. The building groaned. Screams echoed ...not human. Not animal. Some hybrid that wrinkled reality. * * * * * Underground. In the tunnels. Beneath the city. They ran. They reached the old Project Eidolon vault. Heavy steel. Abandoned for years. Inside, the truth waited. Dead men sat in chairs, heads split like ripe fruit. The walls were scrawled with symbols in their own blood. Night Teeth We brought it back. It brought us back. It remembers the dark before light. Layla stared at them. Her voice cracked. “Jonah... it’s not alien. Not supernatural. It’s us.” He froze. “What are you saying?” “We made it. In that other dimension. Out of our own thoughts. Our own nightmares. The probes projected human fear into the void. And it... it grew there. Fed on it.” “And now it’s home,” Jonah said hoarsely. “It is home,” Layla whispered. * * * * * The lights flickered. Something slid across the ceil- ing. Jonah turned. “It followed us.” The vault door slammed shut behind them. And Layla was no longer Layla. Ethan Campbell Her smile cracked too wide. Her voice too calm. “You’re scared, Jonah. You always were.” He backed away, eyes wild. “What the hell are you?” “I’m what you made when you killed that kid in Kandahar. You remember him, right? The one with the toy gun? You hesitated . And he died anyway.” Jonah’s gun trembled. “Go on,” it whispered, wearing Layla’s face. “Pull the trigger. It won’t matter. I’ll be back. I’ll always be back.” He screamed, and fired. * * * * * When the rescue team found Jonah two days lat- er, he was sitting in the dark, whispering to someone who wasn’t there. His rifle was melted into slag. They brought him to the surface. He kept mutter- ing: “She saw it. I made it. It wears my name now.” * * * * * Night Teeth The blackout ended. But at night, sometimes, faces shift in mirrors. Shadows don’t always move with their owners. And under the city, something still listens Hungry. Waiting. You can’t see it. But it’s learning how to wear you END Ethan Campbell Night Teeth Ethan Campbell Ovi eBook Publishing 2025 Ovi eBook Publishing Design: Thanos Night Teeth Ovi eBooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Ethan Campbell Ethan Campbell Night teeth Ethan Campbell, nat- ural born stand-up comedian who never made it any further from his toilet’s mirror, so he turned into writ- ing fantasy and para- normal stories.