The house was quiet again.

Not in the way it used to be — filled with the loaded hush before a case, or the dense silence that lingered after returning from one — but the kind of quiet that settles in after a storm has finally passed. A stillness that hums through the floorboards and lives in the corners of the home like a long exhale.

It had been four years since the Smurl case.

Four years since the darkness in that home in West Pittston had clawed at the edges of everything they believed in. Since Ed had stood firm with holy water dripping from his fingertips, and Lorraine had whispered prayers until her throat went raw. That was one of the last cases that shook them — not because of the entity’s power, but because of how deeply tired they’d been afterward.

The wear didn't show in their movements yet — not entirely. Ed still kept his back straight when he walked into a room, and Lorraine still had that gentle but unshakable poise. But in private moments, you could see it in their eyes: the heaviness of five decades’ worth of battles. Some won, others... simply survived.

Now, they lived in rhythm with the seasons. Their New England home had grown even more sacred, more rooted, as if the house itself was holding them together gently. The collection room remained, sealed and blessed, dimly lit in golden lamp-glow. The crucifix on the wall hadn't moved in years. Annabelle sat quietly, watched constantly. Nothing stirred.

“I think we’ve earned the rest,” Ed would say, almost like he was trying to convince himself.

And Lorraine — who still wore her rosary around her wrist and read people’s pain like scripture — would nod. “We can rest, but we won’t forget. And we can teach others now. That matters too.”

They began holding lectures again. Small rooms at universities. Auditoriums filled with skeptics and believers. Paranormal conventions across the country, where younger faces asked them for guidance — the next generation, hungry to understand what they had seen.

They never called it “retirement,” not really. That word felt too final. But slowly, the late-night phone calls stopped. The church referred fewer cases. The interviews faded. And finally, the public’s obsession quieted. The world was changing. And they... were not.

One fall evening, Lorraine stood alone in their museum room. The floors creaked beneath her soft shoes. Ed was upstairs, reading — likely the same copy of Demonology and Deliverance he’d been revisiting for the past month. Outside, the wind rattled the trees just enough to make the house feel alive again.

She looked at the old cases: the tapes, the dolls, the photos of children who had cried in the dark and parents who had begged them to save their families. So many voices, so many years.

She pressed her hand to the glass that separated her from one of their earliest items — a rosary taken from a house in Amityville. Her reflection looked back at her, softer now. Older. Wiser. A woman who had seen evil, and chosen faith over fear, again and again.

Behind her, Ed entered quietly.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. His chin rested lightly against her temple.

“I was thinking,” he said, voice low, “maybe next spring we plant that garden you always talked about.”

Lorraine smiled.

“And maybe we start writing that book together,” she added, her voice warm.

He chuckled. “You’ll finish it before I even write the introduction.”

The two of them stood in that museum-turned-memorial for their life’s work — surrounded by haunted artifacts, echoes of terror, and hundreds of reasons they had never stopped fighting.