"In the Shadow of the Axe"
Title: “In the Shadow of the Axe”: The Conjuring Saga fanfiction
Pairing: Abner ( Axeman ) x Reader Female
Genre: Dark Romance | Supernatural Horror
Warnings: Mentions of possession, ghostly violence, obsession, unsettling intimacy, minor blood, psychological manipulation.
Summary: As the Smurl house grows darker, you—its devoted nanny—find yourself caught between fear and fascination when the axeman Abner begins to haunt not just the home, but your very heart.
You adored your job. For months now, you had been the nanny for the Smurl children, especially the two youngest girls who clung to you with the kind of innocence that made the world feel softer, gentler. Their laughter filled the home, often pushing away the heavy, suffocating air that seemed to linger in every corner of the house.
But lately, even their laughter couldn’t erase the unease gnawing at your heart.
The basement was the worst of it. You hated going down there—the way the lightbulbs always seemed to flicker, the way shadows bent against the walls as if mocking you. You swore you could hear the thud of heavy footsteps when you stood at the top of the stairs, even when the basement was empty.
And then there was him.
You never saw him fully, not at first. Just a presence, a shimmer in the corner of your vision, a whisper brushing the shell of your ear when you tucked the children into bed. Sometimes you swore the mirror in the hallway showed a tall figure behind you, holding something gleaming.
The children never mentioned him. But you knew. Someone was in that house.
----
It wasn’t until one storm-laden evening that he revealed himself.
The children were asleep, the house wrapped in silence except for the wind clawing at the windows. You were folding laundry in the sitting room when the air shifted—thick and suffocating, as if someone had stolen all the oxygen from your lungs.
“Little dove.”
The voice was gravel dragged across stone. You turned, heart hammering, and there he stood.
Tall. Broad shoulders. His face shadowed in the dim light, but the glint of the axe in his hands was unmistakable. His eyes… God, his eyes burned with something primal. Hunger, but not for food.
“Y-you’re not real,” you whispered, clutching a child’s blanket to your chest like it could ward him off.
Abner stepped forward, the axe resting against his shoulder. “I am more real than anything in this house. They called me here. Their fear… it sings.” His gaze slid down to you, lingering in a way that made heat crawl beneath your skin. “But you—” He tilted his head. “You’re different.”
Your breath caught. You should have run, screamed, prayed—but your legs rooted to the floor as his presence filled the room.
“Why me?” The question trembled off your lips.
“Because you feel it,” he said simply, stalking closer. “The darkness. The truth in the walls. You’ve seen me… even when you tried not to.” He leaned down, voice hot against your ear. “And you are not afraid enough to turn away.”
You shivered when his hand—ice-cold, calloused—brushed your cheek. Every instinct told you to recoil, but something in his touch pulled you in. Dangerous. Wrong. Yet intimate in a way no living man had ever touched you.
“You protect the little ones,” Abner murmured. “That’s why I won’t hurt them. But you…” His thumb dragged across your bottom lip, slow, deliberate. “You belong to me.”
Your heart stuttered, torn between terror and a dark pull you couldn’t name. The house creaked around you, the storm rattled the windows, but in that moment it was only you and him—the axeman who should have been nothing but a ghost story.
You whispered, barely audible: “What happens if I don’t belong to you?”
His grin was sharp, feral. “Then I’ll make you.”
----
That night, you lay awake in your small bedroom, staring at the ceiling as shadows shifted unnaturally across the walls. You could feel him—watching, waiting, claiming. And though fear clawed at your chest, something else pulsed beneath it.
A forbidden fascination.
You told yourself you’d quit tomorrow, leave the Smurl house behind. But you already knew it was too late.
Because the axeman didn’t just haunt the house.
He haunted you.
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