Hastum
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2. Preparations for the real deal
🕑 Added 2025-08-29 21:10:04 +0000 UTC“Real haunting?” Now, that was interesting. The last time I actually got to use some magic was three months ago against a barely solidified spirit. “You sure?”
“Do you even have to ask?” came a self-assured voice from the other side.
“Okay, okay, wait. Don’t tell me. Let me guess.” I was giddy like a child before Christmas now. “A family moved to an old, weirdly cheap house, and it turned out that the house was haunted.“
“Nope.” I could hear the amusement in the voice.
“Okay. A group of college kids tried summoning ghosts and unknowingly used an actual medium.” That one actually happened around two years ago.
“Not even close.”
“Right. Some weird cult got their hands on a real Grimoire and screwed up a ritual.” A Grimoire would be exciting.
But the voice on the other end just chuckled and answered, “Colder.”
Pity, ancient books were always interesting, “But there was a ritual?”
“No ritual.”
“Hmmm,” I needed a moment to think this time. “An old local legend turned out to be true, and someone who didn’t know that they had magic in them did something wrong.”
“Oh wow, that was a long shot. Are you giving up?” I could tell by the voice that my broker was having a bit too much fun, so it was something I would not guess easily.
“Not that easily. Was there an artifact involved?” I was always hoping for a source of haunting I could use after the job was done.
“No artifact.”
“Grimoire.”
“You already tried that one.”
“Does the family have some hidden lineage?” Lineage was a really long shot. It was almost impossible for any bloodline to manifest in the world after the mana veins were shattered. But worth a shot.
“No special bloodlines.”
“Something that dates back at least a thousand years is somewhere in this story. But it is not a Grimoire and not… ” I started to wonder out loud, what could it b-
“Nope, nothing ancient.”
My brain came to a screeching halt. “Wait… wait, wait, that doesn't make any sense.” Was he pulling my leg all along? “We are aware of the same world history, right? Or did you start to buy into the Vatican’s cover-up? Any mana that was present after the war had already dissipated. So if there is nothing that dates back to when it was still around, and the family doesn't have any mages or special bloodline, then this is not a real haunting.” My excitement quickly turned into disappointment. “Okay, tell me this wasn’t some weird prank?”
“We checked the family, nothing special. The house is also nothing special. We searched for artifacts and found nothing. No classic sources of hauntings. No runaway cryptid or mage in the vicinity. But…” He ended with suspense.
God in the Abyss, my broker was sometimes annoying. “Oh, drop the act and tell me.”
“Buuuut.”
Should I get a new partner? This one was starting to piss me off.
“The woman describes it as such.” He finally continued. “Two weeks ago, she killed a home invader. He was some loser from the internet. You know, the ‘I'm a nice guy, so I will stalk you relentlessly’ kind. But she gave him a chance, and as you can imagine, things didn’t work out. And before you ask, nothing special about the guy either, maybe except for his internet history.”
“I can imagine.”
“Anyway, he turns into a stalker and finally gets the bright idea to declare his love by breaking in during the middle of the night. And she puts a couple of bullets in him in the end. And then it starts. Bad dreams, feeling of presence, sounds in the night, things misplaced when she returns home.”
I was still missing the reason for the excitement about the whole case. I needed an explanation. “Okay, while it sounds like a haunting, you know those can be easily explained by the fact that she killed someone two weeks ago, and her moral compass is acting up?”
“Yes, I know that not everyone is the heartless killing machine you are.”
“Thanks,” I said flatly.
“You’re welcome,” Came a cheerful response. “Anyway, we thought the same until she added a new detail. Every night after the sun goes down, she can smell the odor of burning hair.”
“Oh,” That changed things.
“Yeah, ‘oh’ indeed. Also, in the dreams, the man speaks to her in some strange language. The dreams are so vivid that she could cite some of the things. The language is the Black Speech.” He ended with a dramatic tone.
“Are you sure?” I was back to excitement.
“Yes, from what we can translate from the woman's phonetic retelling, it should be something along the lines of ‘you shall be mine in the other life’ spoken again and again.”
Unlike all the rest, that part sounded like real haunting, a very strong one at that.
“Got you interested?”
“Very, three thousand dollars plus the standard amount based on the rank of the spirit. Paid in gold obols, obviously.”
“Deal.”
The deal was struck, so my broker hung up.
Now, I was excited to the limit. Not only a haunting, but one without any explanation. I had no idea what to expect, but there was a chance for a real challenge. Not just slugging it out with barely-solidified ghosts with the terrifying ability to move some chairs and moan at night. No, this time it might be a proper fight.
I wanted to go to sleep and start the preparations first thing in the morning, but after a while, it became obvious that I would not be getting any sleep anytime soon. So, like an excited schoolboy before a school trip, I decided to prepare all of the necessary gear.
I put on some clothes and made my way to my rustbucket of a car. With the roads empty in the middle of the night, it took me barely 20 minutes to get to the old warehouse complex where my family's wealth was kept.
I nodded to the 24-hour security guard and made my way inside the complex.
After entering my storage unit, I patted the two gargoyles on their heads like large dogs. They were big, black, ugly, stone things that looked like old Halloween decorations. Decorations that would come alive and rip apart any trespasser just to feed on what remained of the body. They were over a thousand years old and some of my favorite possessions.
The rest of the unit looked like something between an ancient library and a mad scientist's laboratory. Books in piles on old cabinets. Coffers locked with weird locks without keyholes. And old statues depicting things that had no business being depicted in three-dimensional geometry, seeming to be in a constant state of battle against rules binding them to our Euclidean space.
There was a lot. Most of my family's treasures were lost to time during the age of the Inquisition, but the most essential things were here, protected by enchantments and gargoyles.
It couldn’t go on forever, but a couple of hundred years more shouldn’t be an issue.
I sat by the only not cursed-looking object in the room, an old heavy desk used for work, and started on my tasks.
What should I take?
It should be a spirit. The burned hair suggests apparition, and black speech suggests, at least, partial intelligence. So, I should prepare something for a head-on battle against a relatively smart opponent.
Making a quick mental list of things needed, I started on the preparations. I would need rune paint for a seal on the house and some basic potions for safety to deal with any minor wounds I might sustain.
So, first, alchemy. I mixed reagents in a laboratory set that could have come straight from a movie set. Once the elements for the seal and the essential potions were done, the next part was the attack.
My dagger, staff, and my own magic should be enough for offense normally, but I couldn't be too sure, especially with the enigmatic nature of the haunting. So, after some hesitation, I decided to start on one more concoction.
I stretched my back walking to one of the shelves and took a bottle filled with holy water. The original, of course, not the bullshit they use in churches these days. But normal holy water was not enough. Now would be the hard part. After a bit of searching in the mess of my family’s belongings, I finally located the right coffer.
I put my finger on the rune-lock and whispered the correct phrase to open the thing. Inside were a couple of white bones that looked like they could fetch some money as haunted house decorations. If any specialist looked at any of them, they would probably say that it was the wing bone of some huge bird, if not for the weird hole in the middle that looked suspiciously like an eye socket.
Now for the hard part. Taking a special carving knife, I pushed some of my magic into the blade, and previously hidden runes lit up like Christmas lights. Straining my muscles, I spent the next hour trying to scrape enough powder from the bone, feeling my magic flow out of me with every pass over the hard material.
How anyone could have killed the bone’s owner was beyond me.
After getting enough powder, I put the bone back in its place and mixed the fruit of my work with the holy water. Not many spirits should be able to live through coming into contact with that.
With that, my basic preparations were done.
The last part was surprisingly tiring. I wanted to rest a bit before returning home, but the feeling of emptiness quickly made itself known. It was like a pressure difference that desperately wants to be corrected, but, for some reason, can’t. A feeling of something missing from you that you want back but can't locate. The nasty outcome of using magic in a world lacking any natural mana.
With a heavy sigh, I opened one of the most protected chests in the room. It was filled to around half with blue crystals, segregated by size into compartments inside the coffer. Some of the crystals were the size of a pebble, others a bit larger than my fist. They were all strangely regular, like they were cut by a professional, even though all were natural.
I took out one of the pebble-sized ones. Now with a source of mana, I instinctively drew the energy into myself, slowly feeling the sucking sensation go away.
That feeling of emptiness was the cause of many mental illnesses. Untrained people with potential for magic used their mana in a fit of rage or sorrow just to spend the rest of their lives thinking they're missing something. That they can’t be happy.
Thank the Abyss, I had the crystals.
With everything prepared, I went back to the apartment to rest. Before going to bed, I confirmed that my broker sent me details about the meeting with the client. It was supposed to be tomorrow. And then, it would hopefully be go time.
The next morning, after finally winning the battle with sleep, I woke up with the exorcism on my mind so much that I almost forgot it was a working day, and I still had to go to college.
The exorcist gig was nice, but I needed a job in the future. With any hauntings and mana sources becoming more scarce every year, a normal job was a nice thing to have. A safe thing.
I studied two courses. Archaeology, as there was always a chance of coming across some ruin dating back to the age of myth, and the second one online, physics. My father decided that one, to have something logical, something that describes the world in specific terms, to anchor the mind when delving into things that can’t be truly understood or perceived.
The archaeology course was a bit boring for me. Most of the events we studied were Vatican cover-ups or history told to mortals so they would stop asking questions. Also, I didn't have many friends to talk to in order to pass the time, considering that the eerie feeling I gave out was still present even with my eyes covered. Most warlocks that dealt with demons were unnerving, and I had a deal with something much darker than a demon, so people usually stayed clear of me.
I was not one for human companionship, but sometimes, it would be nice to talk about anything to pass the time.
Sadly, not all of them ignored me.
“Ayyyyy the exorcist. Fought any ghosts recently?” The college jock straight from the pages of any school drama. Ever since someone’s grandmother became my client and showed the exorcism photos on her phone to one of my group mates, he just wouldn’t fuck off. If not for the fact that it would be spending a finite resource that was magic, I would probably have put a curse on him long ago.
I responded without turning around to look at him. “The spirit of your mother, yesterday in my bedroom.”
I wish I could just fight the ghost already.
