Muhammad Shafiq Mohd Nizam
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(Free) 10th- Chapter 4: Spirit.
🕑 Added 2025-08-17 09:29:36 +0000 UTC[Owen POV]
As Jessica opened the door, I immediately sensed something was off. A subtle shift in the air—like static clinging to your skin before a lightning strike.
Her eyes shimmered unnaturally. It reminded me of that red glow from old flash photos—unnatural and misplaced.
“Owen. You’re here,” she said softly, smiling too wide. It raised goosebumps on my neck. Her fingers wrapped around my wrist, pulling me inside.
“My husband’s been wanting to meet you,” she added.
“Does he?” I muttered, unable to stop the sarcasm. But she didn’t seem to hear it. Instead of the living room, she led me up the staircase toward the second floor.
We entered the den—a windowless, wood-paneled room that smelled like a frat house. The window had been boarded shut with splintered wood. But no one commented on it.
Lenny Sloane sat on a worn recliner. Almost bald, beer gut sagging, blotchy skin. A stained white tank top clung to his hairy chest and shoulders. He wore only boxers. Next to him, curled almost too intimately, was another man.
The guest was scruffy—unkempt beard, thick glasses, acne scars and fresh spots dotting his face. He looked like someone who hadn’t slept well in years.
They were holding hands.
Not casually, but deliberately—like lovers, or conspirators. Fingers interlocked. Eyes locked, too, with that same crimson gleam I’d seen in Jessica. An eerie glow.
“I’d taken out a second mortgage on my house to fund it,” the scruffy man was saying, his voice slow and lethargic.
Lenny nodded, gaze still fixed on him. Their expressions were vacant, yet too focused—like puppets pretending intimacy.
Then Lenny looked at me.
“Oh, you must be the genius artist Jessica hasn't stopped raving about,” he said brightly—too brightly. Like a voice recording played slightly off pitch.
His smile was wide. His eyes didn’t blink.
I was about to respond—when I noticed something else.
A hand—small, porcelain white, unnaturally delicate—resting on the scruffy man’s shoulder.
It moved like a real hand.
Its fingers were too long. The skin had a glossy glaze, like smooth ceramic. Hairline cracks traced across the wrist, like fractures in fine china. It looked like it belonged to a doll—not a person.
“Yeah, that’s me. And you must be Lenny Sloane, right?” I said, shaking hands with—well, I guess he was my uncle-in-law.
“Yep! That’s me!” he replied, still smiling too hard. Then he pulled a contract from a briefcase. “I’ve written it down. You can just sign it.”
The scruffy man suddenly protested. “What? Lenny, are you really going through with this? I told you the contract is predatory—to you!”
Lenny ignored him and turned back to me. “Owen, this is George Burnett. You might not know him, but he used to be a big-time Hollywood director!”
“I see.” I shook George’s hand. He frowned, still focused on Lenny. “Let me get my lawyer to look it over.”
“You don’t have lawyers. You don’t have any money to pay them, remember?” Lenny said flatly.
I sighed. “Don’t worry. I’m not here for the contract.”
All three of them stared in confusion.
“I’m here for you, Mr. Burnett,” I said coldly.
George looked annoyed. “What do you want from me?”
“I just have a few questions. Please answer honestly. Have you ever participated in a ritual before? Maybe… summoned something to bless your films?”
He slammed the coffee table. “ARE YOU WITH THEM?! I TOLD YOU—I’M NOT GOING TO BE ONE OF YOU!”
“I’m not whoever you think I am. So I guess… you haven’t done it?”
“NEVER!” he shouted.
Jessica flinched and quickly stepped in to calm him. “George. Owen’s just being curious, that’s all. Keep your anger in check.”
“Jess—sorry.” He became oddly docile in front of her. They held hands, too. Intimately.
I raised an eyebrow. Hmm? Is my aunt in a throuple? But something felt off. It didn’t seem… genuine.
“Mr. Burnett, are you angry a lot?” I asked.
“Well, he did get a court order to attend anger management after assaulting someone—” Lenny started, before Jessica slapped his arm.
“I see. And do you always feel this way? Like there’s a constant, boiling rage inside you?”
Jessica answered before George could. “No! George used to be really kind! It’s just the stress from work, that’s all.”
George blinked slowly. “Kid… why are you so interested in me?”
I paused. “Because, Mr. Burnett. You’re killing Jessica and Lenny.”
The room went silent.
George’s eyes widened. “What did you just say?”
I took out a talisman and tossed it toward the trio. It burst into flames midair and vanished.
“Look around, Mr. Burnett. Look closely at both of them.”
“What—” His senses distorted, then cleared. And suddenly… he saw them for what they truly were.
Their bodies were covered in pus. Gaunt. Decayed. Blackened hands, claw-like nails. The scent of rot clung to them like a second skin.
George recoiled, slapping their hands away as he stumbled toward the wall. “What—what have you done!?”
“I’ve done nothing. I just lifted the veil. Briefly. Mr. Burnett, I have a theory. Maybe you can tell me if I’m right.”
“You haven’t participated in any satanic rituals… but you know people who have. Lenny said you were once a big name, but suddenly your creativity dried up. Opportunities vanished. No one would fund your work. Tell me—when did this all start?”
“Huh? I… I don’t know. Maybe ten years ago?”
I nodded. “You have remarkable innate resistance, Mr. Burnett. It’s amazing you lasted that long with that thing latched onto you.”
“Thing—what thing—AHHH!”
He finally saw the hand on his shoulder and screamed.
“You didn’t summon it, Mr. Burnett. But you were the target of someone else's ritual. That thing is a spirit messenger. It latches onto people and drains—well, whatever it was the conjurer bartered for. Fame, talent, luck.”
I flicked a talisman at the hand.
The moment it hit, the thing screeched, launching itself at me, clawed porcelain fingers aiming for my neck.
“And these two?” I added, dodging as I drew my dagger—etched with runes along its spine. “They’re infected by proximity. Your friends, your lifelines. That’s how it spreads.”
I slashed at the hand—clang. The blade couldn’t cut it, but the impact launched it across the room, shattering a lamp.
“Shit. It’s strong.”
I turned to Burnett. “If you want to survive, listen carefully. Get them to the living room. Now.”
He hesitated. “Isn’t it dead now—?”
But through the boarded window came a blur.
A humanoid figure, its face pale and glassy. Porcelain skin. Long black hair.
It stood on the window sill, silent, staring at me with lifeless, pit-deep eyes.
Then it lunged.
I bent backward, narrowly avoiding the tackle—it would’ve killed me if it made contact.
“GO!” I shouted.
Burnett yanked Jessica and Lenny out of their trance and dragged them down the stairs.
I held off the doll with my dagger—barely. Its strength was absurd, inhuman. Every clash with the dagger produced bright sparks.
I didn’t fight back. I waited. The doll was confused as to why she couldn’t touch me.
I was timing it.
The moment I heard Burnett reach the living room—I jumped.
I landed hard, rolling over the couch. The porcelain doll paused—confused—then followed.
Just as it stepped into the room, the trap activated.
The four talisman corners flared crimson, etching a burning seal across the floor—an invisible prison. The doll froze mid-motion. It twitched, jerked, then locked in place like a glitching puppet.
The ward had caught it. I placed the trap yesterday.
Lenny and Jessica dropped to their knees. George collapsed beside them, breathing hard.
I pulled out the bamboo box—wrapped in red string, reinforced with seals and iron nails. I unrolled a sheet of prepared talismans, inked in blood and wormwood.
Then I began the chant.
“Exaudi me, Domine, exaudi vocem meam…”
[Hear me, O Lord, hear my voice…]
The doll started shrieking. Its glassy limbs twitched erratically.
“Ligare spiritum per voluntatem meam…”
[Bind the spirit by my will…]
“Signa in nomine lucis…”
[Mark it in the name of light…]
“Claude hostem meum.”
[Bind my enemy.]
The floor glowed white, symbols pulsing beneath the spirit like burning roots. I slapped the final talisman onto the lid of the box. It caught flame—green-blue—and curled into ash.
Then the doll began to crumble.
First the feet. Then the joints. Then the face—slowly turning to powder. Not breaking—dissolving. Its essence twisted into a spiral of ash and red light, shooting into the bamboo box with a piercing scream.
WHUMP.
The lid slammed shut on its own. The string coiled tighter. The seals pulsed once—then faded to black.
Silence.
Only the labored breathing of the three people on the floor remained.
I held the box in both hands and whispered, “It’s in.”
George stared at it in disbelief. “You… sealed it.”
Then came the purge.
All three suddenly clutched their stomachs and began vomiting violently—thick, black bile laced with streaks of crimson. I pinched my nose in disgust.
“Don’t hold it in,” I said firmly, preparing the rest of my tools. “Let it out. All of it. That rot isn’t part of you anymore.”
The stench hit like a wall. The bile sizzled against the floor like acid, releasing a stench of copper, decay, and sulfur.
Jessica screamed mid-vomit. Lenny dry-heaved, his eyes bloodshot and watering. George groaned through clenched teeth, bile trailing down his chin.
But it had to come out. That was the price of cleansing.
“This isn’t over,” I warned. “That was just the messenger. If the contract demon shows up next, we can’t be here.”
“Where—what—what should we do?” Jessica asked, voice shaking. But she didn’t hesitate—she was placing her trust in me completely.
“A hotel. A motel. Or maybe another city. Somewhere with no spiritual imprint. No traces of you for him to follow.”
I placed a fresh talisman in the center of the living room. “If he comes, this’ll ignite and alert me. If it doesn’t, then you’re safe. Chances are he’ll go after the conjurer instead.”
We moved quickly. No cars. Just a cab. On the way, we stopped at a gas station to buy new clothes and burn the old ones in a trash barrel behind the store.
After switching taxis, we checked into a motel to scrub ourselves down—each of us using my tracing erasure compound: a pungent blend of sulfur, crushed herbs, and powdered minerals. It burned the skin a little, but it worked.
Only once we were sure we hadn’t brought any lingering traces from the house did we finally move to a proper hotel.
Anything connected to that house had been left behind—except for my satchel, and the sealed box inside it.
…
The hotel room still smelled like sulfur, but the three adults sitting across from me looked like they’d just come back from a Sunday brunch.
Jessica was sipping chamomile tea like she hadn’t nearly been devoured by a transdimensional parasite.
Lenny was adjusting the audio levels on his portable recorder, muttering about "ambient tone loss" like that was the real problem. He was recording today’s incident in detail for future references.
And George Burnett—director, has-been, haunted man in ironic sunglasses—was flipping through the room service menu like he could still afford eggs Benedict.
I stared at them from the edge of the bed, swaddled in a hoodie two sizes too big for me, debating if I was the weak one here.
Two months. That’s how long it took me to stop hearing whispers in dead languages after my first demon encounter.
Two months of cold sweats, existential dread, and writing prayers just to feel real again.
These three? They got back up to their feet just a few hours afterward.
I asked them how, and they told me it was because they watched many horror movies before. I wanted to hit each one of them with my poison darts.
“Owen. Can I get hotel service? I’m starving,” George said, already shaving off his beard, which made him look ten years younger.
I scowled and said, “Don’t you think I’ve done enough? I paid for the hotel, the clothes, the taxis…”
None of them had the rationale to bring money during our escape. I had to foot all of the bills. I wanted a job, but I’d already wasted around $1,500 tonight before I even signed the contract.
“Pleaaase,” Jessica begged.
I sighed and let them order the food. They promised to pay me back after this was all over.
George Burnett.
In the '80s, he was the guy film students wrote essays about.
In 1982, he dropped Whispering Shadows, this minimalist noir with existential dread soaked into every frame. It won a Spirit Award and was declared “the voice of a generation” by people who chain-smoked indoors for aesthetic reasons.
Then in ’84, he directed Silent Liberation. Holocaust drama, muted protagonist, something about Morse code and trauma and piano keys. It shouldn’t have worked.
It should have been pretentious garbage. But somehow, it landed. $120 million at the box office. Oscar nominated Best Director. Overnight, he became Hollywood’s Next S-tier Visionary.
And then?
He disappeared.
Well—his talent did.
By ’86, he couldn’t string a screenplay together. Studios often dropped him mid-production, claiming he was butchering their films.
Studios ghosted him. Execs stopped returning his calls. Someone joked he’d been cursed by Orson Welles’ ghost.
They weren’t entirely wrong.
Same with Jessica and Lenny.
All three of them were parasitized by spiritual messengers—leeches from another plane. Talented creatives with bright futures, drained like juice boxes.
Jessica used to be a hot California girl. She even posed for a swimsuit magazine in her twenties.
Lenny had a head full of hair and used to hit the gym regularly. Both of them finally realized what they’d turned into.
George was a good looking director that even dated multiple actresses before. All three of them had suffered greatly from the incident.
“When can we go back home?” Jessica asked.
“Maybe after two or three months,” I replied casually.
All of them widened their eyes in shock and disbelief.
“Why? Why do we need so long?” Lenny asked urgently. “All of my work is in there.”
I replied flatly, “You can go and pick them up. Go in after two or three days, but don’t stay there. The demonic energy needs time to dissipate.”
I didn’t explain much else and went to check on the bamboo box seal.
George turned on the TV in the room. Lenny and Jessica joined him.
“What are you going to do with that?” George asked, jilting toward the bamboo box.
I shrugged and replied curtly, “I’ll handle it.”
If the spirit messenger had any kind of core inside it, that would be great for me. But if it didn’t, I’d just destroy it.
Spirit messengers were ordinary spirits turned into demonic lackeys—either through contracts or just plain cruelty.
No matter how they were turned, they couldn’t return to their original state anymore. It would be better to just destroy them.
George flipped on the TV, probably hoping to catch a late-night rerun of something meaningless. Instead, he landed us straight into chaos.
“We interrupt this program for breaking news—” the anchor’s voice cut in, tense and rehearsed.
The screen changed to a shaky helicopter shot of a mansion in Bel Air, swarming with red and blue lights.
“—A prominent Hollywood director has been found dead at a private party just an hour ago. Authorities are still working to confirm details, but preliminary reports suggest that the victim—identified as Victor Camden—died on-site under... disturbing circumstances.”
George blinked. “Victor? I know that guy.”
I didn’t reply. My attention was fixed on the TV.
“Eyewitnesses claim Camden was dancing when he suddenly collapsed. According to one guest, ‘It was like something snapped. He just dropped. His neck… it bent the wrong way.’”
Jessica gasped. “Victor… He’s your friend… isn’t he, George?” She turned to him.
George let out a beleaguered sigh.
“They’re starting,” I muttered. “The backlash is coming. The contract is absolute, but they can destroy it by killing the conjurer. That’s how a demon used a loophole in the agreement.”
Jessica looked at me. “What?”
Before I could answer, the screen changed again—“This just in—another death confirmed.”
The anchor’s voice was tighter now, a little shaken.
“A second victim, screenwriter Elliot Tseng, was found dead in his apartment minutes ago. Similar cause of death: severe cervical trauma. LAPD has declined to comment on possible connections to the Camden incident. Both of them were working closely together for the upcoming and highly anticipated Disney Film–”
Lenny whispered, “Two?”
Then a third alert came on.
“Developing story: a high-ranking executive at Gold Bell Pictures was found dead in his home office in what investigators are calling a ‘bizarre spinal rupture.’”
Jessica’s hands were trembling. George slowly put down the room service menu.
Three.
That was enough.
By the time the fourth death was confirmed—barely fifteen minutes later—the broadcast cut back to the anchor mid-sentence, then suddenly faded to black.
The screen came back to a generic studio feed.
“Due to the sensitive nature of ongoing investigations, this segment has been temporarily suspended.”
Classic. Government intervention. That was fast.
Censorship didn’t usually move this quickly unless it was alien contact, nuclear threats, or—you know—mass supernatural assassinations targeting the entertainment elite.
George spoke first. “Owen…”
I didn’t answer. Just stared at the box.
The spirit messenger inside it was the contract itself. The demons must have only had this one left—no reserves, no second wave.
If it were a strong demon, it would’ve just sent another spirit. But this?
This meant desperation.
It’s kill or be killed now—for them and the contractors.
There was thick air inside the room. No one uttered anything for a while.
Suddenly, the front doorbell rang. Everyone jumped from their chairs, faces turning ashen pale.
“The demon—he’s here—”
Before George could finish, I interjected, “It’s food service. You ordered the food, remember?”
Comments
KingSpy25i .
This is getting real good! 😳 Thank you for the great chapter 🙏
