Elizabeth Rossi (11) | STAFF REPORTER
Town population: 6,918.
Non-human population: Unknown.
Rowan adjusted the wire frames atop his nose bridge, pencil flicking to and fro between his fingers within the other hand as he stared down at the newly scribbled statement front and center of his journal. He pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth, feeling the gap between as he sunk further into thought. The diner was humming with the clattering of dishes and utensils scrapping the contents off of them, a sound that he didn’t mind but Kirsty seemed to feel differently. The dark-haired girl’s lips were pulled down, brows drawn together in a scowl that seemed to be permanent as she glared at nothing in particular. Her hands were fidgeting with one of the many braids trailing over her shoulder as a few had come undone from their earlier hunt. Even Mila was uncharacteristically quiet considering the ecstatic thrum she would normally have about her, half asleep against the pane of the window. The blonde’s ringlets were partially uncurled but still, somehow, retained enough shape to practically cushion her lolled head. She had felt sick from the start of the evening up until now, nauseous and unwilling to nurse any drinks or food. Mila had told them that the house they’d visited reeked so profusely it hurt her head but the others hadn’t smelled anything.
The group in general looked exhausted with their heads on the table and food hardly even pecked at, bodies fatigued and sore. Rowan could feel a bruise of his own swelling over the length of his calf from when the poltergeist had began wrecking the kitchen, a kettle having unfortunately found its way across the room to him. Yet, despite how they all felt and always did feel after a hunt, none of them would trade it for the world.
Rowan was the first to purge their silence with his head tilting back onto the cushion of the booth chair, voice no more than a mumble as if he were speaking to himself more than the others, “that should’ve been an easy job. It was supposed to be one spirit, not three.”
“We’ll just upcharge. Meyers should’ve given us some kind of warning.” Finally looking away from the clothed table but glare still ever present on her face, the brunette’s gaze was now trained on the boy sitting across from her. She’d finished braiding and her hands had quickly busied themselves in breaking off some of her waffle for the little rat in her bag.
“That’s not the point, Kirsty. We weren’t prepared and something could have gone wrong and there shouldn’t be this many ghosts just showing up out of nowhere. It’s like there’s a sudden population of them everywhere we go instead of just one or two.”
Mila interjected but her body was still slouched along the window’s frame, tone light, “you don’t like that you don’t know why it’s happening, the increase that is. Not to mention the actual monsters showing up like that werewolf last weekend in Ms. Langford’s garden.”
There’s a collective wince at the memory, too close of a call when the curly-haired blonde had nearly been bitten were it not for her own quick thinking, shoving several of her silver bracelets down the creature’s throat. The boy runs a bandaged hand through his unkempt hair before rubbing his eyes without bothering to move the perch of his glasses, muttering, “don’t even get me started.” Surprising to none, there were little ways, let alone conventional ones for a bunch of runaway orphans to support themselves. They needed these gigs but they also weren’t high rate professional hunters and past the obvious safety risks was the legal concern; tracking down, exorcizing, and removing the supernatural without a permit or license was beyond illicit after ethical laws were passed.
It paid really well however because of it. Ever since basement-inhabiting horrors reared their heads, everyone in their neighborhood needed some sort of help, whether it was with a bodily possession or haunted furniture piece, not everyone was willing to pay an arm and a leg for expert services. That was the group’s bread and butter. They all knew how to deal with the typical ghoulish encounters and were will equipped for it considering Rowan’s ease with his ironclad bat, Kirsty’s homemade gadgetry ranging from Walkman EMFs to versatile lockpickers, and Mila’s inherent clairvoyant nature offering insight where library databases couldn’t. Dealing with vampires, hellhounds, and trolls beneath the docks of lakes however? They had no clue how to deal with those. It’s why they’d reluctantly made an alliance with one, a rogue who similarly to them, was a runaway; it helped that more ironically, she had hematemesis. Currently, she was out with Kirsty’s older brother, talking to the homeowner they’d just assisted.
The younger sibling spoke up as her pet rat moved to nestle in the curve of her neck and shoulder, interrupting Rowan’s thoughts, “then what’re you suggesting we do? It’s not like this is gonna stop any time soon.”
Vida interrupted them as she approached their table with a bag over her shoulder, headphones powered off but placed over her ears as to not draw attention to their unmistakably vampiric points. She’s already slipping onto the seat with Kirsty, the only person who she really felt comfortable with as her pointed nails rummaged through the bag now on her lap. “Lain is taking the van to get gas and some stuff I asked him to buy but he’ll be here in a bit and more importantly, I need you guys to see this.”
Her pallid fingers resurface cradling a filthy pouch, burlap muddied and fastened together by a fraying string. There’s an usually serious furrow between the furrow of her brows given how soft spoken and unreadable the vampire often was. “This is bad. I don’t know who in the Hells you managed to rile up but Lain is on his way to find a priest, burning sage, and obsidian jewellery.” Her voice even seems to have a tremor of nerves to it as she clutches the dingy bag, revealing, “this is a hex bag. Nasty stuff that you don’t mess around with. No one uses these without the intention of badly messing their victim up.”
Everyone sat up with a puzzled and more than worried look but Mila has fully recoiled with her hand over her math, paling. She looks like she’s going to retch, hardly able to even bite out her words, “what the hell is in that stupid bag? God, it reeks of rotten eggs but a million times worse!”
Rowan speaks up as her eyes flicker over the group with a dawning realization. “You found the bag in Meyers’ home, didn’t you?” he turns to the nauseous blonde continuing to string together the pieces. “That’s why you felt so sick when we drove in; you sensed it, the witchcraft.”
Mila looks less than enthused, grumbling before Vida’s tongue presses to the ends of her fangs, a nervous habit of hers as she finishes his thought. “That job? The three ghosts instead of one? It wasn’t a coincidence. Someone put this hex bag there to reel in the extra spirits. This thing literally has bones, chicken feet, and spider eggs in it; none of which are easy to come by so whoever planted it, is seriously out to get you.”
Kirsty cuts in now with a small nudge to the vampire’s side, “but why would anyone have it out for us of all people?”
The group shares a collective moment of uncertainty, afraid to consider the worrisome possibility. This was running deeper than just a few ghost hunting gigs and they were way over their head but there wasn’t a way out. It was time to bury what they had uprooted.
