Sanctified by Uncanny Kingdom

Author:Uncanny Kingdom [Kingdom, Uncanny]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Uncanny Kingdom
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

19

For my second mission I’d been tasked with a single, bite-sized undertaking: to go eyeball-to-eyeball with a ghost and send it back to wherever it is that ghosts come from.

Viz was light on the details, and Gen certainly wasn’t about to dazzle me with any science, which was probably for the best, all things considered. So long as I was only confronting the ghost to send it packing, the thumbnail version would do just fine.

I focused on the task at hand as we made our way to the site of the haunting. I had to get it right this time. Had to prove that I was cut out for this job, to myself as much as anyone else.

‘Let’s see if you fare any better in the spectral world,’ huffed Gendith, accompanying me for a second time.

The mission didn’t take us far. As a matter of fact, it didn’t even take us outside of the industrial park where the gas tower stood. After a short walk, we came to a halt at the padlocked entrance of an old circuit boards factory. A chill wind whistled through its crumbling facade, and moonlight chromed the building’s battered edges. It looked like exactly the kind of place a Scooby-Doo monster would lurk.

‘It happened a couple of decades back,’ Gen explained. ‘A factory worker fell into one of the acid vats they use for copper plating. They say the fumes overwhelmed him and he lost his footing.’

Yikes, I thought. It’d take more than an appointed first-aider to square that circle.

‘The company called it an accident,’ Gen went on, ‘and the courts agreed. Evidently the victim felt differently, as he keeps manifesting here on the anniversary of his death.’

‘And what does he do when he shows up?’ I asked.

‘So far, nothing. For twenty-one years, the revenant has materialised on this site, but every time he has, we’ve put him out of commission.’

‘Revenant?’

‘A malevolent phantom. Otherwise known as returners, ferals or wraiths.’

I thought back to my performance with the vampires in the alley. ‘And what happens if the revenant isn’t, like, put out of commission?’

Gen shrugged. ‘Best guess: it will make a bid for freedom, mindlessly terrorise the area, and maybe kill a local or two.’

‘I see,’ I said, letting out a scared little laugh. ‘So what can I do? Kill it?’

‘Oh, it can’t be killed.’

‘Right. Good. So what is it we’re doing exactly?’ I asked.

‘We’re banishing it.’

‘Uh huh. And I suppose there’s a difference between the two?’

Gen sighed and explained it to me like I was an American politician. ‘We can’t kill that which is already dead. All we can do is keep driving it away when it manifests.’

‘So… kind of like a game of whack-a-mole?’

Gen sighed again. It was really getting on my nerves. ‘Look, when you see the ghost just stick it with the pointy end of that dagger, okay?’

And with that, she reached out, grabbed the padlocked chain securing the warehouse door, and ripped it free with her bare hands.

The space beyond was pitch black.

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