Robert’s Monday night exorcism
Date: 2025-07-07 01:15
(Robert’s Monday night exorcism)
[Mon Jul 7 2025]
In empty shop
It is about 60F(15C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At Maple and Sidney/span>/spanRobert Martin’s flashlight beam cuts through the darkness of the empty shop on Maple Street, illuminating dust motes that dance in the still air. The construction crew finished their work hours ago, leaving behind the scent of fresh paint and sawdust. His security rounds have been routine for weeks, but tonight something feels different. The temperature gauge on his belt reads 45 degrees–fifteen degrees colder than it should be.
A soft metallic chiming echoes from the back corner of the shop, near where the workers have been renovating the old storage area. Robert’s breath mists slightly as he approaches, his footsteps echoing on the bare concrete floor. There, sitting on a makeshift plywood table among scattered tools and paint cans, lies a tarnished silver locket. The chain pools around it in an impossible spiral, catching his flashlight beam and throwing strange shadows on the freshly painted walls.
The locket wasn’t there during his last round two hours ago. Robert is certain of that. As he draws closer, the intricate Celtic knotwork on its surface seems to shift and writhe in his peripheral vision, and for just a moment, he could swear he sees tiny faces pressed against the silver, mouths open in silent screams.
His radio crackles with static, and the digital display flickers between the current time–1:14 AM–and a date from fifteen years ago: July 7th, 2009. The same date his younger brother called asking for help, the call Robert ignored because he was too busy with work.
Robert sweeps his way into the innocous, empty store, drawing in a deep breath and exhaling slowly as booted feet thumping across. “More Celtic things, huh.” He murmurs, his flashlight strapped to his wrist moving casually as he sweeps across with surprisingly familiarity with the occult. “I suppose this is the place for it.” Eyes behind reflective sunglasses marked with the sigil of the Last Vigil as his lightweight equipment clicks and clacks gently. He taps at his earpiece a few times as it buzzes, re-tuning it and turning the sound down.
He checks the digital details versus the details of his kinetic, mechanical watch on his wrist. And then he realizes the time, a grimace crossing his features. “I had cooking that needing doing. Busy kitchens…”
He studies the silver with a scowl, already in a foul mood and debating between smashing it to pieces. But something in him holds back.
14 AM, but the radio display now flickers between multiple dates from his past, cycling through moments with increasing urgency.
The temperature drops another five degrees, and Robert’s breath becomes visible in small puffs. Behind him, the shop’s front windows begin to fog over despite the mild July night outside. In the condensation, faint handprints appear and disappear, as if someone is pressing against the glass from the inside.
The Celtic knotwork on the locket’s surface shifts more noticeably now, the tiny screaming faces becoming clearer. They’re not random expressions of anguish but specific faces, each one twisted in the particular despair of someone who needed help that never came. One face looks remarkably like Robert’s younger brother, mouth open in a silent plea.
A new sound joins the metallic chiming: the distant echo of a phone ringing, the same ringtone Robert’s old phone used fifteen years ago. The sound seems to come from the locket itself, growing more insistent with each ring. The shop’s overhead lights flicker on and off in rhythm with the ringing, casting dancing shadows across the walls.
The scent of burning food drifts through the air, though there’s no kitchen in sight. It smells exactly like the dinner Robert was preparing that night in 2009 when he let his brother’s call go to voicemail, too focused on his work to answer.
Robert calmly, patiently, begins to load a series of salt-packed slugs into his shotgun as his mind pours back to that time. It wasn’t just a meal for him. He was working in a little mom-and-pop fastfood place, grinding out burgers and fries on the midnight shift. He was trying to make enough cash to help supplement going to college, to bolster his savings, the difficulties he always had in making money. But while his mind wanders to other times, his hands and body works with the brisk efficiency of focused, businesslike detachment.
Probably the real reason he made it as a leader. The ability to have parts of his mind and body working independently of his suffering, and that endless, cool and confident smile on his features. The scent of bubbling, old oil and grease, him too busy to pick up the phone for anything but an order. The incoherent talking, the presumption of a prank.
Well, now he’s here. “I’ll get that demon, someday.” He murmurs, raising his refurbished Winchester trench shotgun.
And then he pulls the trigger, a roar of blessed salt and mechanical lead punching straight at the locket.
the sizzle of the fryer, the ding of the order bell, the muffled sounds of a busy kitchen during the late shift.
But something else happens. The mirrors on the construction workers’ hard hats scattered around the room begin reflecting not the current scene, but moments from Robert’s past. Each reflection shows a different instance where someone needed help, where a choice was made or not made. The reflections pulse in sync with the locket’s glow.
A new voice joins the cacophony: a woman’s voice, thick with an Irish accent, sobbing. “Brigid, my darling girl, if only I could have saved you. If only I had done more.”
Robert begins to take advantage of the slam-firing mechanism, holding down the trigger as he pumps. PING! sends the locket flying, sliver and metal and bits scattering. DOWN comes his booted foot, stomping flat on the necklace of the locket to hold it in place as he lines up the gun. He looks annoyed.
“The past is done and dusted. We can only look towards our future.” BLAM goes the shotgun again, a noisy roar that deafens in these close quarters in an enclosed room, but the man is wearing his earplugs. Another reason why he’s able to mute out the sound so well.
The blessed salt and lead tear through the locket, sending fragments of tarnished silver spinning across the concrete floor. But as the pieces scatter, something unexpected happens. The Celtic knotwork doesn’t disappear–instead, it begins appearing on every reflective surface in the room. The construction workers’ hard hat mirrors, the shop windows, even the polished surface of Robert’s shotgun barrel now bear the shifting, writhing patterns.
The temperature plummets further, and Robert’s breath comes in thick clouds. The woman’s sobbing grows louder, more desperate. “You cannot destroy grief with violence, child. You cannot shoot away regret.”
The scattered silver fragments begin to move on their own, sliding across the floor like mercury, trying to reform. But more disturbing, the mirrors around the room now show not just Robert’s past, but the pasts of everyone who has ever felt the weight of failing someone they loved. The reflections multiply and overlap, creating a kaleidoscope of human regret.
From the largest mirror fragment, a translucent figure begins to emerge–a woman in 1840s dress, her face gaunt with starvation and grief, clutching the ghostly form of a small child. Siobhan O’Malley materializes fully, her eyes fixed on Robert with a mixture of desperation and recognition.
“You know the pain,” she whispers, her voice carrying the weight of centuries. “You know what it means to let someone down when they needed you most.”
“I do. I have many friends, who I turned away from, trying to focus on a simple life of cooking.” Robert answers the woman before him heavily, pumping the shotgun and clacking out the final shell. Buckshot comes next, in the same blessed salt, as he rivets his gaze upon the woman. “Regret does not matter. You are not alive, and you do not belong here. The mortal’s suffering is their suffering to address – and you have a place you can go.” His tone turns gentle, now, the shotgun still pointed at the floor.
“Hello, Miss O’Malley. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Back into the arms of God, and to those of your family and before and who came after.” He says, quietly.
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven… A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up… Ecclesiastes 3:1, 3.” He murmurs quietly.
Siobhan’s ghostly form wavers at Robert’s words, her grip on the spectral child loosening slightly. The temperature in the room stops dropping, holding steady in the frigid air. The Celtic knotwork on the mirrors slows its writhing, though it doesn’t disappear entirely.
“You speak of rest,” Siobhan whispers, her voice carrying both hope and anguish. “But how can there be rest when I failed her? When I brought my Brigid to this cursed place and watched her waste away? When I could have done more, been better, saved her somehow?”
The child in her arms, translucent and pale, looks up at Robert with eyes that hold no accusation, only a deep sadness. Little Brigid reaches toward her mother’s face with ghostly fingers, trying to comfort her.
The mirrors around the room begin showing something different now–not just moments of failure, but moments of love. Robert cooking for friends, despite his exhaustion. Siobhan working late into the night, crafting beautiful silver pieces to sell for medicine money. Small acts of care performed despite impossible circumstances.
“The living still suffer,” Siobhan continues, her form becoming more solid as she speaks. “That construction worker, Tommy–he carries guilt about his daughter. The shop owner who hired you–she blames herself for her mother’s death. They touch my locket and feel what I felt. How can I rest when the pain continues?”
The silver fragments on the floor have stopped trying to reform, but they pulse with a soft, mournful light.
“Because it is Over. One way or another, you have done what you can, and you have succeeded. Your daughter loves you. You have stayed with the grace and love of God. And here, this is truly your mistake: To stay here, to malinger, when you can easily turn to the comfort and rest of your Just Rewards in the afterlife.” Robert responds quietly, steady, his sunglasses another mirror that show his own regrets on the inside of them, and flash Sibohan back hers.
And then it changes, to fondness, to love, to the care and effort he makes to help people and add to them.
“It is not your duty to carry the living. To drag them down to their guilt. If you truly wish to help them, prepare their welcome,” He says, sternly. “For the time spend dead is longer than the time spent living. When they come to you in hurt, their lives expended as best they can, you can be there to help them. But it is beyond your duty to try and assist here – and your efforts will have the reverse effective, of cold and death.” His voice clouds the air.
“You will make their hurts and regrets worse, lingering here.”
Siobhan’s form shudders as Robert’s words hit her like a physical blow. The child in her arms–little Brigid–looks up at her mother with eyes full of love and understanding, not the accusation Siobhan has been seeing for over a century.
“Mama,” Brigid’s voice whispers, barely audible but carrying the weight of absolute forgiveness. “You did everything you could. You loved me every day. That’s enough.”
The mirrors around the room begin to clear, the Celtic knotwork fading as Siobhan’s grip on the present world weakens. The temperature starts to rise slowly, and the oppressive weight of accumulated regret begins to lift from the air.
“But Tommy,” Siobhan protests weakly, though her voice lacks its earlier desperation. “And Mrs. Chen who owns this shop. They hurt so much…”
Brigid reaches up and touches her mother’s face with ghostly fingers. “They have their own people to love them through it, Mama. Their own time to heal. We can’t carry everyone’s pain.”
The silver fragments on the floor begin to lose their supernatural glow, becoming just scattered pieces of old jewelry. The mirrors reflect only what stands before them now–Robert in his security gear, and two spirits preparing to let go of a world that no longer needs their intervention.
Siobhan looks at Robert one last time, her form already becoming translucent. “You’re right. I’ve been selfish, haven’t I? Keeping us both here when we could be… together.”
Robert chides the ghost gently, “You haven’t been selfish. You gave, and you gave, and you gave. No-one could expect more from you. But your duty is over. You have discharged it, and I am certain wherever you two go…”
He cracks a smile. Small. Genuine, for once, instead of practiced. “You will continue. Good night, Siobhan, Brigid. I am certain that one day, I will meet you both again, after I expel my last breath.”
1:23 AM.
In the sudden quiet, Robert can hear the distant sound of a phone ringing somewhere in the neighborhood–not supernatural this time, but someone reaching out to someone else in the middle of the night. A reminder that the living still have chances to answer, to help, to choose connection over isolation.
The shop feels lighter now, ready for whatever new purpose it will serve.
Robert raises his shotgun to his shoulder – giving it a secondary glance, and the scattered pieces of silver. He sighs, and reaches up to tap his ear. “Curse is handled. Pair of ghosts.” He listens in silence to the buzzing on the other hand. “Yeah. O’Malley family. Celtic. Seems like their bloodline is around. Poor people. This strange town.” He huffs out a sigh through his nose.
“Get the paperwork set up for it and the location, and come here to sweep up the materials for research. I’ll finish the signatures on the reports in the morning.” He turns, brisk, thumping away, always having to tackle some other change or issue.
24 AM–and stays steady. Behind him, the scattered silver pieces have lost their supernatural gleam entirely, becoming nothing more than fragments of old jewelry that will puzzle whoever cleans them up.
The temperature has returned to normal, and through the now-clear windows, Robert can see the July mist beginning to lift from Maple Street. A few lights are on in the row houses across the way–insomniacs, shift workers, parents tending to restless children. The living world continuing its quiet dance of small kindnesses and daily struggles.
As he pushes open the shop door, a gentle breeze carries the scent of someone’s late-night cooking–not the acrid smell of burning food from his memories, but something warm and nourishing. Somewhere in All Saints, someone is taking care of someone else.
His footsteps echo on the sidewalk as he walks away, leaving the empty shop truly empty for the first time in over a century. Tomorrow, construction will resume, and the building will serve the living once again.
The curse of the O’Malley locket has been broken–not through destruction, but through acceptance, forgiveness, and the simple recognition that some burdens are too heavy for the dead to carry.
Robert puts away the success in a file of a long line of successes, tucked away in an archive with research and information. Perhaps there will be a new addition to the Natural History Museum about ghosts and Irish faiths. But that’s for another time. For now, he’s having to weave his way through the town, the thick mists clinging to his form as he sniffs at the air. He smiles, some. A bit of humanity returning, pushing back the unnatural existence.
But for now he has to get to his car through the thick mists, and then creep his way home in the vehicle. “So many ghosts stirred up recently…” He mutters, under his breath.
The mist swirls around Robert as he navigates the narrow streets of All Saints, his footsteps muffled on the damp pavement. The fog is thickest here at the intersection of Maple and Sidney, just as his briefing notes indicated, creating pockets of near-zero visibility that seem to shift and move with unnatural purpose.
His car sits where he left it, beaded with moisture that catches the occasional streetlight. As he approaches, the mist parts slightly, revealing glimpses of the Gothic Revival church spires that pierce the night sky like ancient sentinels. The wrought iron decorations on nearby buildings seem to watch him pass, their Celtic knotwork and subtly demonic motifs now carrying new meaning after his encounter with Siobhan’s locket.
From somewhere in the fog comes the distant sound of traditional Irish music–a fiddle playing a slow, mournful tune that might be a lament or might be a lullaby. It’s impossible to tell if it’s coming from one of the local pubs or from something far older that still walks these streets.
Robert’s radio crackles softly with routine security chatter from other parts of New Haven, a reminder that while All Saints sleeps fitfully under its blanket of mist, the rest of the world continues its normal rhythms. But even the static seems to carry whispers of other cases, other supernatural disturbances stirring in the summer night.
The car door handle is cold and slick with condensation as he reaches for it.