Hester’s Monday morning odd encounter(Hester)
Date: 2025-08-04 11:43
(Hester’s Monday morning odd encounter(Hester):Hester)
[Mon Aug 4 2025]
In A Worn but Dignified Studio Apartment/span>/spanThe apartment opens into a modest living area with hardwood floors that show
the wear of countless tenants over the decades. White walls display the
occasional scuff mark or nail hole from previous occupants, though the paint
appears relatively fresh. A single window overlooks the building’s courtyard,
where the white and ivory plantings are visible through clean glass panes.
The radiator beneath the window clanks softly when the heat runs, a common
sound in these older Gothic Revival buildings. Built-in shelving flanks one
wall, the dark wood matching the baseboards and door frames throughout the
unit. The kitchen alcove contains basic appliances and laminate countertops,
functional if unremarkable. A narrow hallway leads to the bedroom and
bathroom, where the original hexagonal floor tiles remain intact, their black
and white pattern unbroken despite their age. The apartment carries the faint
scent of floor polish and the lingering traces of previous residents’ lives –
coffee, old books, and something indefinably academic that permeates
buildings in this part of the city./span>/spanIt is about 65F(18C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At High and Darkwater/span>/span(Your target discovers a small antique shop that wasn’t there yesterday, run by an elderly proprietor who insists they’ve been waiting specifically for them to arrive and claim an item that’s “already theirs.”)
Justine takes another gulp of monster energy, brows knitting as she underlines in red ballpoint a photocopied book.
Justine tears a page off, pinning it onto a corkboard full of similar pages. They are mostly ledgers of local graveyards, with some entries underlined.
It’s a period of rest after all of Windermere’s finished their final exams. Some have graduated, some have dropped out. But as for where Justine is concerned, there’s enough free time in the here and now to pursue… extracurricular activities.
And it seems, so too does someone at the door. Tap tap… tap. A polite knock disturbs the zone of concentration.
Justine exhales, tossing the book on the mess of papers on her bed and pads over to the door. “Who is it?” she yells out, before peering through the peephole.
An eye stares right back at Justine through the peephole.
The unexpected visitor leans back with a warm chuckle and a crinkling of crow’s feet on either side of pale grey eyes. White hair betrays her age, wrinkles and age spots amidst her gaunt features. “I was looking for a Justin Ward? Is this.. where Justin Ward is?” the kooky old woman wonders, holding up none other than a palm pilot from ages past. “I’ve got something that belongs to them.”
“Do I have the right address.. yes,” the elderly woman rasps, tapping her stylus on the gadget. She hefts up a big sack that clanks with all sorts of metal and glass.
Justine sighs, unlocking the door, pulling back two bolts one by one and opens the door, but just enough to see who it is. “Justin Ward?” she says, giving the crone an up and down look. “I think you have wrong person, ma’am. I am Justine. I get how easy it would be to make that mistake” despite her polite answer, there’s an undercurrent of frustration at being interrupted in her tone.
“Oh! Justine, Justin..” the old woman in outdated florals wheezes merrily at Justine with the wave of an arthritic arm. “My mistake, I thought the E was silent. Won’t you come in and sign this receipt so the sender knows you’d gotten your package? It’s traveled quite a long way,” she hopes of the blonde, beckoning her out instead of asking to invite herself in. The sack is set down with a loud *thud* – as if it were heavier than it looked. Humming a pleasant tune, she puts a bony arm in up to the elbow to search for said package.
Justine glances down at the sack, surprised herself at the sound it made. And this whole situation. “Who gave you this address?” she asks the woman. “You don’t look like a Fedex employee and I didn’t order anything.”
A twinkle dances in the elderly one’s cataracts. “It was no order of yours, Miss Ward. Someone has been watching your progress, and they would like to throw you.. a bone, if you will,” she rasps at Justine, reaching all the way down, down, down like near half her body were swallowed by that peculiar sack. “Hmm, perhaps I left it in the back,” she determines.
She turns to hobble down the hallway. There’s a waft of ginseng and tea/span>/spanblink, the outside has become the inside of one of those old antique shops, flooded with waist-high mist so thick it might as well be whipped cream. “Do watch your step, if you come in..” she calls out from behind some shelves.
Justine raises a hand, just about to shoo away the woman from her door. Her hand stays in the air, the surroundings changed and she’s standing there like fool for a moment. Then sharply turns back just to see if her door is still behind. It’s not.
Justine turns again, hand on the grip of her Steyr handgun tucked behind the back of her pants. “Hey!” she raises her voice. “Hey lady, what the fuck?”, despite herself she does take a step toward the back of the shop, knuckles widening around her weapon.
Justine pales a little as her other hand runs through the mist as is almost able to catch the thick white substance.
Justine produces a LED keychain flashlight, flicking it on, it’s light doing little to illuminate the mist wreathed back of the shop.
Indeed, it isn’t. A plaza of cobblestone has replaced what of Justine’s apartment there was. For now, her graveyard research and books have blipped into.. who knows? Market goers of all shapes and worlds bustle through, seeing to business of their own outside the antique shop.
The mist swirls, smothering but harmlessly (for the most part), around Justine’s jeans, licking at hands and handgun alike.
“Ah! Here it is. Untouched and unwrapped, just as instructed,” comes the old lady’s voice from the aisle just around the corner. Justine catches sight of her soon enough, pulling a sealed brown parcel covered in dirt. Soil is brushed off of the container with care, worms and maggots tumbling into the misty floor. “Oh, no need for bullets here, dearie. If I wanted to turn you into a package, I would’ve come in through the chimney. Like Krampus with the children.”
The old woman probably meant *wrapped, seeing that it -is- wrapped. She’s been saying things all wrong today.
“Instructed by whom?” Justine’s voice is now quiet and unsteady, shaking a little as she lets go of her firearm. “Who the hell are you?”, any trace of annoyance at a harmless old lady is replaced by badly concealed fear. Her gaze flits left to right, scanning both the customers and possible exits.
The crone edges a cheeky look over Justine, wrinkly lips almost taut with a grin – quite like she’d only just realized how juicy a secret she was actually holding. “Ohhohoho.. you will find out in time. When you are ready,” the old one provides a most cryptic clue, so painfully cliche that it might as well be in a Nicholas Cage movie.
Odd be it to see no other customers within the antique shop than herself, Justine is a lone entity with the elderly lady. Only the shadows of civilians outside make the light flicker through the thick of the waist-deep fog. “Who I am is not nearly as important as who you are,” she affords, however, holding out the earth-damp parcel for Justine to take. “And who you are, is -almost- not as important as who you -can- be.”
Justine bites the corner of her lip, holding out her hands to receive the parcel. She’s not in control here, an unpleasant feeling for her. Locking her gaze with the old woman is an attempt to regain it. But under the circumstances, her gaze isn’t as cold, clinical and piercing as it could be. “I need you to tell me who sent this.” she says in her most commanding voice, which, again isn’t that commanding right now.
The warmth slowly crumbles from the hag’s smile as Justine takes a chance in their meeting of eyes. Quite literally, her skin flakes off her cheeks as she smiles with yellowing teeth and rotting gums. Secrets are spoken, but none of them reach the blonde’s ears, like she had cotton balls growing inside them. “Child of..” Wrinkled lips moving, but Justine can’t quite place their sound or shape. “.. you are expected home soon.”
Bone-thin fingers brush down the woman’s face, leaving wet marks of soil like she’d crawled fresh out of a grave. Whitish eyes roll up as she thrusts the package into Justine’s grasp, to be left with it whether she wished to take it or not. “What is yours, has been yours. Has been collected. The debt is paid.”
“Child of w…” she shuts up as soon as she sees the change on the old woman’s face. She is taken aback, the peeling skin, the rotting gums, rolling eyes. She probably does smell like a grave, too. Justine takes a step back, almost stumbling over her own feet, dropping the package on the floor. She crouches quickly, trying to gather it, worried if it’s broken.
Down into the smothering mist, the ground proves itself treacherous. No solid flooring underneath. It almost feels like grassy fields, damp after a rain. The dirt clinging to Justine’s hands might betray the reality of it. There it is. She feels it. Damp brown paper and the thin twine bundling it up.
The package is found but throughout Justine’s search of the ground, the earth had begun to erode with a squelch and slide of muddy clay. See, it takes but one wrong move to end an adventure.
And all at once, the rest of it swallows her up in a silence as dead as a sepulcher.
Back in the apartment Justine lands with no couch to cushion her fall. A woman-shaped splotch of mud dirties her landing space. No sign of any antique shop, nor any nosy old woman. Just that damned parcel and all the dirt that came with it.
Justine’s chest heaves as she stares at the ceiling for a minute, wincing after her hand touches her brow. She has no words to utter, no curse. Instead she slowly rolls over the mud stains, grasping at the package.
Justine opens the parcel without finesse, tearing off the rotten twine and pieces of stained paper.
Before Justine tears open the parcel paper, she might’ve just noticed the handwriting on the front – familiar and yet not exactly so. It bears the same sweeps and loops as a certain grandmother‘s penmanship, and yet… it’s not quite a match.
The object within thrums with a dark power as Justine’s fingertips set upon it: 40a compass of polished obsidian glinting in the light of her living space. A large needle of sharpened animal bone spins madly in circles, unsure of its direction. Unknown sigils have replaced cardinal directions around its circumference.
Justine stands up from the floor, mud sticking to her clothes and pads over toward the window, leaving dirt footprints behind. She pulls the curtain aside, having to close her eyes as the light shines upon her and the curious thing in her hands. “What? I remember this, this shit was behind the glass and we weren’t allowed to touch it…”. She winces, having had to change hands in which she holds the object.
Justine tries to tilt the compass so the bloody needle with actually point somewhere.
It’s that very same compass, no doubt about it. Even the ominous feeling it gives is a familiar one – like one’s childhood boogeyman making a reappearance under your bed twenty years later.
Despite the angles at which Justine tilts the trinket, the needle doesn’t seem to find rest. Close inspection reveals a faded stain of red around the sharp tip.
Justine frowns, sliding a finger around this unpleasant memento, cold and prickly like the woman who used to own it. She notices the stain. Pauses.
Justine sucks in a break and decides, oh what the hell, and presses her thumb against the tip. then a bit harder, enough to draw a droplet of blood
Justine says, to herself, bitterly, “Even beyond the grave you’re finding ways to wound me, Magdalene.“
60Rich, red blood oozes out of Justine’s fingertip. The large droplet quivers ever so slightly before it’s 24sucked into the bone, drawn from its source. Thin notches along the body of the needle turn 60crimson, tracing sigils of olde.
The needle winds as if with fresh vigor, having tasted something delectable.
Justine holds her breath, her eyes on the needle, trying to see if it will calm down. Seems to her it won’t. “Never enough for you, is it?” she hurries over to the kitchen cabinet, getting a steak knife from a drawer. Holding her breath, she cuts at her wrist, angling it to drip some more at the cursed thing.
More blood for the starved compass. A good thing Justine might be used to such sacrifice. With more of the red to fill its nooks and niches, each unholy symbol ’round its circle is coloured deep. Finally, the bone needle slows, satiated like a hound of hell after getting its pound of flesh. One might wonder what manner of beast it may have been hacked from…
The spinning draws to a halt somewhere between north and west. But is it the direction that matters, or the 60crimson eye it points to?
Something for Justine to discover in due time./span>