Meridith’s Monday night exorcism
Date: 2025-07-07 22:46
(Meridith’s Monday night exorcism)
[Mon Jul 7 2025]
Whaling Port Cemetery/span>/spannight, about 78F(25C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. The mist is heaviest At Autumn and Blackstone/span>/span There is a waxing gibbous moon.
The wrought iron gate of Whaling Port Cemetery stands ajar, creaking softly in the humid night breeze as Avalon, Cadalie, Thomas, and Meridith gather near the entrance. The air carries an unusual tang beneath the scent of summer flowers – something sharp and chemical that makes the back of the throat burn slightly. Mist begins to coalesce around the larger monuments deeper in the cemetery, forming in wispy tendrils despite the warm temperature.
A church bell tolls somewhere in the distance, but the sound seems to echo strangely, as if coming from multiple directions at once. The weathered headstones nearest to the group flicker momentarily in the moonlight, their carved dates appearing to shift and blur before settling back into focus. From somewhere among the graves comes the faint sound of creaking wood and rope, rhythmic like a ship at anchor.
The Blackwood mausoleum looms prominently in the center of the cemetery, its elaborate Victorian stonework more ornate than the surrounding graves. Patches of mist seem to gather most thickly around its base, and occasionally a warm amber light flickers from within, as if someone has lit a lantern inside the sealed structure.
The scent of quicklime grows stronger as a gust of wind carries whispers in an unfamiliar dialect from deeper among the headstones.
Meridith sticks her hands in her pockets and slouches about, curious. She keeps near Cadalie, an eye on her but doesn’t shy from exploring. She blinks. “That smell, what is that?” She wonders, picking it up amidst her sharp senses.
“I sense it,” Thomas tells Meridith. “In that mausoleum — you, with the rifle,” since Avalon never bothered to introduce himself. “Let’s look sharp.” There’s an air of some mystic knowledge about the man as he advances on the mausoleum; one hand is cocked, as if ready to work some magic. The necromancer pronounces, “I sense power.” Then he reaches out, to open the mausoleum door.
“Quicklime,” Thomas fills in for Meridith. “It is the smell of old graves. I have smell’t it many times, anon.”
“Quicklime.” Cadalie comments idly, not quite a chemist, not quite an alchemist, but certainly a nun. “That’s a component of the ritual of purity. I suppose it’s not odd in a cemetery but..” She slips off the wrought fence and brushes her bum free of any dust, leaning forward in her gait as she sets herself next to Thomas at the door.
“It’s not only the smell, but also the whispering…” Avalon sighs out, but as Thomas catches his attention, he nods and with a simple shrug he approaches along with him, leaving the rifle to a side and instead gripping his hammer tightly, since they are approaching the mausoleum, better be ready to hit something from up close. “You guys will have to figure out the magic stuff, I’m better at just hitting things…”
“The pestilence takes them all… bury them deep… the lime burns clean…” The voices seem to come from beneath the floor rather than the walls.
A brass compass embedded in the sarcophagus lid spins wildly, its needle never settling on any direction. The quicklime smell intensifies, and Thomas can feel necromantic energy pulsing from somewhere below the mausoleum floor. The amber light flickers more rapidly, and for a moment, the sound of distant ship bells mingles with the church tolls outside.
Cadalie notices carved symbols around the compass that seem to shift between nautical charts and occult sigils.
“There is power here — the power of death,” Thomas says. “Meridith, you with the rifle — are you going to give your name, or just be mysterious? — be ready. I do not know what dwells here.” He pauses. “Cadalie, if you could assist me with a circle…” He begins to drag his boot in the dust of the mausoleum, to make some ritual circle around the sarcophagus. Meanwhile, he starts to chant: it is an ancient funeral rite in Latin, chanted backwards. Even said forwards it is heresy.
Meridith rubs her eyes, getting a little confused. “What was that?” She frowns and leans down to stare at the source of the noises. “Mmmph…cryptic…” She steps lighter. She moves over to Avalon. “Yeah I got his back, just, stay frosty, alright?”
Approaching the sarcophagus, hand on the revolver at her hip for some mundane power, she looks down at the occult sigils, trying to mark their origin. “..Oh, is that Hebrew? Tch..” Cadalie adds her voice, in Latin, to the chant as she studies them, a tone altogether different from a southern tongue.
“It’s Avalon… But focus on the demon haunting rather than on the fat guy with the rifle” Avalon tells Thomas with a little groan, shaking his head as he moves a bit to the side to watch him and Cadalie do their thing, shrugging his shoulders and tilting his head to try and peer at the underside of the mausoleum, still seemingly following both the scent of quicklime and the whipsering coming from it
“The captain… he charts a course through time itself… the dead serve below…”
The symbols around the compass begin to glow faintly, revealing themselves as a mixture of nautical navigation marks and temporal manipulation sigils. Avalon’s examination of the floor reveals hairline cracks forming in a perfect circle around the sarcophagus, and through them seeps the acrid smell of quicklime mixed with something else – whale oil.
The amber light suddenly flares brighter, and for a moment everyone can see through the stone floor to a hidden chamber below. Hundreds of bones lie scattered in quicklime, and at the center sits a figure in a captain’s coat, his skeletal hands still gripping an ornate whalebone compass. The vision lasts only seconds before fading.
Meridith’s acute senses pick up a new scent threading through the quicklime – the salt tang of ocean spray and the rancid smell of rotting whale blubber. The whispers now carry a distinct nautical accent: “Chart the course… escape the pestilence… the dead shall crew my vessel through eternity…”
The church bells outside begin tolling frantically, matching no earthly rhythm.
Meridith lets out a deep, pained, fearful groan. “PIRATE GHOSTS!” She shouts prematurely. Then she catches the chamber below and gasps. “NO!”
“Well,” Thomas tells Avalon, Meridith, and Cadalie. “I do not know what I was expecting.” He pauses. “A spectral whaling captain was not one.” He raises his voice, calling out — speaking to the ghost. “O CAPTAIN!” he says. “What knowledge do you have, and what do you desire of us? We come here to propitiate to you — to give you whatever you desire, in exchange for the riches dead eyes have seen!” That’s right: see something evil, make a bargain. It’s the Librarian way.
“Always, a fool seeks to traverse time.” Cadalie mutters with some exhaustion as she rolls her eyes. “This is temporal mistake is fourth-coming, for three before have I dealt with too recently.”
Cadalie points to the amber, returning to English. “World tree amber, in all likelihood. Good to collect and keep, it’s also the ‘wonder-stone’ of all of these fools tryin’ to rewrite time.”
Thomas replies to Cadalie in the same tongue. “Would I could sail the seas of time, Cadalie. I would steer a ship gladly between the shoals of death and destiny.”
Avalon listens to Thomas speak to the ghost, and then briefly to Cadalie in some unknown language to him, huhing a little bit before interjecting with “I’m no expert in magic- Not more than through life experience at least but… Didn’t we just see that chamber thing, and what’s presumably our ghost skeleton thing? Can’t we just, go down and get rid of it?”
“Aye, scholar… I chart the temporal currents to escape the pestilence that claimed my fleet… my crew… my fortune. The dead below serve as ballast for my voyage through eternity’s waters. But the compass… it spins wild… cannot find true temporal north…”
The floor cracks widen slightly at Avalon’s suggestion, revealing more of the chamber below. The quicklime-covered bones seem to shift and stir, as if responding to their captain’s distress. Meridith’s acute senses detect the sound of creaking ship timbers growing louder, and the scent of whale oil becomes almost overwhelming.
Cadalie’s observation about the amber proves accurate – veins of the substance run through the compass like trapped lightning, pulsing with each failed attempt to find direction.
“The mass grave… they buried them without proper rites… I claimed their bones for my eternal voyage… but the navigation fails… the temporal currents pull me back to that cursed year of pestilence…”
The mist outside begins to thicken, and through it, the faint outline of ship masts can be seen among the headstones.
Meridith rubs her face. “So, it’s a bone pirate stealing ghosts and bones. But he’s stuck in time? And is worried about pestilence? Buddy! You’re bones, worry no more. Disease is the least of your concern!”
Thomas says “Can you hear me, Cadalie?“
Cadalie nods with ease. “Ah- that’s better.”
“Oh, what the… Stop that!” Avalon complains to no one in particular as he reaches to cover his nose, the stench of whale oil already being overwhelming is only worsened by his good sense of smell. The other hand goes to wave, but, he’s reminded its occupied by holding his weapon and so he refrains, commenting after Meridith “If it’s all about the bones and whatever compass thing this is… We can just smash them and problem solved, no?”
“Temporal north,” Thomas says to Cadalie. “This is a new one to me.” He raises his voice to the dead sailor. “I understand what you want — you want us to bury the bones of your crew,” he says. “But surely, Captain: you have something for us in exchange for that. Is there not some treasure you have buried? Some secret sin you can confess?” he says, calling down to the pit. “I will not promise to lay to rest your soul unless I get the full measure of my bargain,” he says. “I am a necromancer –” And here, he gestures, to amplify his command over the dead. “I will torture your soul for another eternity unless you pay the ferryman’s price for your rest.”
The skeletal captain’s laughter echoes from below, a sound like wind through rigging. “Torture me, necromancer? I am already trapped in an endless storm of my own making! But you speak of bargains… aye, I have treasure aplenty.”
The amber in the compass flares brighter, and suddenly the chamber below becomes fully visible. Scattered among the quicklime-covered bones are chests overflowing with gold coins, whale oil barrels marked with arcane symbols, and nautical instruments that gleam with otherworldly light.
“But smashing solves nothing, hammer-bearer,” the captain continues, addressing Avalon. “The compass is bound to my will, and my will is bound to these bones. Destroy one without properly releasing the other, and the temporal storm will tear this cemetery – and half your city – into the past forever.”
The mist outside thickens dramatically, and through it, the ghostly outline of a full whaling ship materializes among the headstones. The sound of spectral crew members can be heard calling out in 1840s dialect.
“The girl speaks truth – I fear no pestilence now. But I cannot navigate to my eternal rest while the mass grave remains unconsecrated. The Church refused them proper burial… their souls anchor me to that cursed year.”
Meridith waves a hand. “Orrrr, we buckle some swashes and give them what for!” She insists with a wise bright grin. Then pivots over, ooohing at treasure. She hmms and fusses, considering it. “Well, consecrating the dead is a reasonable exchange, no? And a reward for our troubles?”
Cadalie contemplates Avalon’s solution as she takes a step back from the chamber to see all of its corpses, some look of mild mirth setting her features into a knit. “..Oh lord, consecrating a Demon’s grave? I never thought I’d see the day.”
“I have gold,” Thomas tells the captain. “What do I need for oil? But if that is an enchanted sextant I spy — then yes,” he tells the ghost. “That is a fair price to sail you and yours home. Will you offer it to us?” he asks the captain. “If so, I will perform the ritual to quiet even the most unquiet dead.”
“Got it, not smashing bones” Avalon sighs out, moving the hand covering his nose upwards, to rub at his eyes for a couple seconds, and then waving it dismissively at the vision of the grave “Just… Whatever, do the arcane thingy… Worst case scenario we just lose half of the city, not a bad deal” He says, seemingly completely unironic about it
consecrating these bones requires more than ritual words. They died in terror, abandoned by their faith. You must give them what the Church denied – proper last rites spoken over each soul, not as a mass but as individuals.”
The spectral ship grows more solid, its crew becoming visible as they work the rigging with translucent hands. The captain’s voice carries a note of desperate hope mixed with warning.
“But beware – the moment you begin the consecration, the temporal storm will fight back. The year 1848 will bleed through stronger than ever. You may find yourselves living through the cholera outbreak, feeling the pestilence in your bones, tasting the desperation of a dying port.”
Cadalie can see that the quicklime has preserved scraps of clothing and personal effects among the bones – rosaries, wedding rings, children’s toys. Each represents a soul that needs individual recognition.
The amber compass needle spins faster, and the church bells outside begin tolling in the specific pattern used during the 1848 epidemic – three short, three long, three short. The mist now carries the sounds of coughing, weeping, and frantic prayers in multiple languages.
“Choose quickly – the storm grows stronger with each passing moment.”
Now it is time for a ritual: this, Thomas knows well. He begins to scribe a slow circle, clockwise, as he instructs the others. “Cadalie, the east side,” he says. “Avalon, the north.” A pause. “Meridith, the east.” He says. “As I perform the ritual,” he says, taking up a position in the West, “Spirits will flood out of here. Each one will whisper their name to you, and you must say it back to them — recognize them as they whisper their name. Then they will be free.” He warns. “It will come as a flood,” he says, as he produces a dagger to slash his palm — and then, with a Latin invocation, the ritual is begun.
Meridith exhales. “Or we-” She frowns, looks like Thomas is engaging in magic. She sighs. “If I get Cholera and die, I’m haunting you.” Not that the demigoddess doesn’t extole her own hardy constitution.
And how convenient, for a nun to be available for the Anointing of the Sick. Cadalie joins the east side and takes a rosary bead from along her waist- tied along a thick garrote string that she wraps around the metal. In her most earnest, she preaches, “Wait for your shepherd; he will give you everlasting rest, because he who will come at the end of the age is close at hand… Rest, O my people, until your rest shall come”
Avalon starts moving northward just like Thomas, once more complaining and saying “Does this demon even know that cholera is still a thing? It’s still kicking and all, we just haven’t had an epidemic in a while” He gruffs a bit, resting the hammer on the ground once he’s taken positions and asking Cadalie and Thomas “Not saying that we do it… But what happens if we just… I don’t know, you two could simply vanish this thing and we could take its stuff… How long is it going to take us to repeat the names of an entire crew by just four people”
“Speak their names! Each soul acknowledged weakens my anchor to this cursed time!”
But something else stirs in the chamber – the whaling crew’s bones begin to rattle, and the captain’s skeletal form starts to rise, compass clutched in his bony hands. “The storm… it fights back!”
The amber compass needle spins wildly as past and present collide.
As the bones begin to rattle, Thomas puts his will into fighting back the storm. “Less bellyaching!” he tells Avalon. “More fighting these ghosts!” He pauses. “This is a problem on necromancy, not of time,” he tells them. “Focus on the ghosts!” He begins to name them as they stream by: “Silas, George, Harold, Arthur, Thomas, George, Owen…”
“Roberts. Edward.. Edward Sr..” She chants, but pauses at a particularly strange name that floods her mind, “Gravehook, Yes- rest well Gravehook.” Cadalie says as earnestly as she can muster under a smile.
Meridith frowns deep. She sets about the task and bears her will against any encroaching ornery ghosts. She starts to guess some names under her breath. Helping, surely.
Thomas says, sotto voice, “A whaling ship crewed about 30 men. It’s not a man of war. We can get through this before the storm arrives.” He urges Cadalie, Meridith, and Avalon on.
While not an ordained priest from whatever period they were from, and therefore not technically suitable, Cadalie does own to such a title as Pontifex. Which, while male-endowed and functionally apostate within her own religion, she does speak as a builder of bridges- from here and to a beyond.
“Ah, whatever, I’m more used to fighting alive things, who fear and bleed… This is just-” But Avalon ceases his complaining there as the first couple of spirits reach him and he nods his head dismissively “Yes, yes…” And as they start whispering, he starts repeating “Yes, yes… George, Francis… Charles, Albert… Another George…”
The flood of spirits intensifies as Thomas’s ritual takes hold. Names pour from the spectral crew in overlapping whispers – “Mary… little Mary, only seven years…” “Johannes… Johannes Eriksen…” “Catherine with child…” The voices reveal these aren’t just sailors, but the cholera victims from the mass grave.
The captain’s skeletal form wavers as each name is spoken, his grip on the compass loosening. “The anchor… weakens… but the storm…”
The mist around the cemetery suddenly thickens to an impenetrable wall. The year 1848 bleeds through stronger – the stench of sickness mingles with whale oil, and everyone can taste the metallic tang of fever on their tongues. The ghostly ship’s rigging creaks overhead as spectral crew members begin to fade one by one.
“Sarah… Benjamin… little Thomas…” The names come faster now, a desperate rush of souls seeking recognition before the temporal storm tears them back to their cursed year.
The compass needle begins to slow its wild spinning, pointing toward something that might be true temporal north. But the amber veins pulse with increasing intensity, and cracks appear in the mausoleum walls as past and present war against each other.
That is a lot more victims than Thomas planned on: he begins to chant the words, letting them fall over his tongue in a waterfall of the names of dead sailors now mixed with the larger mass grave here. He can’t speak — he can only chant names, frantically, as each one whispers to him. He is beginning to lose the thread, though — if he cannot send these souls to rest, he will have to end the ritual and damn them all.
Watching as the mist seems to intensify and the crowd keeps getting larger, Avalon frowns, a brief glance cast towards the arcanists, Cadalie and Thomas to gauge the situation. His hand getting a better grip on his weapon just in case, hammer rising from the ground as he keeps on spewing names in repetition those those the ghosts tell him when they arrive “Louis, James, Emily, John…”
Cadalie continues the litany of names from the old grave, speaking what comes to mind, setting the holy intent with some passion as her gauntlet groans from a squeeze of her grip. Without a Eucharist or a viaticum, it’s hard to consecrate-
Thomas continues his magic, words tumbling over his mouth — increasingly frantic.
Thomas looks over at Meridith. “Meridith,” he says. “The names the ghosts are whispering to you, not whatever pop song you remember!”
Meridith flushes deep. “I can’t…!” She tries to lean in and nods. “Samuel? Bridgette…?” She tests, straining to properly hear and repeat.
“The compass… it must point to temporal north, not to my selfish eternity… Turn it… turn it true…”
The amber veins in the compass pulse frantically as the device hovers between Thomas’s ritual circle and the crumbling bones below. The needle spins wildly between pointing toward the past and true temporal north .
The mist begins to thin, but the ghostly ship still looms overhead, its spectral crew waiting to see if their captain will finally find his proper course. The church bells outside slow their frantic tolling, but haven’t yet returned to normal time.
“Choose quickly… the temporal storm weakens, but if the compass isn’t set right, it will rebuild stronger than before…”
The cracks in the mausoleum walls spread wider, and through them, glimpses of 1848 New Haven flicker – plague carts, quarantine flags, and the desperate faces of the dying.
“Go!” Thomas tells Meridith and Avalon. Turning compasses is there kind of work, as the necromancer turns to face the storm, now. He begins to chant, backwards in Latin. “Turn the compass!” he yells, pouring magical power into summoning now the very essence of death here in the graveyard to keep it anchored in place — to the here and now, not to there. Death, after all, is the end of all things — Time included.
Meridith bends low and springs hard towards the compass. Perhaps there’s a method behind the metaphyiscal to turn it to its true destination. But she tries raw strength
“yticirpS yloH eht fo ecarG eht yb uoy tsissa yaM ,ycrem rednet tsom siH dna gnitnioma yloh siht hguorhT.” Cadalie chants, sounding distinctly in reverse with the strange inhaling syllables that come from her lips.
“Oh for fuck’s…” Avalon begins muttering, mostly to himself as he listens to the developments, turning his head to peer towards the compass in question, but seeing as Meridith has already rushed, he allows himself to close in a bit slower. And then he adds his own raw strength to aid the girl’s, turning the compass around towards what they hope is its proper destination
The compass needle fights against Meridith and Avalon’s combined strength, but their raw determination proves stronger than the captain’s centuries-old obsession. As they force the needle toward true temporal north, the amber veins crack and release brilliant flashes of trapped time.
Thomas’s reversed necromantic chant anchors death itself to the present moment, while Cadalie’s backwards Latin creates a spiritual bridge between the consecrated and unconsecrated dead. The combination proves decisive.
“Aye… true north… not my selfish course…” The captain’s voice grows peaceful as his skeletal form begins to dissolve. “The treasure… yours by right… you’ve given my crew their rest…”
The ghostly ship fades as its crew finally departs for their eternal voyage. The mist clears, revealing the cemetery in normal moonlight. The church bells return to their proper rhythm, and the oppressive weight of 1848 lifts from the air.
In the chamber below, the quicklime-covered bones settle into peaceful rest, while chests of gold and mystical nautical instruments gleam in the amber light of the now-properly-aligned compass.
The temporal storm has passed, leaving only the sweet scent of summer flowers and the distant sound of waves against New Haven’s shore.