Amber’s Tuesday night exorcism
Date: 2025-07-29 00:10
(Amber’s Tuesday night exorcism)
[Tue Jul 29 2025]
In a large house
It is about 60F(15C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At Birch and Lake/span>/spanThe heavy wooden door creaks open as Amber steps into the stifling heat of the old Killgrove house. The fieldstone walls seem to radiate warmth even in the pre-dawn darkness, and the scent of old timber mingles with something else–something metallic and sharp that catches in her throat.
A body lies crumpled against the north wall, limbs at unnatural angles. Dr. Marcus Whitfield’s gray hair is matted with dark blood that has dried against the fossil-impressed stones behind his head. His research notebook lies open beside him, pages fluttering slightly in the still air despite the absence of any breeze.
Three obsidian mirrors catch what little light filters through the single window, arranged in a perfect triangle on the clay tile floor. Their polished surfaces seem to shimmer with movement that doesn’t match the room around them. Near Whitfield’s outstretched hand, a carved bone flute lies broken in two pieces, and an opened leather bundle reveals what appear to be preserved organs–dark, glistening, and unsettlingly fresh-looking despite their obvious age.
Candle wax has pooled across the floor in strange, flowing patterns, as if the candles had been knocked over during some kind of struggle. The air around the mirrors feels noticeably cooler than the rest of the sweltering room.
From somewhere within the walls comes a faint, rhythmic tapping–tap, tap, tap–then silence.
Cadalie arrives, belatedly, panting just enough breath to have been walking in circles.
Amber slinks into the room, having been notified of the crime. She spots the body, giving a bit of a sniff at the sight of blood to see if any might be fresh enough to nibble. Probably not. She skulks further over to the notebook, leaning over to squint at the text and see if there are nay clues. For now, she doesn’t pay much mind to the three obsidian mirrors. Nor does she pay much mind to the broken bone flute or preserved organs. She doesn’t care about the candle wax either, just yet, as she reads.
She looks up briefly at the arrival of Cadalie, raising a hand in greeting.
“The mirrors show truth – not reflection but memory – the guardian stirs – it knows the darkness comes – must find must stop must–”
The sentence cuts off abruptly in a jagged line of ink, as if his hand had been violently jerked away.
Cadalie’s footsteps echo against the clay tiles as she enters, her breath still coming in short gasps. The preserved organs in the leather bundle seem to glisten more wetly in her presence, and one of the obsidian mirrors catches the faint light differently, showing what might be the shadow of trees rather than the room’s interior.
The rhythmic tapping from within the walls resumes – tap, tap, tap – coming from somewhere near the north wall where Whitfield’s body rests. A few drops of moisture bead on the surface of the mirrors despite the room’s dry heat.
Dr. Whitfield’s camera lies partially hidden beneath scattered papers, its display screen dark but the power light still blinking red.
Cadalie looks down on her phone, hot white and suddenly urgent. “I can’t be here.” She draws a gun, and heavy with footsteps, pushes straight through the wall.
Amber flips back and forth through the notebook a bit before shrugging. She looks to the other woman, “Something about the mirrors reflecting memory and we have to stop the darkness. Or the guardian. Not sure which.”
But then the woman busts out through the wall like the Kool-Aid man and Amber just has to kind of stare at the hole a while. After a bit, she shrugs and pushes the papers aside to take the camera and flip through what’s in storage.
dense forests under starlight, figures in traditional indigenous dress performing rituals, and in the final photos, something massive and dark moving between ancient trees.
The last image shows all three mirrors simultaneously, each reflecting a different scene – but in the center mirror, a pair of amber eyes stares directly back at the camera with unmistakable intelligence.
Through the Cadalie-shaped hole in the fieldstone wall, cool night air finally begins to circulate, carrying with it the distant sound of movement in the borough beyond. The temperature drop causes the preserved organs to contract slightly, and a low, almost inaudible vibration begins emanating from them.
Dr. Whitfield’s fingers twitch once against the clay tiles.
The tapping from within the walls grows more insistent – tap, tap, tap, tap – as if responding to the sudden change in the room’s atmosphere.
Amber chews her lip a bit in thought, looking over the materials and the supplies present.
“He must have been trying to finish these rituals,” she wonders to herself, setting up her best to follow the actions performed in the photos to try and call the guardian to protect against the darkness.
a moonlit forest clearing, indigenous shamans chanting around a bound figure, and something vast and dark stirring beneath ancient roots.
Dr. Whitfield’s body convulses suddenly, his back arching off the floor. His eyes snap open – but they’re no longer his familiar brown. They glow with an amber light that matches the eyes from the camera’s final photograph.
“The binding… weakens…” The voice that emerges from Whitfield’s throat carries harmonics that don’t belong to human vocal cords. “It stirs… in the deep places… must… must stop…“
His head turns toward Amber with jerky, unnatural movements, and the tapping within the walls becomes a frantic drumming.
Amber jumps a bit as the body convulses. After he speaks, she snaps at him, “Dude, fuck off. You’re dead.” Of course, so is she. But she continues setting up the ritual materials as best she can to try to reenact the binding.
Whitfield’s possessed form lurches to its feet with unnatural, puppet-like movements. “Not… dead… guardian… bound to duty…” The voice grows stronger, more coherent. “You do not understand – the ritual was not binding – it was awakening. The darkness rises and I must-“
The body stumbles forward, reaching toward the mirrors with trembling hands. As Amber arranges the ritual materials, the obsidian surfaces begin to pulse with inner light, and the preserved organs start to emit a low, thrumming sound.
“No, no, NO!” The entity controlling Whitfield’s corpse becomes agitated. “The old ways – they kept it sleeping – you wake what should stay buried!“
The drumming within the walls intensifies, and hairline cracks begin to spider across the obsidian mirrors. The temperature around them drops further, and frost begins forming on their edges despite the summer heat.
Through the hole in the wall, distant howls echo across Killgrove – something is stirring in response to the supernatural activity.
“Well then how about, instead of being vague as fuck, you tell me what to do?” Amber wonders with some annoyance at the ‘guardian.’
“Or I can just smash the mirrors and let you deal with this shit. What I get for being a good Samaritan,” she grouses, pausing the ritual to see if she’s given a better option.
The possessed corpse staggers backward, Whitfield’s face contorting as two consciousnesses war within. “The… the organs…” it gasps, pointing with a shaking hand. “They are… bait. Lure for the great hunger that sleeps beneath the borough. The shamans… they bound me here… to guard… to watch…“
The entity’s voice becomes clearer, more desperate. “If the mirrors break… the binding fails completely. It will wake. It will feed. The whole borough…”
Whitfield’s body collapses to one knee, blood trickling from his nose. “The flute… when whole… it calls the binding spirits. But I am… trapped… cannot leave to stop what comes…“
From outside, the howls grow closer. Something large crashes through underbrush in the distance, and the preserved organs pulse faster, as if responding to an approaching presence.
The obsidian mirrors now show the same image in all three surfaces – a massive, writhing darkness moving beneath the streets of Killgrove, drawn by the spiritual disturbance.
Amber flinches at the howling. Not a favorite sound for a vampire. She grabs the two halves and pushes them together.
“So like, what? I hold the pieces together and you can play the notes or something? We don’t have a lot of time, and I only have two hands.”
The possessed corpse nods frantically. “Yes… but not me… the guardian spirit needs… proper vessel…” Whitfield’s eyes roll back, showing only whites, and when he speaks again the voice is entirely inhuman. “This flesh… dying… cannot hold the song…“
The entity looks directly at Amber with desperate intensity. “You… undead… already touched by death… might survive the joining… but the risk…“
The bone flute pieces grow warm in Amber’s hands, and ancient symbols carved along its length begin to glow faintly. The preserved organs pulse in rhythm with her heartbeat – or what would be her heartbeat if she still had one.
Outside, something massive slams into the side of the house, causing the timber beams overhead to groan. Dust rains down from the ceiling, and through the hole in the wall comes the sound of claws scraping against stone.
The darkness in the mirrors writhes closer to the surface, and the temperature in the room plummets further. Ice crystals begin forming on the walls.
“Choose quickly,” the guardian pleads through Whitfield’s failing form. “It comes…“
“Fuck me,” Amber whimpers, frustrated and worried. She’s glad the monster missed the giant hole in the wall, at least.
“Do what you need to do in order to bind this thing. But just guide. Don’t control. I know like a hundred angry arcanists if you try to possess me fully, and they’ll fuck your shit up,” she warns, otherwise letting down her defenses for this ‘joining’ which must only be temporary.
“The binding holds… for now. But it grows stronger each time it wakes. One day…“
The spirit begins to fade, its duty fulfilled once more. The flute grows cold in Amber’s hands as the supernatural energies dissipate.
Amber tosses the flute away as soon as the binding is done, more than ready to be free of both spirits.
The bone flute clatters across the clay tiles as Amber releases it, the ancient symbols along its length dimming to darkness. Dr. Whitfield’s corpse slumps forward, truly lifeless now, the amber glow fading from his eyes.
The obsidian mirrors crack with sharp sounds like breaking ice, their surfaces going dark and reflecting only the room once more. The preserved organs in the leather bundle shrivel and blacken, crumbling to dust within seconds.
Outside, the sounds of the retreating creature grow distant – heavy footfalls moving away from the house, back toward whatever deep places it emerged from. The ice crystals on the walls begin to melt in the returning summer heat.
The rhythmic tapping from within the walls falls silent.
Through the Cadalie-shaped hole in the fieldstone wall, the first hints of dawn light begin to creep across Killgrove. The immediate supernatural threat has passed, but the weight of what lies sleeping beneath the borough – and the knowledge that the guardian’s binding grows weaker with each awakening – settles heavily in the still air.
The crisis is over, but the greater danger remains, waiting for the next time someone disturbs the ancient protections that keep the darkness at bay.
Amber lets out a relieved sigh as the creature departs. “Some other idiot’s problem,” she mutters under her breath with a sidelong glance at the corpse, having absolutely no care or thought to what future problems the monster might cause.
The morning light streaming through the hole in the wall illuminates the scene of devastation – Dr. Whitfield’s body, the shattered mirrors, the pile of ancient dust that was once preserved organs. The research notebook’s pages flutter in the dawn breeze, its final entries now seeming like the ravings of a madman rather than scholarly documentation.
Somewhere in the distance, the sounds of Killgrove waking up begin – car doors slamming, voices calling morning greetings, the normal rhythm of a borough that has no idea how close it came to catastrophe in the pre-dawn hours.
The fieldstone walls have returned to their normal temperature, and the oppressive supernatural atmosphere has lifted. Only the lingering scent of old wood and the faint metallic tang of dried blood remain as evidence of the night’s events.
The ancient house settles back into its centuries-old slumber, keeping its secrets as it always has, while beneath the streets of Killgrove, something vast and hungry returns to its restless dreams, waiting for the next disturbance to stir it from its depths.
Amber dusts her hands off and shoves them back into her pockets. The murderer has been handled, and she’ll leave the cleanup for the police or the next person to buy the house. Not her problem, as she turns to head for the front door despite the hole in the wall right there.
Amber’s footsteps echo against the clay tiles as she makes her way toward the front door, stepping carefully around the pooled candle wax and scattered research papers. The heavy wooden door groans on its hinges as she pushes it open, revealing the quiet pre-dawn streets of Killgrove beyond.
The cool morning air feels refreshing after the stifling heat and supernatural tension of the house. Birds begin their tentative morning songs from the ancient trees that line the street, and the first delivery trucks rumble in the distance.
Behind her, the old house stands silent once more, its secrets buried with Dr. Whitfield and the crumbled remains of artifacts that were never meant to see modern light. The hole in the fieldstone wall will raise questions when the authorities arrive, but those are problems for daylight hours and people who get paid to ask difficult questions.
As Amber walks away, the rising sun catches the fossil impressions in the house’s stones, casting shadows that look almost like ancient pictographs – a reminder that some mysteries in Killgrove run deeper than any single night’s horror.
The immediate supernatural threat has been resolved through the players’ actions, though the greater danger sleeping beneath Killgrove remains for future investigators to discover.
Amber begins the long ride home, leaving all thought of these dangers behind.
The scenario draws to a close as Amber disappears into the awakening streets of Killgrove, her footsteps fading into the distance. The ancient house settles back into silence, its timber beams creaking softly as they cool in the morning air.
Dr. Marcus Whitfield’s research will be found later that day by concerned colleagues, his death attributed to an accidental fall during his late-night documentation work. The broken mirrors and scattered artifacts will puzzle investigators, but without context, they’ll be dismissed as curiosities from the borough’s pre-colonial collection.
The hole in the fieldstone wall will spawn theories about structural failure or perhaps vandalism, but no one will connect it to the supernatural events that unfolded in the pre-dawn darkness.
Killgrove continues its daily rhythm, unaware that its ancient guardian has once again fulfilled its duty, binding the great hunger that stirs beneath the streets. The shamans’ protections hold for now, but each awakening weakens them further.
In the depths below, something vast and patient returns to its slumber, dreaming of the day when no guardian will answer the call, and the binding will finally fail.
The players successfully investigated the supernatural crime scene, discovered the true nature of the threat, and prevented an immediate catastrophe while learning of the greater danger that lurks beneath Killgrove.
Meanwhile, Amber cares nothing about the greater danger. As she doesn’t share it, that danger will likely strike sooner rather than later. But that’s a problem for some future investigator.
The morning sun climbs higher over Killgrove as life returns to normal in the historic borough. Children walk to summer programs past the old house, their laughter echoing off fieldstone walls that have witnessed centuries of secrets. Shop owners unlock their doors, and the smell of fresh coffee drifts from the local cafe.
None of them notice the subtle changes – how the fossil impressions in the stones seem slightly deeper than before, or how the ancient timber beams creak with a rhythm that almost sounds like breathing. The borough’s supernatural equilibrium has shifted, the guardian’s binding ritual having drained more of the protective wards than it restored.
In the depths beneath Killgrove’s streets, something stirs more restlessly in its sleep. The next disturbance – perhaps another curious historian, or construction work that digs too deep, or simply the passage of time wearing away the shamans’ ancient protections – will find those bindings weaker than they were just hours ago.
But for now, Killgrove basks in the summer morning, blissfully unaware that its borrowed time grows shorter with each passing day.
The immediate crisis has ended, but the seeds of future catastrophe have been sown by knowledge left unshared and warnings left unheeded.