Patrollogs
(Solomon's ghost banishing)
[Sun Jan 7 2024]
On the Sprawling Hillside of Arkwright Cemetery
It is night, about 31F(0C) degrees, and there are a few dark grey stormclouds in the sky. The area is wreathed in mist. There is a waning crescent moon.
The distant caw of crows adds to the bleakness of the wind-washed graveyard. A long, shuddering moan emerges from the direction of the ocean before a transluscent figure in a white dress with a gaping mouth flickers above the gravestone.
Casey was hoofing it, and almost as soon as she gets to the site, Casey gives a smile to those attending. "Hiiii," Casey says. She had a bag of water softener salt over her shoulder, and starts by making a wide, wide circle around the gravesite. "Just... a precaution," Casey says, tilting her head as she goes. "... there's been a lot of *zombies* afoot, after all, if you believe in these things," Casey says with amusement, making the giant circle. And then taking a step out to make another one.
"Casey, by the way. I've seen you around," Casey says to Solomon.
Solomon finishes drawing his circle. Raising his hand, he cuts lightly across his palm, letting blood drip down. As it does, it catches fire. "Solomon Inigo," he says, using the fire to draw some sigil in the air. "I am glad to meet you, Casey. Let's hope it is not zombies." He looks up. "It seems to be some other spirit."
Solomon starts to babble about their most recent nightmare before regaining control of themselves.
Jessica beams Casey briefly with her flashlight at her arrival, she shows instant relief upon seeing someone she recognizes. "Hey Casey." she says, in a friendly voice. But then the figure with the white dress flickers above the gravestone and she catches it with the corner of her eye, "What the shit was that?"
"I --" There is a rush, and then Solomon twists a little, as if briefly possessed. "I see you, hunter! I will burn your skin from your bones, I will flay each inch of flesh, I will--" A shudder, and then it is as if he expels whatever was inside him. He stands here, having just drawn a circle in the earth with his cane, a dagger in hand. Blood flows from one hand, and where it drips, it catches fire.
Casey pauses, emptying out that bag of salt as she tilts into a curtsey, in spite of the jeans and sweater she was wearing. She taps a pistol at her side, tugging up her sweater to show it off. "If there are, I gotya, Solom..." Casey says, her eyes tracking down towards the burning blood.
This was different.
Casey draws her eyes back up towards Solomon, her expression gaunt. "Hello, Jessica," Casey says, her tone of voice gentled. "Are you alright, ah... Solomon?"
Solomon grits his teeth as he draws a sigil to force the possessing spirit out of him. "A little better now," he says, and he moves his hand again, the dripping blood drawing another sigil in fire in the air. "But I do not like unwelcome things entering my body." His voice has basso humor. "There are four of us. I stand to the north," he says. "Casey, take the eastern quarter. Jessica, the west. And Tabitha..." He recognizes Tabitha. "The south, please."
Though the ritual is already set in place, Tabitha follows her nose, so to speak, to where the others are standing. She does not speak immediately, but does draw out a knife from her bag. Along a life line she cuts, and the wound seeps clay thick blood. "What are we dealing with?" she asks Casey and Jessica, her eyes drawn and locked onto Solomon.
Jessica's head cocks at Solomon, she looks weirded out by the burning blood but doesn't say anything about it and when she's directed by him, she gets a little lost and goes east first, before realizing thats wrong and the goes to the west to stand there. Still the asian girl uses her phone flashlight to light the immediate area for herself. "It's not zombies this time at least."
Tabitha takes her place at directional south within the salt circle. She kneels, and she begins to draw sigils into the snowy, dead grass beneath her in her own blood. "Yes, Mister Inigo," she says.
Opposessive doom presses down on all of the group, filling their hearts with hopelessness and despair.
"It's not the zombies," Casey says, her voice a little intense. Casey had laid an industrial grade salt circle around them, probably expecting the former. "It's something... possessing people," Casey says to Tabitha. "Another spirit, maybe," Casey says. Clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
"I'd like that, something a little more... traditiona..." Casey begins by saying, her knife lingering at her palm.
A beat more, and the tip of the knife goes more towards her wrist, even as she lingers towards the east. Her expression pinches.
Knife-tip goes back to her palm, cutting some there, leaving lifeblood to drift onto the ground, for Casey to trace other sigils.
From his position in the north, Solomon draws another symbol in the air with burning fire. Whatever arcane symbol it is strange, alien, as he lowers his head. "A presence. It invades," he says, clipped, his tone full of worry. "Even with four of us at the quarters, it may seize us." Low doom in his tone, as he thrusts his cane into the earth, letting it stand there like a sentinel so he can gesture with both hands.
Jessica is just a simple college girl in a miniskirt and a hoodie. So when Solomon goes deep into ritualistic magic its obvious she barely follows along. She stands there, awaiting instruction and at least she stands in somewhat the right location based on some innate knowledge she has. She looks exceedingly worried
Every member of the group sees a vision of their own death.
Casey seemed to be murmuring at this point, her eyes glancing out towards the east as that feeling of doom subsides. Casey was doing fairly basic scripts, as far as these things went - 'traditional' exorcism sigils that could be found in the first layer of secret texts. And murmuring to herself, apparently, Casey's eyes glancing back towards the girls and Solomon afterwards. "Yep, I think it's trying to get in, rig..." Casey says.
Casey stands up, jolting as her features fall, color draining from the woman's face as she stands, transfixed, a moment, staring out into the graveyard.
There's a pause: Solomon stares in the distance for a moment, and the movements of his hands falter. "Casey," he says. "Help Jessica. She does not know the path," he says. "She..." He inhales, he tries to gesture. "She needs to be ready."
Jessica gets a distant look in her eyes and loses focus, she stands there stiff and out of it for quite some time before she snaps from it and realizes shes still in the middle of the shit without a clue. "Huh, what?" she ask, looking first to Solomon blankly, then Casey, "What do I do?"
Doom. It is etched on her features, and Tabitha, startled by some vision, steps backward from an unseen assailant. She holds her hands upward, arms crossed. "Nooo!" she screams, but like premonitions go, it is gone, and she lowers her arms with a soft sheepishness. "You cannot dissuade me, spirit!" she calls out, kneeling once more to complete her own symbols, though she is eyeing the one that she does not understand. She dare not ask about it, yet, perhaps. Instead, she pierces the ground with her athame knife, it coated in her blood and the remnant of the clay she was just working with.
Solomon raises his fist in the air, closing it, and then the blood-on-fire runs down his arm, like some strange pastiche of Lady Liberty. It's a low beacon in the night. "This place is our place," he says, his voice booming. "You are not welcome, spirit!" he says. Moving his bloody right hand, he draws another sigil, even as he makes some complex hand-tut gesture with his left hand.
Solomon feels his heart freeze as if encased in ice and drops to his knees.
Casey runs her tongue over her lips, bringing her hand up to her forehead, rubbing at her temple with her forefingers as the blade lingers near her head. "I can't... this is... different."
A breath, once, twice, and Casey glances to Jessica. "Salt, and suffering," Casey says to Jessica, as if this was a well-practiced mantra for her. "You need blood. Life's blood - to fuel a ritual," Casey says. "And arrange it into a shape that draws this energy into power, ah..." Casey says, tapping at her backpack. She had left her book at home in exchange for ammo.
"Look at what I'm doing. Try to copy this," she says, pointing the tip of her knife towards the sigil she made.
Falling to Solomon's knees, the fiery symbols seem to die out. There's a shakiness to the man's body as he reaches with his unbloodied hand to cover his heart. There's a shaky, scared indrawn breath.
"Blood? I don't have a knife." Jessica tells Casey, looking very unsure about any blood letting she might have to do. She remains posted at the western place of the circle where she was initially bid. The asian looks towards Solomon when he kneels and she ask him nervously, "Are you having a heart attack?"
Casey, focused as she was on Jessica, looks up as she notes Solomon's distress. "Tabs?!" Casey says, her hand quivering as she keeps her blade out, pointed towards the ground. "Jessica, focus," Casey says, reaching out her hand kinda harshly to grab the woman's wrist and yank it towards herself.
To cut Jessica's palm, if the woman doesn't fight her too much.
Jessica squeels when Casey takes her wrist and cuts her palm, but she doesn't pull back and she does snap back into focus thanks to the pain and severity of the situation. "Ouch, I'm focusing!"
Casey was murmuring as she goes, although her eyes were focused on Jessica primarily. Casey had a small shiver in her arms, the usually silly girl becoming deathly serious.
"When we're done here, you're going to go to Black Rose and buy a book I'll tell you about," Casey says.
"And you're going to read it. So that when we run into something serious like this..." Casey says.
"You'll know more of what to do."
Low, ragged breathing from the Inigo sorcerer, as Solomon clutches at his chest. Fiery blood is still dripping, but now it just drips, unspent, to the ground.
"He is not so old as to have a heart-attack." Tabitha says, even as she seems to recognize a power of the spirit. She walks over to Solomon, leaving her corner, to assist him up, should he accept it from her. She is chanting in a badly formed Latin. She's trying to ignore so much of what Casey is telling Jessica, but she does ultimately say, "You should not come out here without knowledge to protect yourself, Jessica."
Solomon spins, flailing wildly at nothing as the spirit fills his vision with his greatest fears.
Jessica bleeds from her hand where Casey cut her and her pure human blood adds it's special flavor of power to the ritual whether the asian girl is very knowledgable or not. She winces at Tabitha chiding her and tries to defend herself by saying, "The best way to learn is by doing."
When Tabitha gets close, Solomon flails his arms. Spatters of burning blood go flying, some leaving little smolders on the redhead, others landing near Jessica and Casey. He shakes, possessed: it's in him, now, as he reaches for his cane to support himself on his knees, sagging against it. He begins to speak, and it is in tongues, glossalia. Perhaps his eyes are rolling back: who can see, under those dark glasses at night?
Tabitha shouts in surprise when droplets of burning blood land upon her skin. Nay, screams. She stumbles backward, using her free hand to wipe his blood off her. So much for chiding others.
Casey stands upwards, distracted from Jessica as Casey looks to Tabitha, Casey's brow curling in some hidden thought as she looks between Tabitha and Solomon. "No, no nonono," Casey says. "Jessica, the sigils. Draw your own!" Casey says, pointing towards her own. They did not burn with blood, but they splattered the dirt and top of a gravestone. It might take a little artistry, but Jessica could probably trace them herself.
Casey was concerned with Tabitha and to an extent, Solomon, her eyes on the latter as she sidesteps around him towards her friend, the former.
Solomon is filled with a desire to be alone and never have another lie eyes upon them again.
As the spirit closes in on him, Solomon's eyes are shut close behind dark glasses. He grasps his cane, head bowed, and there is just a low shaking in his body as he grapples with it. The spirit is within him, and inside his valley of shadow is the battle.
Jessica grimaces as she's forced to take an important role. Being one to wilt under pressure she moves to where Casey indicates and with her blood, tries to trace the sigils with her very limited ritualism knowledge. "I've only played with basic curses.." she complains, trying her best to draw while ignoring the pain of her bleeding hand.
Tabitha meets Casey halfway, holding her arm where the blood had splattered her. She turns her back on Solomon, and it is like he was never even there the way she does not look back in care and empathy for the ailing man.
Casey stands up straight as she can. Casey glances towards Tabitha, and Casey starts a chant. Again, the sort of knowledge one finds in hidden books, but not *deeply* hidden books, her eyes focused on Solomon. The Latin was clumsy, but it was obvious the woman had practiced, turning the exorcism ritual on Solomon instead at this moment.
There comes the soft sound of sobbing as the feeling of doom slowly fades, the spectral figure falling to her knees, and then falling through the earth back below. In the distance on the ocean the silhouette of a dark ship slips further to sea.
Solomons Ghost Banishing
(Solomon's ghost banishing)
[Sun Jan 7 2024]
On the Sprawling Hillside of Arkwright Cemetery
It is night, about 31F(0C) degrees, and there are a few dark grey stormclouds in the sky. The area is wreathed in mist. There is a waning crescent moon.
The distant caw of crows adds to the bleakness of the wind-washed graveyard. A long, shuddering moan emerges from the direction of the ocean before a transluscent figure in a white dress with a gaping mouth flickers above the gravestone.
Casey was hoofing it, and almost as soon as she gets to the site, Casey gives a smile to those attending. "Hiiii," Casey says. She had a bag of water softener salt over her shoulder, and starts by making a wide, wide circle around the gravesite. "Just... a precaution," Casey says, tilting her head as she goes. "... there's been a lot of *zombies* afoot, after all, if you believe in these things," Casey says with amusement, making the giant circle. And then taking a step out to make another one.
"Casey, by the way. I've seen you around," Casey says to Solomon.
Solomon finishes drawing his circle. Raising his hand, he cuts lightly across his palm, letting blood drip down. As it does, it catches fire. "Solomon Inigo," he says, using the fire to draw some sigil in the air. "I am glad to meet you, Casey. Let's hope it is not zombies." He looks up. "It seems to be some other spirit."
Solomon starts to babble about their most recent nightmare before regaining control of themselves.
Jessica beams Casey briefly with her flashlight at her arrival, she shows instant relief upon seeing someone she recognizes. "Hey Casey." she says, in a friendly voice. But then the figure with the white dress flickers above the gravestone and she catches it with the corner of her eye, "What the shit was that?"
"I --" There is a rush, and then Solomon twists a little, as if briefly possessed. "I see you, hunter! I will burn your skin from your bones, I will flay each inch of flesh, I will--" A shudder, and then it is as if he expels whatever was inside him. He stands here, having just drawn a circle in the earth with his cane, a dagger in hand. Blood flows from one hand, and where it drips, it catches fire.
Casey pauses, emptying out that bag of salt as she tilts into a curtsey, in spite of the jeans and sweater she was wearing. She taps a pistol at her side, tugging up her sweater to show it off. "If there are, I gotya, Solom..." Casey says, her eyes tracking down towards the burning blood.
This was different.
Casey draws her eyes back up towards Solomon, her expression gaunt. "Hello, Jessica," Casey says, her tone of voice gentled. "Are you alright, ah... Solomon?"
Solomon grits his teeth as he draws a sigil to force the possessing spirit out of him. "A little better now," he says, and he moves his hand again, the dripping blood drawing another sigil in fire in the air. "But I do not like unwelcome things entering my body." His voice has basso humor. "There are four of us. I stand to the north," he says. "Casey, take the eastern quarter. Jessica, the west. And Tabitha..." He recognizes Tabitha. "The south, please."
Though the ritual is already set in place, Tabitha follows her nose, so to speak, to where the others are standing. She does not speak immediately, but does draw out a knife from her bag. Along a life line she cuts, and the wound seeps clay thick blood. "What are we dealing with?" she asks Casey and Jessica, her eyes drawn and locked onto Solomon.
Jessica's head cocks at Solomon, she looks weirded out by the burning blood but doesn't say anything about it and when she's directed by him, she gets a little lost and goes east first, before realizing thats wrong and the goes to the west to stand there. Still the asian girl uses her phone flashlight to light the immediate area for herself. "It's not zombies this time at least."
Tabitha takes her place at directional south within the salt circle. She kneels, and she begins to draw sigils into the snowy, dead grass beneath her in her own blood. "Yes, Mister Inigo," she says.
Opposessive doom presses down on all of the group, filling their hearts with hopelessness and despair.
"It's not the zombies," Casey says, her voice a little intense. Casey had laid an industrial grade salt circle around them, probably expecting the former. "It's something... possessing people," Casey says to Tabitha. "Another spirit, maybe," Casey says. Clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
"I'd like that, something a little more... traditiona..." Casey begins by saying, her knife lingering at her palm.
A beat more, and the tip of the knife goes more towards her wrist, even as she lingers towards the east. Her expression pinches.
Knife-tip goes back to her palm, cutting some there, leaving lifeblood to drift onto the ground, for Casey to trace other sigils.
From his position in the north, Solomon draws another symbol in the air with burning fire. Whatever arcane symbol it is strange, alien, as he lowers his head. "A presence. It invades," he says, clipped, his tone full of worry. "Even with four of us at the quarters, it may seize us." Low doom in his tone, as he thrusts his cane into the earth, letting it stand there like a sentinel so he can gesture with both hands.
Jessica is just a simple college girl in a miniskirt and a hoodie. So when Solomon goes deep into ritualistic magic its obvious she barely follows along. She stands there, awaiting instruction and at least she stands in somewhat the right location based on some innate knowledge she has. She looks exceedingly worried
Every member of the group sees a vision of their own death.
Casey seemed to be murmuring at this point, her eyes glancing out towards the east as that feeling of doom subsides. Casey was doing fairly basic scripts, as far as these things went - 'traditional' exorcism sigils that could be found in the first layer of secret texts. And murmuring to herself, apparently, Casey's eyes glancing back towards the girls and Solomon afterwards. "Yep, I think it's trying to get in, rig..." Casey says.
Casey stands up, jolting as her features fall, color draining from the woman's face as she stands, transfixed, a moment, staring out into the graveyard.
There's a pause: Solomon stares in the distance for a moment, and the movements of his hands falter. "Casey," he says. "Help Jessica. She does not know the path," he says. "She..." He inhales, he tries to gesture. "She needs to be ready."
Jessica gets a distant look in her eyes and loses focus, she stands there stiff and out of it for quite some time before she snaps from it and realizes shes still in the middle of the shit without a clue. "Huh, what?" she ask, looking first to Solomon blankly, then Casey, "What do I do?"
Doom. It is etched on her features, and Tabitha, startled by some vision, steps backward from an unseen assailant. She holds her hands upward, arms crossed. "Nooo!" she screams, but like premonitions go, it is gone, and she lowers her arms with a soft sheepishness. "You cannot dissuade me, spirit!" she calls out, kneeling once more to complete her own symbols, though she is eyeing the one that she does not understand. She dare not ask about it, yet, perhaps. Instead, she pierces the ground with her athame knife, it coated in her blood and the remnant of the clay she was just working with.
Solomon raises his fist in the air, closing it, and then the blood-on-fire runs down his arm, like some strange pastiche of Lady Liberty. It's a low beacon in the night. "This place is our place," he says, his voice booming. "You are not welcome, spirit!" he says. Moving his bloody right hand, he draws another sigil, even as he makes some complex hand-tut gesture with his left hand.
Solomon feels his heart freeze as if encased in ice and drops to his knees.
Casey runs her tongue over her lips, bringing her hand up to her forehead, rubbing at her temple with her forefingers as the blade lingers near her head. "I can't... this is... different."
A breath, once, twice, and Casey glances to Jessica. "Salt, and suffering," Casey says to Jessica, as if this was a well-practiced mantra for her. "You need blood. Life's blood - to fuel a ritual," Casey says. "And arrange it into a shape that draws this energy into power, ah..." Casey says, tapping at her backpack. She had left her book at home in exchange for ammo.
"Look at what I'm doing. Try to copy this," she says, pointing the tip of her knife towards the sigil she made.
Falling to Solomon's knees, the fiery symbols seem to die out. There's a shakiness to the man's body as he reaches with his unbloodied hand to cover his heart. There's a shaky, scared indrawn breath.
"Blood? I don't have a knife." Jessica tells Casey, looking very unsure about any blood letting she might have to do. She remains posted at the western place of the circle where she was initially bid. The asian looks towards Solomon when he kneels and she ask him nervously, "Are you having a heart attack?"
Casey, focused as she was on Jessica, looks up as she notes Solomon's distress. "Tabs?!" Casey says, her hand quivering as she keeps her blade out, pointed towards the ground. "Jessica, focus," Casey says, reaching out her hand kinda harshly to grab the woman's wrist and yank it towards herself.
To cut Jessica's palm, if the woman doesn't fight her too much.
Jessica squeels when Casey takes her wrist and cuts her palm, but she doesn't pull back and she does snap back into focus thanks to the pain and severity of the situation. "Ouch, I'm focusing!"
Casey was murmuring as she goes, although her eyes were focused on Jessica primarily. Casey had a small shiver in her arms, the usually silly girl becoming deathly serious.
"When we're done here, you're going to go to Black Rose and buy a book I'll tell you about," Casey says.
"And you're going to read it. So that when we run into something serious like this..." Casey says.
"You'll know more of what to do."
Low, ragged breathing from the Inigo sorcerer, as Solomon clutches at his chest. Fiery blood is still dripping, but now it just drips, unspent, to the ground.
"He is not so old as to have a heart-attack." Tabitha says, even as she seems to recognize a power of the spirit. She walks over to Solomon, leaving her corner, to assist him up, should he accept it from her. She is chanting in a badly formed Latin. She's trying to ignore so much of what Casey is telling Jessica, but she does ultimately say, "You should not come out here without knowledge to protect yourself, Jessica."
Solomon spins, flailing wildly at nothing as the spirit fills his vision with his greatest fears.
Jessica bleeds from her hand where Casey cut her and her pure human blood adds it's special flavor of power to the ritual whether the asian girl is very knowledgable or not. She winces at Tabitha chiding her and tries to defend herself by saying, "The best way to learn is by doing."
When Tabitha gets close, Solomon flails his arms. Spatters of burning blood go flying, some leaving little smolders on the redhead, others landing near Jessica and Casey. He shakes, possessed: it's in him, now, as he reaches for his cane to support himself on his knees, sagging against it. He begins to speak, and it is in tongues, glossalia. Perhaps his eyes are rolling back: who can see, under those dark glasses at night?
Tabitha shouts in surprise when droplets of burning blood land upon her skin. Nay, screams. She stumbles backward, using her free hand to wipe his blood off her. So much for chiding others.
Casey stands upwards, distracted from Jessica as Casey looks to Tabitha, Casey's brow curling in some hidden thought as she looks between Tabitha and Solomon. "No, no nonono," Casey says. "Jessica, the sigils. Draw your own!" Casey says, pointing towards her own. They did not burn with blood, but they splattered the dirt and top of a gravestone. It might take a little artistry, but Jessica could probably trace them herself.
Casey was concerned with Tabitha and to an extent, Solomon, her eyes on the latter as she sidesteps around him towards her friend, the former.
Solomon is filled with a desire to be alone and never have another lie eyes upon them again.
As the spirit closes in on him, Solomon's eyes are shut close behind dark glasses. He grasps his cane, head bowed, and there is just a low shaking in his body as he grapples with it. The spirit is within him, and inside his valley of shadow is the battle.
Jessica grimaces as she's forced to take an important role. Being one to wilt under pressure she moves to where Casey indicates and with her blood, tries to trace the sigils with her very limited ritualism knowledge. "I've only played with basic curses.." she complains, trying her best to draw while ignoring the pain of her bleeding hand.
Tabitha meets Casey halfway, holding her arm where the blood had splattered her. She turns her back on Solomon, and it is like he was never even there the way she does not look back in care and empathy for the ailing man.
Casey stands up straight as she can. Casey glances towards Tabitha, and Casey starts a chant. Again, the sort of knowledge one finds in hidden books, but not *deeply* hidden books, her eyes focused on Solomon. The Latin was clumsy, but it was obvious the woman had practiced, turning the exorcism ritual on Solomon instead at this moment.
There comes the soft sound of sobbing as the feeling of doom slowly fades, the spectral figure falling to her knees, and then falling through the earth back below. In the distance on the ocean the silhouette of a dark ship slips further to sea.