Blessed by Fire

by P W Hillard

  “We aren’t going to wait a minute, see if the rain clears?” Asked Jess.

  Aasif laughed. “If you wait for the rain to stop in Wales, you’ll be here a long time. Besides its only spitting.”

  “What a horrible way of phrasing that.”

  “Hello! Police! Anyone home?” Jess stepped inside, the door to the house was ajar. “Hello?”

  “Maybe no-one’s home?” Aasif asked.

  “Hello?” Jess stepped down the entrance passage and pushed open a door to another room. “Ah, Aasif, you better call this in.”

  “Call in wh- “He stopped as he turned to look at the now open living room. “Yeah, I’ll call it in.”

  The building was a slaughter house. An older man, who Jess assumed was Mr Greenwood the senior, was impaled onto the living room wall. The metal curtain rail had been pulled from above the window and forced straight through his stomach and into the plasterboard. The rail had bent from his weight and his body was now slumped half supported by a coffee table, the finial of the curtain rail resting on his stomach. Mrs Greenwood was in the kitchen. Her head had been slammed into the oven door repeatedly until both the glass and her skull had cracked open. Jess found the two boys upstairs in their shared bedroom. Each lay on their beds, chests ripped open, ribs arching outwards like great wings. Their organs had been pulled out and hooked onto their ribs like a grotesque washing line. Entrails dripping onto the floor. Jess was leaning over the older boy, Daffyd when Aasif knocked on the door.

  “I called it in, backups on the way. Holy shit. This is fucked up.” He stepped into the room, careful not to step in any of the blood. “This has to be linked right?”

  “Must be,” said Jess, she had slipped on a pair of gloves from the pocket inside her jacket and was rummaging in the pocket of the body. “Aha!”

  “What are you doing?” asked Aasif.

  “Found a phone. You’re right, these boys knew the first victim, could be something on here.” Jess tried to swipe on the phone’s touchscreen, it was locked. “You’re taking this rather well.”

  “My dad was a halal butcher, wanted me to follow in his footsteps. Seen more than my share of blood and organs,” answered Aasif.

  “It’s a bit different when it’s a person.” Jess was leaning carefully over the body, phone in hand.

  “Yeah, but I’m grateful for the stronger stomach right now. What are you doing?” asked Aasif puzzled.

  “One downside to modern phone, ah there we go, facial recognition. All unlocked. Doesn’t matter if you’re alive or dead.” She held the phone to her face and began opening apps and reading messages.

  “I’m not sure I want to know how you realised that. Didn’t look like that was a first for you,” said Aasif.

  “I wish I could say it was,” Jess admitted, “Oh these have been some naughty boys indeed. Looks like they were spreading some err, rather intimate, photos of a girl. It seems like she sent them to Glyn, the first victim, who wasted no time showing everyone.”

  “So, a motive then, but that girl would be what, sixth form? Sixteen or seventeen like these two? How could she do all of this!” asked Aasif, his face twisted in shock.

  “Well, once backup arrives, let’s say we go find out.”

  Mark hit the floor hard, knocking the wind out of him. The spectre drifted slowly towards him. He had been in the room where Chelsea had been attacked but a few moments, crystal spinning madly in reaction to the spirit when it had appeared. With a gesture it had thrown him into the hallway. Scrambling to stand Mark was thankful it hadn’t chosen the window again. There was no ratty second-hand van belonging to a wannabe DJ to save him. As the spirit advanced Mark could feel it exerting an overwhelming pressure, its force squeezing him uncomfortably. The thing was pale grey, as though all colour was anathema to it. Her face was stretched its sunken features stretching into contorted shapes as though it were clay. It wore a maid’s outfit its skirt drifting as it floated. The entity reached out, running its hand along the wall, its nails were sharp curved talons that cut thin slashes into the peeling wallpaper.

  “Ah shit,” said Mark as the ghost wailed. “He reached into his coat pocket, producing a small black bag, his hands trembled as he struggled to open the drawstring that kept it close. The pressure from the spirit grew as it loomed over him, terrible claws bared. Reaching into the bag Mark took a pinch of powder onto his palm and blew. The spirit shrieked as the dust touched it, each mote turning into a tiny spark as it burnt. Mark saw his chance, sprinting down the stairs, the front door slamming behind him, bouncing off the doorframe. Opening the van door, he leapt into the seat. Having had to flee far too many times than he would have liked, the keys had been left in the ignition. He switched the engine on and peeled off with a squeal of his tires.

  “Fuck voicemail,” swore Mark down the phone, he drove quickly, eager to get distance between himself and the house. “Jess when you get this, we got a problem, fucking things not a normal ghost. Our angry female spirit has a physical form, claws, I’m pretty sure that it’s a fucking onryo. Good thing I had iron filings with me or I would have been fucked. Call me when you get this.”

  Jess could feel her phone buzzing in her pocket. As she stood with Aasif by the door. She knocked again ignoring her phone. They had gotten the address from the school, the boys having cruelly included the girls full name with the pictures. The door opened ajar with a squeak, stopping on its chain.

  “Hello?” said the girl inside, no more than seventeen. She wore pale blue pyjamas and a pair of slippers that seemed to be entirely fluff.

  “Claire Payne? I’m D.C Holden, this is constable Rahman, can we have a word?”

  Chapter 6

  Mark looked at his phone. There was still no reply from Jess, but he wasn’t concerned. Jess was notoriously terrible at returning calls, texting or just using phones in general. Mark had never not seen her screen smashed. He placed the phone onto the small bedside table in his hotel room and resumed his task. Picking up a large can of orange spray paint from beside the phone, he began to paint large ornate glyphs onto the walls.

  He stood back when he was done, fingers orange from the paint. A bewildering array of symbols covered the wall. Kanji, Babylonian sigils, hieroglyphs, pentagrams, and arcane runes of every conceivable kind. Satisfied, Mark opened the small black silken pouch he had used in the house and slowly poured a thin line around the perimeter of the room. When the first bag was empty he took another from his case, having dragged it back into the room. Once he had completely lined the outside of the room, using a third bag as he did this, he took the remainder of the iron filings within and sprinkled them across the carpet, taking care to reach under the bed. The whole floor now covered in a thin scattering of iron, Mark grabbed the spray can and stood on the bed.

  “For fucks sake,” he cursed, as he tried to spray the ceiling, having to jump repeatedly on the bed to get enough height. With great difficulty he sprayed a large a large snowflake symbol, an eight-pointed star, the ends of each crossed with a curve, pairs of straight lines drawn through each spoke of the star. An old Norse rune of protection. Panting, Mark sat down on the bed, leant over into his case, and removed a book. The cover read “Wraiths and Revenants: An encyclopaedia”.

  Flicking through the book, Mark found the page for an onryo. The picture included was an old Japanese print, a grotesque female form in a white burial robe, long black hair and curving talons. He read through the passages, trying to pry useful information from the pages like a miner would dig for gold. The book was a mass market widely available book, nothing about it was particularly occult, instead being a recounting of folklore. In Marks experience folklore was passed down from generation to generation for a reason. It worked. It normally transpired that traditional methods were overkill, stabbing a vampire with anything worked just as well as a wooden stake, but it was a great starting point.

  “Typical, just my shitting luck,” Mark swore at no-one in particular. The only example the boo
k listed of stopping one was by a legendary Buddhist monk, not something Mark could easily get on tap. Curious he picked up his phone and searched quickly on the web. There was a group of Buddhist monks in nearby Cardiff! Unfortunately, it seemed they were on an annual retreat and so out of the country. Mark let out a loud sigh, rolled his eyes and placed his phone back down. “Ok Mark,” he said to himself, “it’s still a kind of ghost. There has to be a way to get rid of it”. He glanced back down at the page. Vengeful female spirt, betrayed in life, seeks revenge, prone to jealousy. It seemed too familiar to him. He thought for a moment and flicked the book to another page. “The Woman in White” it read. There he was presented with a familiar image. A spectral woman, white gown flowing, driving by revenge, created by a betrayal in life. “Right so onryo and women in white,” Mark said as though talking to the book, “they seem so similar they must at least be related. Different interpretations of the same kind of spirit maybe?” Thinking for a moment, Mark picked up his phone, scrolled for a moment on his contacts and then dialled.

  “D.S Singh,” answered a voice.

  “Rajan, hey, it’s Mark, that woman in white you dealt with a few years ago, how did you sort it?”

  Rajan Singh stood on the parapet, looking over into the courtyard, slowly following the line as it shuffled onwards. He adjusted his turban slightly; the wind was blowing a gale and being this high up had exacerbated it. In front of him a group of American tourists were excitedly taking pictures and leaning worryingly over the ancient stone.

  “In the twelfth century,” continued the tour guide to a chorus of impressed murmurs from the tourists, “the original wooden motte and bailey was replaced with the first stone castle at this site.” She stopped and stared at the glazed looks in front of her. “A motte and bailey is a kind of castle, with the keep on a hill in the middle and an enclosed courtyard around it.” She was met with several nods to signify that of course, they had known that all along. “Once the castle would have had several more buildings – “continued the guide as she descended the stairs, the tour following her.

  Rajan, waited patiently for the tour to pass the destination he needed for his place. A small fire exit located just off the gift shop. Slipping silently from the crowd, he approached the dark green door. As he had hoped it was the older kind, its alarm tied to the great metal bar that ran across the door. The end of the bar was connected to the alarm, when it was straight it connected the circuit, pushing the bar to open the door broke it, triggering the alarm. Rajan pulled out a small flat sheet of metal from his pocket. One of his less scrupulous contacts had provided him with the tiny conductive magnetic card. Pushing it flat against the bar, Rajan very carefully and slowly pushed the handle down, card pressed hard against it. Inch by inch he pushed the door open, ensuring the small card completed the circuit in its place. The small black sheet stuck to the mechanism, preventing the alarm. Leaving the door ever so slightly ajar he returned to the tour who were busily stripping the gift shop of overpriced tea towels and calendars.

  Carefully approaching the castle, torch in hand but switched off to hide him from the dark, Rajan was relived to find the door still open. He pulled it just wide enough for him to squeeze through, stepping inside. He stood before the entrance to the gift shop, a large metal shutter having been rolled down to cover it. He shivered, pulling his jacket zip up as a chill breeze drifted through the hall. Flicking on his torch, he lifted a small blue crystal suspended on a cord from his pocket, dangling out in front of him. It began to swing slowly in a circle. Cautiously, and quietly, he began to walk, the breeze growing into a faint whistling wind as he did.

  He stepped out into the courtyard, the wind having reached an angry bluster. The crystal was spinning furiously, despite the elements arrayed against it. Rajan stopped, before him was the small stone alcove responsible for the last sighting of what he sought. A civilian had taken a photograph of a woman, pale grey almost white, a faded apparition weeping by the stone. The crystal was pulling against its cord in anger, threating to tear form Rajan’s hand, so he slipped it into his pocket. He shone the torch into the archway, the darkness within swallowing even its light. That when he heard it. Faint as first he almost mistook it for the wind. It grew in volume become clearly the sound of a woman sobbing angry painful tears.

  “Hello?” said Rajan in a whisper.

  “Hello, hello? Is someone there?” came a meek reply.

  “Can I help you at all, I’m here to help you?” He stepped forward, closer to the arch. The shadow seemed to slither towards him, forming into the shape of a woman, her dress ragged. Her skin was ashen grey, her eyes sunken dark pits.

  “They took my child! They took him!” screamed the spectre, drifting towards Rajan a few inches from the ground. “They took him! They took him!” the ghost became more and more angry as she repeated it, changing in moments from meek girl to furious demoness. She seemed to stretch and distort, her limbs becoming thin distended branches, swinging wildly. She shrieked a bellowing noise, somehow high and low pitched at once and flew screaming at Rajan. Then she was gone.

  “I didn’t,” said Rajan down the phone. “It was harmless. Scary as shit but no threat to anyone. We left it there, good for local tourism.”

  “Yeah somehow that’s not much help to me. The thing I’m dealing with is horrible. Just being near it is like this weight pressing on you. You like can feel its grief physically. Plus, its able to take some kind of physical form, scratched up the walls pretty good. I’m thinking it’s an onryo,” replied Mark.

  “What’s one of those when it’s at home?” Rajan asked curiously.

  “Ever seen a Japanese horror film? One of them. They seemed pretty like your classic woman in white ghost, figured they might be the same thing. Doesn’t seem like though, can’t mark this one down in the tourism column.” Mark shrugged his shoulders even though he was on the phone.

  “Doesn’t mean it’s not. There ever been any other attacks from it you know of?”

  “No, first recorded one recently.” Mark listened intently, intrigued where Rajan was going.

  “There are stories about ghosts at your location, local legends and stuff?” Rajan enquired.

  “Yeah, going back at least a hundred years.”

  “Well maybe your movie ghost is something a woman in white can become? Like if they get supercharged or something makes them really angry. Maybe whatever happened to her has happened again, or maybe something else is amping up ghosts in the area,” said Rajan. “

  “You are a genius, next thing is working out how to stop it,” said Mark. The door to his hotel room knocked. “I got to go, think that’s Jess. Thanks man.”

  “Didn’t feel like answering your- “Mark stopped as he opened the door. It wasn’t Jess, but a young woman. She was smiling up at him rosy checked. She was wearing a maid’s uniform. “Oh, I’m sorry, don’t need any housekeeping, I forgot to put the do not disturb up.” The woman stood there silent, smiling an eerie grin. “That’s a pretty old-fashioned uniform they… oh shit.” The woman let out a slow hiss, like air escaping from a tire. She lunged forward at Mark and smashed into an invisible force with a thud. She stood up, her form had become paler, her skin lighter. Her eyes had become piercing black. She lashed out, swinging at the doorway. As she did great orange sparks burst from the air. Mark stepped back into the centre of the room. The wards he had set up were holding for now.

  “You’re mine” hissed the ghost, drawing out each word. She leaned against the open doorway like it was a glass pane. Sparks flew as she pushed her face against it. “You’re mine. Do not run from me my sweetheart. Don’t be like the other men, they all leave me. Incited by whores!” Her whisper had turned into a shout. “You won’t do that to me my love?” Slowly but surely, she began to push through the door, orange sparks flaring from her limbs, stepping through a waterfall of fire. Mark stepped up onto the bed, directly beneath the rune he had drawn on the ceiling. “Every man has let me down.” Her colour h
ad faded completely now, becoming an almost shimmering white cloud, dark specs of grey where her skin was showing. She flexed her fingers, which had sprouted long talons menacingly. She grimaced and let out a hiss of pain as she stepped onto the carpet, the iron filings burning her skin.

  “Let you down how?” asked Mark. The ghost stopped, apparently puzzled at the question.

  “Promises broken, my first love promised to take me as his bride, make me mistress of the house not some servant,” Mark could hear the disdain as she spoke. “Spent all his money on sluts and whores! Ran his business into the ground. Had the audacity to blame me! So, I took what was mine! I trapped him in the cellar and set him ablaze!” The spirt laughed.

  “Is that how you died too? There isn’t even a cellar on the plans. Are you still down there?”

  “It doesn’t matter! The house is mine! Mine! I awaken and find what again! More whores!” The ghost waved her arms in the air angrily. Sparks continued to burn at her feet, her anger cancelling out any pain it caused her. “But no matter, now I have a handsome gentleman caller, a respectable man to build my respectable family.” She stepped forward, closing on the bed.

  “So, err, what exactly do you want from me?” Mark said.

  “To be my one and only my love, to forsake all others!”

  “I can do that!” Mark replied panicked. “In fact, you know what, why don’t you go home, and I’ll be right along. We can start our new lives together.”

  “You mean it my dear?” The spirit smiled, revealing mangled stump like teeth.

  “Of course, just have some other business to tend to first” Mark said, hoping his idea would work.

  “Don’t be long!” said the ghost. Colour returned to, first her clothing and then her skin. She stood there looking the perfect picture of a happy young woman, and then vanished.

  Mark stepped to his hotel room window, opening it wide in the vain hope the fresh air would help remove the oppressive force the ghost had projected. He leant his head out, willing the winds to blow it away. He look down at the black van he had rented his heart dropped. Great gashes had been torn into the sides, his tires ripped to shreds.