"What would you do if I didn't have it with me?"

Sariya asked as soon as she entered the room, her backpack hanging snugly behind her. She huffed and pouted as her steps came to a halt directly in front of the seat Tira was leaning against, a clear show of displeasure, no doubt stemming from being bothered out of the blue.

"There's no way that’s possible. Didn’t you say your mom tried to throw it away when you were at school?" Tira asked, glad to see her partner in crime coming for the help she knew they would need her for.

"I'm not giving you any bonus for assuming that."

Sariya threw her bag onto the empty loveseat with more force than necessary regardless of the flinch she elicited from the newly sobered Ayunda, unzipped the thing and pulled out what looked to be a thick leather-bound book.

With its yellowing pages, falling-apart spine and curled ends held together with a rubber band; all the book needed was a title in blood red ink to look ominous and suspicious, like a movie-caliber production of a cursed tome.

Unfortunately, the cover, while suspected to be made of questionable materials, was deceptively devoid of any incriminating writing. It was as plain as any other washed-up old journal would look.

"So, what are you looking for, specifically?"

"There's this old hymn, designed to invite the concept of Death to take away lingering spirits from the living world..." She explained in as few words as possible. It was enough for Sariya to shoot her guess immediately. "Ah, the Call of The Resented?"

"That's the one." They’re right on the money if their investigator had gotten the title correct on the first go.

"Let’s see, old mantras and hymns should be around the end."

Sariya carefully flipped the book to the end, only needing to tuck away two pages before she found the entry she was looking for. "Here it is! A hymn based on old traditions of giving mass funerals to spirits of unknown origin or who died in gruesome battles or murders! I think this should be chanted in a specific rhythm, like all hymns were, but since I only own the prayer part of the copy; it’s kind of incomplete."

Leaning forward to inspect the page, seeing that Sariya had another piece of paper flipped up to show the original text in squiggly lines, Tira asked the obvious question for her own clarification, "I’m assuming the additional note is your translation?"

"Yes, but, I mean, I certainly tried..." Sariya flipped the translucent paper back on the page, right on top of the Sanskrit section. Swatting away Rizal’s hand that was about to move the book to make it easier to read from his angle, she continued her speech, "Old Aramaic is harder and more or less a hassle to translate than, say, linear B. So don’t take this at face value, since this one is an old translation attempt, back before I got a hold of the internet and official published papers."

"Do we even have foreign linguistics courses in our university?" Henry asked Gunawan in a whisper, to which the response was a solid no. "Although we do have photography."

Studying the paper carefully, the words were indeed in a discordant order and without much cohesion as to what they should represent. Most of it had even been left blank, as if she had had no idea how to put each symbol together to form an understandable meaning.

"Can you attempt another translation right now?"

"I can try." Without promising anything, Sariya flipped back to the translucent note to reveal the old text again. "Hand me another paper."

Donny gave her his notebook and pen upon request and they watched with rapt attention as Sariya dug into the text once more. The difficulty did not seem to become any easier as time passed got the girl as she had to lean back a couple of times, tapping the butt end of the pen impatiently, before delving back into translating again with a small smile signifying a breakthrough.

Only five minutes had passed, but in that short amount of time, Sariya had completed her latest attempt at translation and handed it off to a pair of hands who had taken it immediately upon offering—hands that turned out to be Rizal's.

"Here’s the most basic translation, see if it fits your rhythm, assuming that’s why you’re asking for a translation now."

Rizal gave the text a scan, muttering under his breath, matching the words to the notes he had previously heard before he gave a real reading to the rest of the group.

"Hear me, hear me, o’ restless one. For I have come to bring your heart peace.

"Your presence, yes, your unbending will, had drained Earth mother of her life.

"Your sorrow, yes, your baleful grief, had tainted Father Heaven with never-ending cries.

"Your blood, yes, your ties to the world of the living have disappeared. Time has hidden it, nature has reclaimed it, and now it is time for us to cut your chord of regret and misfortune.

"So you may reclaim the past for yourself. And we may reclaim the future for our children.

"I ask of you, I plead for you, o’ forgotten one, to remember your name. I ask of you, I plead for you, to control your still rising anger. I ask of you, I plead with you, to forgive the ones who have left you stranded without a purpose.

"I pray for you, Death, to come–"

He ended the reading, his mouth grimacing as he tore his eyes away from the text. "There are more lines below, but Sir Jaya’s humming ended here."

Passing the notebook, one side after another, they read the rest of the hymn in their head. Lydia took a picture of the translated text to read it by herself and passed the notebook to Henry and Gunawan, who handed it over to Dharma and Ayunda, before it finally ended up in her hands.

Scanning the hymn briefly, she could see how this could have been turned into a song. Even though the rough translation was, as Sariya said, extremely scuffed, there was something about this verse that if it were to be polished, could turn out beautiful.

After counting the words and finding the potential rhythm, she noticed that something was just a smidge amiss.

Tira kept that little nugget of a fact to herself as she handed back the book over. It wasn't exactly important to the case at the moment. She could inform Sariya later about it.

Right now, there were other existing questions to pursue—now possible thanks to the translation attempt. "Since the hymn was based on burial rites, do you think that someone could have used it for nefarious purposes?"

"I– Depends? Are you asking about the capacity of black magic as a whole concept or are you asking how it's done in this country? If you’re asking about how we do it, okay, so here's the thing. Most of the black magic that witch doctors here do is done based on their communion with the spirits of those who walk in between."

Sariya read Tira's eyes and went off on a tangent, something she had gotten used to after their past escapades with previous cases. "They command, the spirit complies and after the payment is enacted, voila! Results. We have your usual stuff; hexes, voodoo, curses; spells made to harm other people with the medium of that person’s body parts or cherished belongings."

"Now, the reason why most witch doctors or shamans communicate their rituals to the great astral dwellers in old and sometimes heavy dialects of an already old local language to the point of sounding almost gibberish, is mostly to employ the mystery in something that won’t get them any flak about it if someone else hears about it."

She tapped the tip of the pen against her thigh as her voice twisted, sounded a bit colder and more detached. Tira knew she was about to say something that would have gotten them stoned if they were with a client.

"Like, I hope you all understand that most witchery available to the people? The majority of them? Fakes. Those with real power can definitely mess up someone in normal speech, and it’ll happen—but that’s not fun, isn’t it? Mystery sells, and it sells at a very good price.

"The problem with that is, you can’t tell who’s the real one and who’s the con artist. Because even if I don’t believe in that bullshitery– someone else will! I can curse someone in old Sanskrit, for example, and it would still count as me cursing someone only if there was another speaker of Sanskrit who was in the room and understood me. The difference is just that nobody else could understand if I did that, they would think I was just speaking in a foreign language.

"And if the guy who heard it believed in curses and became convinced that I cursed him specifically, neither of us can do much more than break ties because no matter how much I try to explain it, he would be so sure that I cursed him using the djinn spirit guardian that I paid in the blood of the virgins every full moon that there's no way of getting me to stop since sending hexes and curses is not legally covered in modern court!"

"Sariya. The point, please? We’re pressed for time." She reminded the girl since Tira knew that Sariya had no context on why she had been called, specifically and had been biding her time to annoy her, just enough so Tira would supply the context voluntarily to stop her ongoing tirade.

So far, it had never failed. Which was extremely frustrating from her point of view due to this being the one and only flaw in what otherwise would be a great partnership in their work.

"The point, is that communication works both ways, sis Tira."

She poked at the book with her finger, hard enough that it thudded upon impact. "You can use an old language to curse someone, yes, but that is not the point of using said language in the first place. There are three factors needed to establish a successful connection to the supernatural plane, and the first one is that both the practitioner and the spirit need to be on the same page."

Sariya brushed off invisible dust off the book as she continued, "As malevolent spirits such as djinns, imps and other such things are believed to have existed from the beginning of human life itself (although it depends on which mythos we are using). It's possible for them to understand old, ancient Aramaic if spoken to, but if the speaker themselves don't not fully grasp the essence of that language because they had to know and believe wholeheartedly that they were indeed cursing someone or else the whole deal is called off before it could continue to step two; the actual cursing."

Nodding, she gave the younger girl a chance to breathe and sink back into her seat as she summarized the entire info dump in her head for later use.

"Thank you for your insight, Sariya. You can go back now if you want."

"I’m thirsty."

Tira handed her a cup of mineral water and a straw.

Just in time for the lights in the office to flicker out.

The rest of the group understood none of what just happened. Night was about to approach soon, accompanied by a rapt knock coming from the door asking for them to follow, as the professor had asked them to come and hurry.

And Tira already felt tired beyond her comprehension.

—·∞·——·∞·——·∞·—

As the students looked particularly panicked, the team headed back out to the main lobby to find out the detainment room's whereabouts. They were guided by a student who turned out to be Henry’s roommate in the dorms.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Meanwhile, she updated Sariya about the gist of the case as they speed-walked, wanting her opinion on the matter.

The girl wasn't going back until she solved the case. She could see it in her friend's eyes that Sariya was already hooked onto the mystery and wouldn't let it stay unsolved if she had anything to do with it.

So instead of asking for assistance, which she had already done, Tira said, "As long as your mother is alright with this..."

"Getting permission was your job though, right?" Sariya gleefully shot back with a mischievous smile on her face.

Tira could only sigh back. That has indeed been her role since time immemorial.

Professor Lucas was in the middle of talking with another student, something about discussing their shift schedule when the group arrived in the hallway. "Ah, I apologize for not returning. The situation with the other two students suddenly turned dire and I couldn't leave."

"Understandable, sir; may we inquire as to what the emergency was?" Donny walked up front as they followed the professor into a makeshift medical room. It was filled with beds from one end to another, where four people laid on top of each bed. Three young faces appeared to be deeply asleep, while one was sitting on the bed with his head slumped forward in a clear sign of exhaustion.

Ayunda pulled a chair and took her seat next to her grandfather’s place. A little bit of life returned to Sir Jaya upon the arrival of his granddaughter, which allowed him to start talking, albeit with some difficulty.

"The good news is, I am still awake, for now." Sir Jaya patted Ayunda's worried hands that had lain over his bed with gentle strokes, then glanced at the rest of the group, "The bad news is, I think I don’t have much more time to fight it back, else my heart gives up and decides for me."

"I feel we have stumbled onto some information, but we aren’t sure if it leads to anything." Dharma took the far wall as he uncovered the curtain separating the patients, "Unless a certain someone has something to say?"

She caught the look and had to take a deep breath. The accusation happened only because she hadn’t got the chance to explain herself back there, though now was as good a time as any, since now was all they had.

"I called Sariya here because I was curious about something, which she confirmed. The short explanation for our debate back there is that there must be someone either motivated enough to curse three people in a row, or, whatever the side effect of the ritual they attempted succeeded and began affecting very specific people to accomplish… something."

"All the victims are male, for one. Age has nothing to do with it, as Professor Jaya’s affliction has shown it's not one of the criteria. All of them happened to be awake at night when the moon wasn't not shining either." Sariya took over as she listed the facts she got from their short walk, studying the three sleeping boys and their sickened parlor. "Did they all happen to take place in the same location? Specific parts of the campus?"

"The moon?" Lydia caught a part of her speech and asked back.

"We keep track of it." Tira admitted with a shrug, her eyes catching an important thing hanging by the wall, and walked over to it. "Ever since Dias confirmed that hexes and jinxes would be an actual thing, I had to start keeping track of that and the traditional dates, per Sariya’s request."

"Just in case something happens." The little girl played with her twin braids as she shrugged, "In this case, something did happen."

Tracing her fingers on the dates, she pointed to the first day of the month. "The month started here, along with when the supposed first case happened. Moonless night." She traced down to count, one day since the first comatose patient was found, another victim reported, "The second report. Moonless. On the third report, there was a new moon on the day he reported and three days later when he went to sleep, moonless. We’re not even in typhoon season, yet there were so many instances of the moon being overshadowed or just plain missing at suspicious times of the night."

Glancing back to the group sitting by the bed closest to the door, Sariya closed her statement with strong last persuasive words: "One is a coincidence, two is bad luck, three is a constant. Make that how you will."

Silence dripped in the room as slowly as the IV drip dispensed its liquid. Not that Sariya cared much about decorum since she was now officially on the hunt, the younger girl asked once again, "So, were there any specific locations that the other three had loitered around?"

Professor Lucas shook his head as he recovered from being in a daze. "Aside from the first student, the other two reported that they heard the singing from their beds at the dorm and the east toilet hallway, respectively." Both locations are on opposing sides of the building."

"And I heard mine in the south-facing hallway, the one facing the parking lot." Professor Jaya commented in a tired voice.

"Location is a no-go then."

Donny clicked his tongue subtly, spinning the pen in his right hand as he thought. "I mean, the entire campus itself can be counted as a ‘location’ if just based on the definition, but why is that important?"

"Where you conduct your ritual matters for it to work. It needs to have enough... Spirituality, or energy, so that the connection could be made." Tira noticed that Sariya had carefully made her words more direct and digestible, holding herself back for once since she was in the company of what were essentially– strangers.

"And you’re right, the entire campus can be counted as a location of its own because so much bloodshed has happened here. The negative energy around us, if it were visible, would be so potent and suffocating that any kind of ritual would work almost immediately. You need negative energy to do bad stuff, positive energy for the good stuff—you get it right?"

"Anyway, covering an entire campus with script lines would be very noticeable, so it had to be done in a room, or on a medium placed conveniently in the shape of an array." Sariya pulled on her hairband and started undoing her hair to pull it up into a tight bun.

"So now this is a matter of either desecrating the place of the ritual or destroying the nodes. It’s a hunt."

Her dark brown eyes darted to the clock on the wall, just as a sharp snapping came from the hair bands, settling her locks into a tight, neat ponytail. "And we only have about five hours before another attempt takes place."

"If that's the case, then we need to split and cover as much area as possible." Donny pocketed his pen at the same time that Lydia pushed herself off the chair. Dharma leaned forward as he got ready for the move. "What are we looking for?"

"Fishy smell, shapes or letters drawn in a combination of chalk or blood or both, items that do not look like they belong on the campus; they might also be buried, so the grounds will have to be inspected." Sariya listed off all possible combinations for a curse to be planted. "And generally a bad, necrotic vibe—you’d know once you saw it. If we could pair up with the university staff or the students, the search might go faster."

"That doesn't sound helpful at all..?", Rizal noted aloud, gaining himself a glare from Sariya.

"Hands,'' she demanded.

Rizal stretched out his right hand, palm side up. Sariya gave his hand such a hard slap, so quickly, that the hit sounded like a whip.

"OWW!"

"That's what a curse should feel like. Remember that feeling."

—·∞·——·∞·——·∞·—

In order to not raise suspicion, they decided to move during dinner time when most of the students were outside, getting their food and socializing one last time before curfew rolled around.

Everyone else had paired off with a student or other university faculty members to start their sweep from inside the building first, before going off to inspect the actual grounds. Leaving out Ayunda and Donny, who decided to stay in the detention room to care for Sir Jaya.

Henry went off with Dharma to sweep the east. Sariya was paired with Gunawan as they checked the south. Lydia had gone with Rizal and the boy who had fetched them from the office to try their luck in the west.

Thus, this arrangement left the old professor with her.

Tira scanned every single inch of every room and hallway they walked into. She didn't utter a single word until eventually, the tension must have been too hard for the old professor to bear as he chuckled when she flipped a pencil case upside down to check the bottom. "I’m sorry, I was just reminded of an easter egg hunt."

She gave a nod back, indicating she understood the ridiculousness of the matter, but still carefully let her chains manifest and slither along the wall, tapping on the surface to check for empty, hidden places. "What subject do you teach, sir?"

"Cyber security." He shrugged lightly as they entered yet another classroom. "And you? What major did you take?"

"Science. Although I had planned to transfer next year." She admitted without shame, to the confused smile of the old man.

"Why? Someone with such a good focus as you would have done well in science."

Chia wouldn't have thought so if she was still sane.

"The material was too hard." Tira took the sixth reason on her list that wouldn’t sound too outrageous. An understanding nod was given to her response, to her relief, and the conversation drifted back to silence. Another bust.

"You seemed… Close, with Sir Jaya." She asked after they got to the second floor. "Were you two old friends?"

"I suppose so. Officially, I’ve known him since the day he started teaching here thirteen years ago. But before that-" Sir Lucas sighed as he flipped open a cabinet, finding nothing but dust and cobwebs. "Before that, he and I attended the same high school, although we weren’t associated much other than being schoolmates at the time."

"Oh? Were you in a different class?"

A small laugh came from the professor again, his face turning friendlier, "Different year, actually. I was already in the third year when his year enrolled. But he was such a bright lad that everyone couldn’t help but know his name."

Tossing over a questioning look at the man quickly had him complying with her inquiry as he continued. "He won the school a lot of their trophies and, not to mention, he was also the casanova of the block. It’s hard to not hear about what he’s doing, even if you’re digging your face away in a textbook. Poetry, mathematics, science—there’s nothing that man can’t do. Even if that was wooing the prettiest flower in the school, who later became his wife."

"Ah, the good old days..."

The professor sighed, nostalgia painting his face in the dark with smoother lines and shades. "It was unfortunate what happened to her. Jaya was left in quite a dark place after he lost her, and that weight never went away, even after all this time..."

As she gave the man the space and time to either wrap up the conversation by himself or to continue, Tira stayed silent. Listening carefully to each word. Withdrawing the chains momentarily so it wouldn’t be distracting.

Professor Lucas decided to continue with another heavy sigh, from a good place in his heart, he said, "For a long while, his son was all he had. The happiest I ever saw that man was during the wedding of Akarsana, his son. He was so happy for him and... And the next was the birth of his granddaughter, Ayunda. She was the one who mended the rift between Yulia and him."

Sir Lucas sat on the side of the table, improper for a professor, but the man did not seem to care as he folded both his hands up in his lap. "Now that I’ve told the honest story, it's my turn to ask. Have you forgiven her?"

Tilting her head sideways, Tira crossed her arms to convey her confusion, just momentarily, to figure out what topic the old man had jumped into, out of the blue, when it finally clicked back for her to recall the mess that went down a mere few hours earlier.

"Are you going to apologize in Ayunda’s stead?"

"No, no, you said it yourself that she had already apologized." Sir Lucas smiled somberly, his aura being the most guarded he had ever been since she saw him for the first time that day. "I’m asking if you’ve forgiven her for what she did to you."

"I’m failing to understand why it is imperative for you to ask me that but... No." Tira breathed out her honest answer. "There was nothing to forgive if I didn't fault her to begin with. The mess of that situation was wholly of my own doing."

Nodding- to himself, to her?- the professor stood back up as he whispered into the night air. "Good. Good, that is a good answer."

She followed with a normal, "Thank you. Let’s keep looking."

They continued the search to the third floor. Still nothing. The fourth floor was also a bust.

To sweep through each nook and cranny carefully, they had not taken the elevator and, instead, had been climbing up the stairs one layer at a time.

It was just hunch, but her instincts told her that if someone wanted to hide something, the emergency staircases that barely saw any foot traffic would be good hiding spots.

Just as they made it up to the fifth floor via the stairs, she felt a zap of harsh static in the air—right by the wall-mounted fire extinguisher.

Using her chains so she wouldn't touch the item with her bare hands, Tira carefully moved the red tube, then opened the latch to the rolled hose by its side.

The hose rolled down on the floor, flopping as it lost its support, revealing a neat circle etched into the metal behind it. The red of paint and rust blended seamlessly to paint a picture of a language long forgotten.

Bingo.

Shaping the end of her weapon to take the form of a sword, she shredded the lines with one of her own, shaving the words and the shape so the spell would no longer be whole.

The ends of the chains shook. Her ears filled with sharp scratching of metal against metal, though she could not tell if it was the plate creaking or if it was someone else screaming in a highly inhuman pitch.

But she persisted, keeping away the dizzying feeling in the back of her head until she was satisfied with the amount of damage done to the etched spell.

Minutes had passed. Blinking away the nausea, she turned to the professor, who had been holding his mouth and looking a little bit green in the face. "Sir?"

"I’m okay." He massaged his chest in a desperate effort to presumably keep his stomach contents down. "That's one down?"

Another ear-piercing shriek tore through the night. She snagged the professor in the torso and said only to, "Hold on tight."

Rushing down and down and then outside of the staircase, following the direction of the scream, had led them to the outside; by the public kitchen where a woman was convulsing on the ground surrounded by her friends. Blood had flowed out of her eyes, nose—and every other available orifice for blood to flow out of.

And soon, another student fell, female again. With the same symptoms. Tira placed the professor on the ground.

Sariya was the second to arrive, carried by Gunawan on his back as he had sprinted with all his might, dry heaving as he put down the girl onto the ground.

"The price in blood... They were using other people’s blood so the rebound wouldn’t get back to them–" She was about to open her mouth again when the rest of the gang had run outside following the second scream. "Ok, good, we’re all here. Did you find the nodes on your end?"

"We did." Dharma muttered since Henry was also out of breath and could not answer.

"We were just about to break the circle when the screaming happened." Lydia spoke out, alone, as Rizal joined the group that was gasping for breath. Their other partner was still struggling to catch up, and he visibly gave up as he walked out the door at a slower pace than when he ran out.

"Don't touch the remaining nodes! Destroying two of them should be enough for the ritual to not work properly anymore." Sariya warned the group as she hastened her pace to check on the fallen victims. "Let me see the two of them."

Kneeling by the side of the two women, taking the blood between her fingers and stretching them apart, it was only now that Tira realized that it was not due to the lack of lighting that the liquid seemed dark.

The blood had turned black.

With the consistency of a tar or molasses, clinging stickily to the ends of Sariya's fingertips before it evaporated into the air. Her expression turned grave as she looked back at the professor and the seniors with an order,

"Make them puke!"

Without hesitation, some of the seniors moved to pick up their friend’s body and put pressure on their abdomen or roll them to face the ground so they could puke. The first woman had returned to her consciousness enough that she complied and hurled onto the ground a mixed bit of the food they had just consumed and yet to be digested, more tar-like liquid, and kept heaving one last load until her saliva ran clear.

The last thing coming out of the stomach was covered in a bit of bile, and the last of the stomach acid was a handful of wet, long clumps made out of human hair.

The same thing was happening to the other female student, although she was not present in mind and had to be assisted to get the last bits of tar and hair out of her gut, which caused her to struggle more when she saw what she had puked out.

"This is more serious than I thought." Sariya frowned as she studied the quickly evaporating tar, turning into black smog after it was collected in the pool of vomit and now more noticeable in its dissipation. "Show me the other two that you haven’t destroyed yet. I need to see if we can trace the one who inscribed it from the nodes–"

Another vomiting student fell to her knees in the background, bleeding, just like the other students had. Then another female was struck when everyone was out of the building.

Finding Purama with the luck of finding a needle in a haystack, Tira saw the man try his best to ignore her after their eyes met.

Darn. She couldn't accuse him of tampering then. Not yet.

"Someone is erasing evidence!"

That was all she had to yell before the group took off again. Henry, Gunawan, and Dharma took off to the east, while Lydia, Rizal, and the professor ran towards the west.

They were so panicked and in a hurry that they had not noticed that Sariya had not followed either of them. Glancing up at her, the little girl said, "I don’t like the conclusion I’m getting to."

"What kind of conclusion is it?" She asked back.

Without answering, Sariya stalked back into the campus building up right and proper, with Tira close on her heels. Nothing more needed to be said between them.

The finale was upon them.