Its breath stinks. It’s like the time Rocco got sick in the car.

But I have to keep breathing in the reeking air. If I stopped, I’d have even less of a chance of keeping the beast’s jaws at bay. My hands already tremble against the monster’s bristly snout and chin.

The beast doesn’t care. Its yellow eyes have yet to look away, let alone blink. Slimy drool drips down its jagged teeth and pools in its mouth. Its lungs continue to pump out its stinking breath. Could it actually be toxic? As if this creature wasn’t deadly enough.

I'm not gonna win this battle of strength. I should run away before my arms give in and the beast sinks its teeth in me. I just need to find a place to --

Mary? Mary! What are you doing here? Get away!

She’s standing a few meters away, eyes wide in terror, which I can understand well - this thing is scary even for Dad. But she needs to get away now! I've seen what this monster likes to do to little girls, and I couldn't bear seeing that happen to Mary… please, let us get out of this alive!

"Daddy…?"

The beast's ears perk from Mary's whimper. It pulls back and turns its head to her.

"No!" I yell. Mary, what have you gone and done? I would've run in just a moment and led the beast away! You should've waited and fled then! No, you're only a kid… I shouldn't demand strategy like that from you… but if only you'd…

The beast slides its tongue across its teeth and turns the rest of its body to Mary. Its tail whips, audibly splitting the air. No, you stay away from her!

"Hey! Over here!" I scream at the monster, desperate for it to face me again, but it's deaf to me. I have to get to Mary. I have to shield her --

A powerful strike of the beast's left horn to my chest throws me onto my back with a sizeable bruise. It hurts, a lot. It may have broken a rib. But that doesn't matter, no pain matters, I have to get to Mary, Mary --

I catch her in my sight. The beast already has her in its claws. She screams and it's terrifying - I can feel her fear and so much more on top because the beast opens its jaws and --

I'm somewhere else.

Dark. Soft. Blanket, pillow…

I sigh. It was just a nightmare.

I check on Laura. She’s still fast asleep, her long brown hair in a bedhead. Good, I didn't wake her up by thrashing in my sleep or anything…

I rub my forehead. It's sticky from cold sweat, just like the rest of my body.

Should I try falling back asleep? I don't want to sink back into that dream, and lying here feels uncomfortable… I think I'll get up for a bit. Dry off, maybe get some water… anything to calm down my racing heart.

As quietly as I can, I lift the blanket off myself and get off the bed. The alarm shows 3:54 in orange digits. Figures. I slip through the bedroom door into the upstairs hall. The bathroom's to my right, but there's something else I want to do first.

To calm my paranoia, I open the door to Mary’s room. She’s in bed, sleeping soundly like Heimi in her grotto. See? She’s fine.

No need to bother her anymore. I don’t want to wake her up just because Daddy had a silly dream. I close the door as carefully as I opened it and enter the bathroom.

Having washed up, I consider going back to bed, but… I just don’t feel tired. I should tucker myself out. But how? I don’t want to wake anyone else up, including Rocco, who is much more alert… maybe I should take a walk outside. Nights this time of year are pretty and pleasantly cool. Seeing the world blanketed in darkness might help my brain realize it’s sleepy time, who knows.

This plan requires sneaking past Rocco, though… heck, I’ll try it anyway. He can’t hear everything, can he? And he falls asleep easily. That settled, I creep downstairs, avoiding the worst of the squeaky steps. Each whimper under my feet makes me cringe, but I’d be surprised if they were loud enough to wake Rocco.

Downstairs, all that remains is to sneak through the entrance hall and out of the door. Rocco’s bed is nearby, in the living room, and turning the corner, I catch sight of him. As expected, the dobermann lies motionless, curled up in the bed, barely visible in the darkness. Behind him lies the fireplace, long unlit. I should light it again soon. It would delight everyone. We’d need firewood first, though, as the basket is nearly empty. I should chop some. Actually, why wait? Chopping wood is both tiring and productive.

I make it to the door without Rocco stirring and lift the keys off their hook. To pocket them, and to keep off mosquitoes, I take a jacket from the coat rack as well. I slip my feet into a pair of worn rubber boots. Now comes the hardest part…

I twist the handle and nudge the door open. The hinges creak and the frame clacks, but slowly, slowly... I keep still and check Rocco. He doesn’t move. Maybe this only seems louder in the silence. I open the door just enough to fit myself through and close it with equal care. Whew. Mission successful.

The air is cool and clear. The streetlights provide just enough light to see ahead with relative clarity, all I currently need. Gentle gusts swirl in the trees while wildlife of the night chatters and chirps, certain sounds less pleasant than others. But a croak is a poem to a crow, as the scripture says - there's beauty beyond human preference.

I circle to the back yard and unlock the shed without worry. There's much more room for noise out here. Even for chopping wood, though…? I'm starting to see a fatal flaw in this plan. Well… I guess I'll try to chop quietly, then? Is that possible?

Ah, no worries. It's not like I got anyone's hopes up. I only really need to give myself something to do.

The logs feel dry as I carry a few of them to the chopping block. Nice, much better than being damp and hard to cleave. Now for the axe…

I lift it out from its usual crevice between the wall and a pile of boxes. As I bring the axe outside, the light hits its head and glimmers on its metal. I find my left hand on my throat.

I sigh and pry it away. My throat is left feeling vulnerable, but I can’t keep feeding that habit. It’ll go away slower that way.

I tried to keep yesterday’s events from my mind as best as I could, but now I’m just in too deep to escape. I can’t block the image of that kid and his knife so near my throat. I was so close to death. Everything could’ve ended with just one mistake. Not even a mistake. That kid was so unstable, so crazed that he may have done it without any reason…

At least I had the comfort of seeing him cured. After the exorcism, after he’d woken up, he was back to his senses and seemed alright. He didn’t remember anything, or so he said, so there was little hope of getting an apology, but it’s not like I needed one. I’ve already forgiven him.

I move back to the block, set up a log and do some practice hacks to see how quietly I could do it while still making progress. Settling for the best result, I keep hacking at a steady pace, replacing the log with a new one after finishing. That chopping as background music, the events of the exorcism replay in my head.

The chapel that appeared around me, regally decorated to a ridiculous extent. The bodies on the floor - the policewoman and a copy of myself, both robed in bloodstained white. The kid in front of me, on the board… he was only a head and a bloody blanket of skin dangling from his neck, but somehow still alive. And absolutely horrified.

Then I heard screaming. I turned around and saw… that thing.

Arukei wants us to respect all creatures, no matter how unsightly they may seem. I agree, but this… this was a demon.

I hear the front door open. Shoot, did I wake someone up after all? There are steps… but who is it?

A fifteen-year-old boy with short red hair peeks around the corner of the house. Eli.

"What are you doing?" he asks, walking closer.

I sigh. "Had a bad dream and couldn't fall back asleep. Thought I'd do something useful. Sorry for waking you up, tried my best not to."

"Nah, it's okay…" He sits down next to me. "You wanna talk about it?"

"Eh…"

He stares at me. "Was it about what happened yesterday?"

Looking back at his blue-green eyes, I can't bring myself to lie. "Yeah…"

"You gotta talk about it, Dad. If you don't, we can't comfort you right."

"But I don't want to worry you. I don't want to give you nightmares, too…"

He playfully bumps me with a fist. "Hey, come on. I’m a big boy. I’m not scared of any monsters."

“Alright,” I sigh. I set the axe aside and sit on the chopping block. “But you have to promise me you won’t get scared.”

“Pbbt. I promise.”

“Okay.” I pause. “So how much do you know about what happened to me yesterday?”

“Well, I know you met the guy who was rude to you the other day and that he held you hostage,” he says, voice lowered as he knows that must’ve been frightening to go through. “And that you figured he was possessed and then, after the police got you safe and arrested him, you performed an exorcism on him. That’s about the extent of what I know.” He shuffles closer. “But I can tell there’s stuff you aren’t telling, even if it’s just talking about how you felt...”

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“Yeah... it’s true. There’s more to it.”

I position myself more comfortably, which admittedly is hard on what's essentially a tree stump.

"He was trying to exorcise her," I tell him. "I told the police I couldn't remember, but I'm certain of it. The things he was saying…" I rub my chin. "It seemed like he was trying to read an exorcism from a book, but she had made the pages blank. He threatened me in order to get her to show them."

"Did it work?"

"I'm not sure," I say. "She appeared to show herself to him, and they talked for a bit. It sounded like she was giving herself up. You know, turning tangible. Letting him kill her. But once he swiped with his knife, one of the policemen managed to disarm him. That's when I made my escape.”

Eli smacks my shoulder, causing me to flinch.

“Sorry,” he says. “Mosquito. Keep going.”

Well… alright, then. I clear my throat.

“The police then arrested him. He was struggling and screaming the whole time, about how this was a misunderstanding and the like. I came up to the police and explained to them that he was possessed, and I showed my exorcist license. We then took the kid to the hospital, to the spiritual operation room, where he was strapped down and I performed… the exorcism.”

Eli notices my troubled expression. “What happened during the exorcism?”

“He was a mess,” I tell him. “Yelling something unintelligible, convulsing, even screaming in pain. And then… something unsettling happened.”

“What was it?”

"Towards the end of the session, the room changed around me. It’s happened to me before - as you know, sometimes the exorcist can start to see whatever illusion is being shown at the moment - but the imagery I saw… was simply strange. Usually it’s pretty straightforward, just general scary stuff or replaying some past event, but this one was odd. And disturbing.”

I describe the scene to him - the chapel, the bodies, the kid on the board as just a head and a cloak of shed skin - though leave out the most brutal details. He’ll get the gist without them.

“Then I heard screaming. I turned around and I saw this… huge, monstrous creature,” I explain. The memory of its vicious stare still makes me shudder. “It was like a mix between a bull, a bear and a dog with the teeth of a crocodile. Covered in black, bristly fur. And its tail was like a whip with a pointed tip. Like it was a… hellhound of some kind.”

I pause, wondering if Eli thinks it actually sounds pretty cool.

“What happened then?” he asks.

“Well, there were more robed people in the room, and the monster was going all out on them,” I continue. “They were pretty much no match for it, and they all fell. And then there's the thing that really upset me… against the wall, there was this little girl, maybe twelve years old, and the beast went for her next. It..."

I pause. Eli can say he can handle whatever I say and look at me with those curious eyes all he wants, but I'm taking creative liberties with this part.

"The beast knocked the life out of her," I continue. "I'd finally had enough at that point and just closed my eyes and kept reciting the exorcism. I tried to block out any sounds around me, but one caught me off guard - someone yelling 'stop, stop'. I had to see what it was and opened my eyes. It was a ghost, a face-bearer, in the mouth of the beast. She was looking straight at me, terrified.

"But I couldn't stop. I had to go on to free the kid and to free the ghost, who probably was the one I was staring at. I figured she must have thought the exorcism I was doing was lethal - which it wasn't, of course, so I ignored her for the time being and kept speaking. But… she yelled something over it, right before the beast ate her whole. She said… 'he killed me'. Twice."

"Did… she not explain that before she left, then?" asks Eli, oblivious. His innocence really twists the knife in my heart.

"She…" The bitter squeeze on my throat makes it hard to speak. "She didn't make it," I finally get out. "Something interfered as she was leaving the body. Later on, someone suggested it was this marking carved on the kid's wrist. Looked like some witchcrafty stuff, apparently… I had no idea."

"...Oh." Eli leans onto me. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah…" I take a deep breath. "But, you know, I tried my best, and I couldn't have known, so…"

"Yeah, it's not your fault. You only tried to help."

“And she’s in a better place now. I’m praying for her.”

“I’ll pray for her too.”

I pat Eli’s back, and we stay like that for a few seconds.

“Then what happened?” he asks.

“Well, the kid passed out,” I say. “He woke up some time later, and I alongside the doctor and the nurse told him what happened. He seemed confused, like he didn’t remember any of it - which wouldn’t be strange, as memory loss in possession cases isn’t uncommon. Then he requested us to leave him alone for a while, and the policemen told me I should go home. I’d already been questioned while waiting for the kid to wake up. And then… I’ve been home since.”

“I see.”

More silence.

“So...” Eli starts again, “what was the nightmare like?”

“Ah, well, not too complicated. The beast was there, and it was going for me and Mary… I woke up pretty quickly, but it still made me feel lousy. I mean… I think I’m kind of over it now. I know it was just a dream and that it couldn’t happen in real life since the beast was just an illusion. But the other stuff…”

“Like what the kid said and what the ghost said?”

“Yeah. And what I saw in the illusion. Like, where did it all come from? I was the only Arukeist in the room in real life, but the illusion had an entire chapel with everyone in robes. And the possessed kid… why was he just a head? What was the beast all about? If it was made by the ghost, why did it eat her? And who was that little girl?”

“Did you ask the possessed kid?”

“No,” I sighed. “And I didn’t tell the police anything.”

Eli frowns. “Why not? This could be important.”

“I… I don’t want the kid to get in trouble based on just some illusion,” I get out. “It could ruin his life. I asked the police - they said he could get up to ten years. He’d lose his entire youth.”

Eli gets up. “But what if he did do something? What if he really did kill that ghost?”

I shrink. He did give off a troubling impression. I don’t know what he was seeing or believing at the time, but he did still keep me hostage. And he was pretty aggressive at the beach.

“But… what about the beast?” I ask. “It attacked the ghost, and it didn’t seem friendly to the kid, either…”

“Maybe she lost control of her illusion due to the exorcism,” Eli suggests. “Can that happen?”

“Well… the host can begin to mentally overpower their possessor, but the kid clearly wasn’t in control, either. He was dying.”

“Hmm…”

Eli stares at the ground in contemplation. I join him in his gravel-studying until he speaks up again.

“Are you sure there was only one ghost?”

“Huh?”

“What if there was another ghost?” he asks. “Like, another one possessing the kid.”

“Another...” I pause to think. I didn’t distinctly feel another presence, but… what would it even feel like? Would I be able to tell how many ghosts there are?

“It could’ve been the beast,” Eli suggests. “That’d explain where it came from.”

“I’ve never met anyone with multiple ghosts in them before...”

“Have you heard of any cases like it?”

“I mean, I have,” I say. “But I don’t know if any of those cases had been verified. It’s been proven to be possible through voluntary experiments, but I think it was uncomfortable for the ghosts. The ghosts involved would have to have a good reason for doing it…”

It would make sense, though. The kid’s violent behavior, the beast, the face-bearer’s final words… all of those would’ve been caused by the malicious ghost, while the face-bearer could’ve been someone caught in the crossfire or even someone trying to help...

Or maybe there was no face-bearer in the first place? Maybe this hostile ghost created it to try and stop me from completing the exorcism so it could stay in the kid. If it knew that the seal would interfere, it would’ve been trying to stay alive. Maybe it’s like that one nurse suggested, maybe this ghost actually created the seal for… whatever powers it might give.

The sound of a smack snaps me from my thoughts. Eli has squished another mosquito.

“Do you wanna go inside?” he asks. “The mosquitos are annoying. You’ll get better firewood if you chop them during daylight, anyway.”

He’s right. I think I feel better by now, anyway. “Sure. Let’s go.”

Having returned the axe and logs to their original places, Eli and I walk to the front door. Still careful not to make too much noise, we slip in, and I put my keys and outdoor apparel back where they belong.

"You wanna talk on the couch?" asks Eli quietly.

I stop to think.

"You know what," I finally start, "I think I'm good. That double-ghost theory of yours explains a good bunch of things. I think I'm gonna be able to sleep now."

"Oh? You sure?"

"Yeah. Thanks. It helped to talk about all this. But I think it's time we both headed back to bed."

"Well, alright," Eli says. We make our way up the stairs before he speaks up again. "If you ever need to talk more, though, I'm here for you."

"Thanks, I appreciate it. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Eli enters his bedroom and closes the door. I check on Mary one more time before entering my own bedroom to make sure I didn't disturb her. I did not. Smiling, I climb back onto my bed and shuffle under the covers, which have dried from the sweat by now.

Just as I think I've succeeded in my sneaking, Laura stirs on her side of the bed. She opens her eyes and squints at me despite my attempts to stay as still as possible.

"Mark…?" she mumbles.

"Sorry, it's nothing, just had a nightmare," I whisper, defeated.

“Mhh...” She turns over and says nothing more.

There goes that… oh, well. It didn't seem to bother her too much, so I shouldn't let it bother me. I rest my head on the pillow and close my eyes.

Two ghosts… I don't know why I didn't think of that before. It explains so much that it now seems obvious.

I mean, it doesn't settle everything. It doesn't tell me what the story behind those two ghosts was or what that little girl in the illusion had to do with them.

Should I have told the police? I feel like I’ve lied to them. Stood in the way of the truth. I mean, they wouldn't put the kid in jail just for some imagery in an illusion, right?

Well, I do have the option of still telling them, either by calling or whenever we meet next. I don't want to bother them for something non-urgent, so I guess I'll wait for the next meeting. I'll have decided what to do by then.

I stare into the darkness of my eyelids, mind blank for a few seconds.

That other ghost… I really wonder what made it do all that. Ghosts may have their own views on morality, but they’re still motivated by things. And this one must have been very intelligent, able to speak and manipulate a complex illusion like that. What could have made it so angry? Unless… it wasn’t angry, and it was just having fun…

I shudder. I hope not. I’d like to believe the best of everyone, be they human or ghost.

Well, at least the ghost is in Arukei’s hands now. And so is that face-bearer. He’ll know what to do with them.

O Creator, take good care of them, I pray briefly. I feel better right away.

Yes… that’s right. Let Arukei handle it, that’s what I should do.

I wrap myself in my blanket and sink into sleep.