I try not to tremble as I pull up the blog, my nerves already on edge.

Shit, shit, shit, I knew I should have read the whole post first!

Even with all the extra time between assembling Big Stack, I didn't read the rest of the guide. Old habits, bad habits - missing most of my formative years as far as reading and comprehension goes and splitting my time between two languages has left me reluctant to read in general unless I strictly have to. It was easy enough to justify not reading the whole thing to myself in my head, between how wordy the blog is and my skepticism over the mysticism and the methods, but ultimately the real reason boiled down to laziness and my own discomfort. Why waste all that time reading when I could be over-engineering my new toy, triple checking no one hacked my most important accounts, playing games, or working on my business?

Life has been too good for me lately, at least in relative terms. I'm being too careless again.

I hear a scraping noise at my door - or perhaps at the wall beside it. I cringe, the sound reminds me of scraping at metal with a screwdriver or the claw of a hammer. I deliberately chose a home with no windows to avoid trouble - not even those tiny ones for accent lighting - but now I find myself regretting it a bit since I can't see out... or climb out and escape. Do ghosts break down doors now, or is it those federal agents I was wondering about come to take me after all?

I need to work fast.

I hit control and F - for "find" - and rapid fire my way through the post, looking for any mention of "heads." Initial instructions... the author rambling about types of materials that might work... alternatives to coins...

oO -- Miscellaneous (Tips & Tricks!) -- Oo

Once you get your basic craft established, you can begin learning how to make the most of it. Almost any tool can be used in more than one way. These tools are no exception, as esoteric as they may appear. Below are a few tips, tricks, and alternative uses for these crafts that I have accumulated over my many years of toil.

01 Geist Dynamo:

* I prefer to share this dynamo as a first example in many cases because the holistic generative effect produces a range of useful byproducts from planar energy expenditure, not solely that energy which is channeled through the seal itself. For example, by leveraging cultural norms to produce a physical loci - like a coin - the truth of the material is tainted repeatedly by the transfer. This yin sensitization assists in the cyclical nature of the process, contrasting how the nature of a coin or other fateful implement does not (usually) re-randomize itself spontaneously. Then, when the contamination grows too severe for proper use of the loci in the dynamo proper, you can re-purpose it as a "battery" for the spent yin within. Wonderful!

Properly speaking, there are three common failure modes that break the dynamo's perpetuity: the owner is not close enough to maintain an easy connection, the owner is not unlucky enough to maintain consistent function, or a third party intervenes. Hauntings and curses are usually sustained by "dumb" ghosts, which are attracted to the subject of misfortune for their service an easy conduit to release their energy and cultivate anew. However, such opportunity to intercede in our planes may also draw the interest of something more sinister, more intelligent. How would one identify the presence of these "smart" ghosts?

In the archetypal example geist dynamo, coins were recommended for this secondary purpose. Unlike dice or other fortuitous mediums, coins only express a heads "good" outcome contrasted by a tails "bad" outcome. Dumb ghosts will repeat the bad outcome endlessly despite the guarantee that they will dislike the result because they have no good alternatives even with to the presence of antithetical, hostile materials. Smart ghosts recognize that they cannot force the bad outcome, but they CAN deny you the good outcome, while simultaneously pointing the hostile material away from them... by landing the coin on its edge. Like an arrow, the antithesis will always point away from their position. Avoid using this technique without urgent need! Smart ghosts are often smart enough to identify the excess energy expenditure from constantly rotating the coin, drawing their ire... or they may be sufficiently intelligent to find getting spotted annoying. ┬┴┬┴┤( >_├┬┴┬┴

By the time I get to the bottom of the last paragraph I'm practically shivering from tension, the growing knot in my stomach not getting any looser.

The heads-side of the coin is facing... me. Quite persistently, in fact. I whip my head around, trying to catch sight of the "smart ghost," but all that does is make me feel silly and start my neck to hurting a little.

What do I do now? Probably tip the coin back over so I don't make it mad... but instead I find myself standing, wandering towards my front door instead. How many opportunities will I get to actually see my problem? My haunting? Maybe I can't see the ghost itself, but something corporeal is clearly messing with my walls right now. I raise a trembling hand and brace against the door, leaning up to the peep-hole.

I don't see anyone immediately outside. Scanning the vicinity, even my neighbor across the way stopped his yard-work - I guess I scared him off, whoops. In fact, I don't see anyone at all wandering around, even as the scraping at my door gets louder and more frequent. What the hell?

That's when I spot it. Across the street, a shape. Dark and still under my the cusp of my neighbor's porch, practically hiding away beside the railing.

A lone dog, squatting in his yard, staring dead-on at me.

Certainly not the neighbor's dog. That'd be against the homeowners association's rules, it says no pets allowed whatsoever, you better believe I checked. This dog is a mangy little thing, likely a stray. Yet the mangy canine seems eerily calm, sitting and staring straight at what should be a basically featureless door. It knows I'm here, it knows, it knows, it knows.

Dogs don't even have good eyesight I think. Maybe it's interested in whatever's causing the scraping noise? Yeah, definitely not looking at me-

Cutting off my desperate thoughts, the stray begins to howl. I'm not certain the noise can truly be described as a "howl." The sound is high-pitched and tearful. The muffled brunt of it reminds me more of a human shrieking in terror than anything else. As the stray howls terribly, its jowls snap unnaturally wide, practically unhinging, and I wince and cringe away at the sight. Leaning harder against the door, I steady my breathing at get ready to look again.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Then I recoil, wheeling back as the sound of the crying dog is matched with more and more unearthly howls, shrieking and crying, dozens of them - I hear howls from further up the road on either direction, then multiple howls immediately outside my door, including one at about leg-height outside, and one from right behind me. I throw my arms out like a lunatic as I wheel around, hitting nothing but air.

When I stop clamping my eyes shut, terrified, I don't see any dog in my home. It's the same as always, just my barely-furnished room, now featuring Big Stack. The head of the coin still faces me.

It's at that point I finally figure out exactly what that scraping sound was - claws on wood, a dog or dogs scratching at my home desperately trying to get in.

They're at my door. I can't see them because they're too short, pressed up to the walls, trying to crawl their way in. They're not inside yet, but that might not last long. The clawing sounds get louder.

Once the howling starts, it doesn't stop. The cacophony of canine pain takes on a fever pitch.

Hurriedly, I put my face up to the peephole again, straining to see if I can spot the dogs at my door. I still can't quite see them, but as I scan the surroundings, I see even more dogs filing in. In the mere seconds I looked away, my street is swarming with dogs - escaped pets, strays. A little schnauzer with a bloodied snout drags a pink leash behind it, its doggy jowls splayed wide in that same terrible continuous howl. The lone stray that I noticed the first time I looked out stood from its post, pacing towards me, its body joining the unblinking tide of shrieking fur now closing in on my little home. The howl sounds almost toneless now, like white noise from a hundred canine maws.

I hear teeth on metal, clack clack, turning as my eyes go wide.

I didn't lock the door back after I let the deliverymen in!

I clutch the knob desperately, yanking it all the way shut through muffled snarls, and then twist the lock.

The howling dips ferociously into a snarl in unison for only a moment before fading back into a wall of screams.

Alright, that's enough curiosity indulging for the next decade I think, curiosity sated, thank-you-very much.

I run for Big Stack at full sprint. First, I hop on the stepladder. The paperclip loop on top is shaking wildly now, and emitting an audibly hum. As I near it I smell something like burnt rubber, and I hurriedly thrust forward hand-first, snatching the paperclips. The loop tingles to the touch, but mercifully doesn't detonate horrifically in my hand.

I fling the loop away haphazardly and it tumbles to the floor, skidding off to a corner. I barely even notice or care where it goes, I'm entirely focused on getting the coin reset before the ghost-dog-things kill me at this point.

"FUCK DOGS," I yell at the top of my lungs. All these years I knew it, dogs ARE the enemy! "Man's best friend," are you seeing this?

Thud. Thud. Giving up on clawing their way in, my door rattles and shakes as, I assume, the dogs have begun to launch their entire weight at it.

Atop the ladder I grip the lid of the enclosure. Only one problem - the hatch goes to the top, not the bottom, so I need to pull it open the whole way to get to the coin.

Hardly pausing to breathe, I throw myself to the floor, yanking along the latch on Big Stack's big lid as I fall, which makes it about half way. It hurts like a bitch.

Next time I make one of these I'm definitely adding a hatch at the bottom of the stairs.

I hear a crack behind me even as the I manage to yank the lid open entirely, and the muffled howling sounds becomes ever so slightly clearer through the door.

Rolling about on the floor, I shove my arm into the crack between the lid and the enclosure. It's a hard stretch, and I'll probably be sore later, but my finger just barely touches metal.

"FUCK DOGS," I shout again, wheezing.

I push the coin over, and it clatters, falling flat on floor of the enclosure.

Heads.

I lay there heaving, gasping, staring my front door wide-eyed. I watch the weighty thuds on the door as the dogs launch themselves against it, awaiting for my fate. Eviscerated by house-pets for daring to mess with technicolor blogs.

After a moment, the cacophony of howling just stops. I barely notice, so tense and braced for what terribleness is coming, but after a minute or so of utter silence I finally convince myself to stand, dragging myself to my feet.

I shamble to the peephole one last time, only to see a miraculous sight: no dogs at all. If it weren't for the brand new crack in the middle of my door, what a bitch that'll be to fix up, and flecks of what can only be loosely identified as dog blood scattered all around the street - so much for being ghost repellent - I could be fooled into thinking it was all a bad dream.

So that entire army of dogs is gone? Just like that? I back away from the door exhausted, shaking off the scent of wet fur and iron gently emanating around and now through the door.

I look dumbly between the coin and the peep-hole, wondering if I just got... lucky?

In the first place I should have tipped the coin over right away. The author said "avoid using this technique" - and their standard of a "safe" technique is learning the tolerable margin for spontaneously detonating metal from experience. I should probably take any conception of avoidance a little more seriously. Lessons learned, I guess.

My face colors red a little bit in embarrassment as I realize I just shouted "fuck dogs" twice at ear-splitting volumes in the span of thirty seconds or so. Maybe the neighbors didn't hear? Judging from how empty the street is they didn't seem to hear the dog horde, but you never know.

"AND I MEAN THAT PLATONICALLY," I add awkwardly... before promptly realizing that phrasing makes it sound so, so much worse.

I'm tempted to try correcting myself again, but before I can work up the nerve to compound my mistakes, my eyes are drawn back to the corner of the living room-slash-office.

To a discarded chain of paperclips, humming with power. Indisputable, certifiable, impossible power. Could you call it magic? Pretty lame magic, sure, but it seems real enough to me.

The tension drains from my body as I walk over, snag the loop, and clutch it tight to my chest. The thrumming vibration feels almost relaxing to me now. I hope it doesn't blow up.

Taking a deep breath, I sit at my desk, scrolling back up the blog. My eyes lock on a certain line, not far below the section on the geist dynamo.

The process of power concentration may take weeks or months depending on the severity of your condition. Once the seal has concentrated sufficient power into the medium, you hold the corpus of potential in your very hands. The things standing between you and your dreams are your Truth, your craft, and your creativity. Rare is one who can walk this path, rarer still one who can overcome these perils. It is a lonely path, and the few who may claim to understand your trials do not.

This is a burden beyond burdens, but recall well the Truth of the master: a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. As of now, you have learned how to walk. The remainder of this HAPPY START guide, like the many other posts on my blog, exist only to teach you how to run. Permit my words to ease your travels, like a comfortable pair of shoes. Not every journey must be an agonizing one - never fear, there will be plenty of agony unique to you, don't borrow others' at all.

ψ(｀∇´)ψ <\\ Disregard my words, tread on nails and rocks!~

All this drama, all this danger, but I don't even what it's been for yet. Some thingly magical paperclips? That doesn't make me feel disheartened - just as the blog's author says, I feel like I'm learning to walk again. I'm taking my very first steps into a stranger world. Only, instead of loving parents teaching me, I have this damned little screen full of meandering gibberish telling me how to put one foot in front of the other in painstaking detail.

This may all be a futile effort, it may be embarrassing, even dangerous, but at the same time I feel like I've made more progress at understanding what's happening to me - understanding what happened to my family - in these past few days than I have in the rest of my entire life until now. I've even faced down a whole bunch of dogs.

Judging from what the blog's author says, I've attained all that progress, and I haven't even started walking this odd path of mine. I merely learned how to walk.

No matter what comes from here, I don't think I can turn back. Even if I wanted to... not anymore.

I tighten my grip on the little chain.

It's time to figure out my next steps.