The Geezer’s bookshop was a squat, dilapidated red-brick building squeezed between two skyscrapers. It gave the impression of stubbornly refusing to adapt to the times, a dog-faced rebel in the heart of the financial district. Its quaintness struck newcomers, while the local professionals strained themselves, pretending it didn’t exist as if embarrassed.
A former local magnate, Jim Wilfrey, who had owned nearly every building in the financial district, once tried to buy it. The Geezer, however, refused. Determined to get rid of the Geezer, Wilfrey investigated the strange shop. He noticed (or rather, the P.I. he hired noticed) that almost no one ever entered the building and suspected there may be some illicit activity he could exploit to deluge the owner with a cascade of fines, legal fees, and potential prison sentences. But the police found nothing amiss, though strangely, their paperwork was sparing in detail.
Frustrated, Wilfrey resorted to less wholesome tactics. One of the local gangs, the Westpoint G’s, went to harass the owner of the ugly little bookshop. But strangely, they never attacked it, as they all came down with a nasty flu, and subsequently lost interest in going after the bookshop owner. A superstition was born.
Wilfrey, then, made his biggest mistake. He went straight to the Geezer and tried to “settle” things with him. Wilfrey soon developed a strange form of rapid onset Alzheimer’s and became totally incapable of managing his affairs. Several of his riskier financial schemes soon collapsed under the mismanagement of his far less capable executors, and the Wilfrey fortune disappeared in a puff of smoke. The bookshop owner has, since, been left to his own devices, and even more pointedly ignored than before. But to the superstitious, they considered this proof of the Geezer’s Curse, named for the bookshop owner who seemed to have been an old man for the past forty years. Most people scoff at it, yet no one enters that strange, ugly little bookshop except the Geezer, his assistant, and his guests.
It was the rumor of this curse that initially led Addy to the Geezer, back when she didn’t know anything about the Occult, but had to get caught up quickly. She didn’t have S yet and the Lady was the kind of boss who expected Addy to learn everything on her own. Once the Geezer knew who Addy served, he had become incredibly amicable toward her, and ever since the two had been close allies. Although, as far as Addy could tell, the Geezer didn’t have a curse, nor even access to Spells. She has learned that he is not a man to take lightly and respects the spirit—if not the fact—of the Geezer’s Curse.
The door jingled as she opened it, and the Geezer’s wispy voice scratched out, “Boy, are you finally back?”
“It’s Addy,” she said, “And you really shouldn’t call Jerome ‘boy.’”
“Eh?” the Geezer said as he shuffled from the back, passing between precariously stacked obscure, dusty volumes, “He’s a boy, Adeline, what’s your point?”
“Never mind,” Addy said, not wanting to debate the octogenarian on the finer points of bigotry, “I need your help.”
“Oh, good!” the Geezer said brightly, flashing Addy with his pearly white dentures. They stood out against his crinkled, parchment-like face. On something so decrepit, it was unsettling to find something so bright and flawless.
“It’s about those child murders,” Addy said, looking away from the Geezer’s teeth.
“Hmm,” he said, stroking his shaven chin with shaking hands, “Dreadful stuff, that. We’d better go in the back.”
The Geezer shuffled away, between the winding maze of innumerable thick tomes. Addy followed along behind him, careful not to touch the stacks, lest she topple them to the ground. She’d never knocked them over, but Jerome had once bumped into a stack, and it led to a domino like toppling of walls of books. The Geezer was normally soft-spoken, but he’d flared up with a vengeance, and hounded Jerome with epithets—some vaguely and uncomfortably racist—until each and every book had been cleaned up. It had been a train wreck of awkwardness. It made Addy wonder at Jerome’s resilience, since she probably would have left the old man’s shop long ago if she’d had to suffer that kind of abuse. But Jerome seemed quite driven, and like it or not the Geezer was, apparently, the foremost master of the Occult in this hemisphere, and so despite his . . . problematic tendencies, he had imparted a significant chunk of wisdom onto his apprentice.
When Addy had talked with Jerome about it, the youth had admitted the Geezer pissed him off plenty, but that the old fart respected, if not Jerome’s heritage, then at least his intelligence and resolve. Jerome even speculated that maybe the old man needled him intentionally, trying to low-key fuck with his focus over time, to help his self-control when conducting particularly dangerous and frustrating rituals. Addy wasn’t so sure, even after Jerome’s explanations about “Entity Resonance” and how disastrous it could be to lose control when conducting even the most mundane rituals.
Much like the rest of his shop, the Geezer’s office was a tumbling mess of books stacked in delicate towers, intermixed with peculiar baubles and trinkets. Given his age, Addy would have thought him at least a little forgetful, but the old bat seemed as sharp as ever. Despite his nonsensical organization (or lack thereof), when he needed something among the thousands of books and objects, he found it without hesitation. It was a mess decipherable only by him and, to a lesser extent, Jerome.
The Geezer sat down at his desk, his face framed by countless books, and Addy moved a small stack from the chair opposite to the ground, and sat herself, explaining her predicament. The Geezer stroked his chin, nodding thoughtfully.
“It also had a mark on its tongue,” Addy said, “If I had to guess, it’s probably serving some Patron or other, though it didn’t belong to any of the usual suspects.”
“And you think it’s harvesting dreams?” the Geezer asked.
Addy shrugged, “There was oneiromantic residue on the body, so it seems likely.”
The Geezer nodded, “The dreams of children are a particularly powerful fuel, if one knows how to harvest them. Which, it would seem, this creature can. Have you identified any patterns to the attacks?”
“Nothing other than what I’ve told you, so I was kind of hoping you’d have some ideas,” Addy said.
“Have you tried mapping them out yet?”
“Um, no.”
The old man nodded his head and smiled. “Geography should never be underestimated!”
He booted up a computer caked in dust and hummed some tuneless ditty to himself. Not long after, he was cursing to himself.
“You want me to do it?”
“I’d rather Jerome did it,” the Geezer grumbled.
“In the meantime, . . .?”
“Oh, fine!”
A few searches later, Addy began putting pins in the map, and frowned, “Well, it isn’t what I’d normally call a pattern . . .”
“It’s just a straight line!” the Geezer said.
Indeed, the attacks were irregularly spaced along a straight line through the city’s grid.
“Well, I guess it does narrow things down,” Addy said.
“Hmph, it still leaves you quite a few options for where it will strike next.”
“This might be a dumb idea, but maybe I can have S canvas the area and look for oneiromantic residue. Maybe we could get some other idea on where it hangs out?”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“It would take too long for S to check each and every building,” the Geezer said, but then he gave a little conspiratorial smirk, “Unless he had some help, of course.”
“What’d you have in mind?” Addy asked.
The old man took out a small piece of paper and scratched a small, relatively simple magic circle on it. “Do you think your familiar could trace this sigil around the city, dispersing his own residue along the lines?”
Addy frowned, “I think so, but he’ll be stretched pretty thin...”
Not to mention, S interjected into Addy’s mind, It would take me a while to recover and it’ll hurt like hell.
“It will be worth it,” the Geezer said, “I can help you channel a ritual through him, and that should allow you to map oneiromantic Residue intensity through the entire city!”
“Wait,” Addy said, suddenly excited, “Could we use this to pin down the strange residue it sheds when it turns into mist?”
The Geezer frowned, shaking his head as he rubbed his shining pate, “I’m afraid the ritual is rather specific, and unless I know what kind of residue it sheds, or its components were it complex, I cannot identify it. In fact, I am simply operating off the fact that the, uh, ‘Misty Snatcher,’ as you dubbed it, is invading the dreams of the children it has marked.”
It seems worth it to me, Addy projected to S, Do you think you can do it, and quickly?
Very well, S said, though Addy detected a note of bitter resignation, I can do it, but it’ll take me an hour.
“S can do it in an hour,” Addy said, “How long should it take you to get things ready on your end?”
“Almost no time at all,” the Geezer said, “I can prepare it now, and channel it through your Pact Artifact, Splinter. You need only give a pinprick of blood to make the ritual succeed!”
Well, you better get going then, Addy told S.
I shall, but are you certain there are no other tasks you need me to complete first?
Stop wasting time.
Addy felt S leave dejectedly, then asked the Geezer, “Should we get started?”
The Geezer waved his hand, “I’ll have Jerome do it.”
“When should he be back?” Addy said, glancing at her phone.
The bell jingled. “Just about now,” the Geezer said.
“Oh, hey Addy!” Jerome said as he bustled into the office. Jerome was short but built like a tank. Apparently, he loved powerlifting in between bouts of learning about the Occult from a racist old codger. Despite his youth, he shaved his head bald, so it gleamed in the dim yellow light of the stuffy bookshop.
He carried a small paper bag, from which he extracted a flaky, chocolate frosted donut and handed it over to the Geezer, who accepted it with a snort, “Took you long enough.”
“Longer line than usual,” Jerome apologized, “Looks like there’s a convention or something.”
The Geezer took on a dark look, as if contemplating something nasty for the convention goers, then said, “Find Alfonso’s Mystic Arcanum Volume Three and initiate the Residue Detection Ritual, Variant Fifteen.”
Jerome blinked, “Uh, sure. Why am I doing that?”
“Always questions with you!” the Geezer snapped as he bit into his donut, smearing cream over his face, “If you spent as much time asking questions as you did thinking, you’d be twice as smart.”
As Jerome left, Addy raised an eyebrow at the Geezer, who returned a petulant stare as he continued munching on his donut. Finally, Addy said, “Don’t you think you’re being a little bit shitty?”
The Geezer mumbled some string of curses while he finished his donut, and Addy sighed, “Fine. Thanks for everything. I’ll go help Jerome set up.”
“You do that.”
In the back of the shop was a set of stairs leading down to a concrete basement. Wood beams braced the floor above. All along the sides of the walls were a series of intricate sigils that protected the Geezer’s workshop from prying eyes and hostile spells. Addy supposed it was the single safest place in the city. Near the center, Jerome was lighting some candles, and intermittently checking a book he had placed on a small table.
Addy helped him set up, following his precise directions, painting incomprehensible markings on the ground and burning small bundles of incense. The markings were almost nonsensical, spiraling away from each other haphazardly. Eventually, Jerome placed a large map of the city over the markings, and Addy went to a small marble plinth he placed at the head of the ritual circle. She pricked her finger with Splinter and smeared her blood over the blade before placing it on the plinth.
Ready, S said in Addy’s mind, and she nodded to Jerome, who began reciting a strange incantation.
The markings suddenly flared to life. The map was being marked by lines drawn with a fire that gave off no heat. Addy stared as thirteen small, red lights glowed in a line straight through the city. She recognized at least a few of the lights as the homes where the Misty Snatcher had struck. They all varied in intensity, and Jerome screwed up his face in thought. He took out a small camera and recorded each of the lights, scribbling notes intermittently.
“What are you doing?” Addy asked.
“I’m measuring the intensity of the lights,” Jerome said.
“I thought you couldn’t record magic,” Addy frowned.
“You can if you know how,” Jerome said, taking down another note, “And despite how crap the Geezer is with tech, he knows how to get magic to interface with it. Speaking of which . . .”
“Jerome!” a hoarse voice shouted through a pipe next to Addy, who jumped, “I’m getting a signal. Are you finished down there?”
“Tell him I’ll be up in a sec,” Jerome said as he continued making notes and double-checking his measurements.
Not long after, Jerome and Addy headed back upstairs, and the Geezer said, “About time. Take a look at this.”
On his screen were a series of navigation pins, somehow corresponding to the points of light on the magic map downstairs. Addy doubted he had put those in manually. “Did you get the measurements?” the Geezer asked.
Jerome nodded, then started sounding off a bunch of measurements, which the Geezer slowly tried to put in, until Jerome politely intervened, entering them himself into the spreadsheet, generating a bar chart. Along the bottom was the street number, and the size of each bar corresponded to the intensity of the measured lights.
“Hmm,” the old man said, “Well, still just a line, but each of those dots have a different intensity. Wonder what that means . . .”
Addy frowned, “Wait, how is this ritual picking up the oneiromantic residue from the murder victims’ homes? The bodies would have been moved already.”
“Time is a river, and we paddled upstream,” the Geezer said, waving a hand at her, “The ritual is very handy in that regard. Great for picking up historical residue peaks.”
“So, each of those points indicate when the Residue was at its peak?”
“Over the last few days, yes,” the Geezer said.
“Is it picking up anything from the future?”
The Geezer gave a barking laugh, “Don’t be silly.”
“Then the residue signatures could increase in strength over time?”
The Geezer nodded, “Most definitely. But without several other, far more sophisticated rituals, good luck picking up changes in the Residue signatures.”
“So, maybe the strongest remaining peak is where it will attack next?” Addy asked.
“Doesn’t seem so,” the Geezer said, “The boy who died last night, his Residue signature was hardly stronger than this one here,” and the Geezer pointed at another point on the screen, “I don’t think this thing is harvesting based on intensity of the Residue.”
“Wait,” Jerome said, “This looks familiar to me.”
“It does?” Addy and Jerome asked.
Jerome nodded, “It looks like a frequency map.”
Addy stared, then looked at the Geezer. He shrugged.
“Well, the details aren’t super important,” Jerome said, and he walked over to a corner of the office, and took his laptop out of his backpack, “But the point is I could derive a shape or something from it. Could you read me the street addresses from each of the points?”
What followed was tedious, as Addy read off addresses and the intensity signature of each point to Jerome. After about an hour of him typing furiously at his keyboard, muttering weird technobabble, he exclaimed in triumph, “Take a look!”
A chart was displayed on Jerome’s screen. The shape seemed strangely familiar...
“Wait a sec,” Addy said, “This is almost like the symbol I saw on the creature’s tongue. Well, half of it, anyway.”
“Could you draw it?” Jerome asked, and Addy sketched it on a piece of paper, then handed it over to Jerome, who, after a little more furious typing and consulting with the sketch, showed her the symbol displayed on his laptop. A little chill of victory made Addy smile, “That’s it!”
“I’m not sure what happened, but that’s great!” the Geezer said, “Excellent work, Jerome.”
Jerome smiled, and said, “Thanks.”
Then Addy frowned, “Well, this is neat and all, but how does it help us track down the Misty Snatcher?”
“Well, this is just a guess,” Jerome said, “But you know the addresses of the murdered children?”
Addy nodded.
“Well, I didn’t have to change those frequency signatures at all.”
“Which means...?”
“This is kind of a stretch, but this,” he said, pointing at a row on a table he pulled up on his laptop, “Is the address corresponding to the frequency signature I had to adjust the least. Well, of the ones I even changed at all. And each time I had to make an adjustment, it was positive, so . . .”
“The Misty Snatcher is building up oneiromantic residue in each of the children before it harvests them, and you think that the child living at that address is due to be killed.”
Jerome nodded.
Addy frowned, “But why?”
“Who knows,” the Geezer said, “Could be its marking territory for its master, carving out the Souls in the city to be sent to it upon death.”
Jerome gaped, “That’s horrible!”
“Indeed,” the Geezer said, “But it’s only a guess, and it can be foolish to guess at the machinations of monsters.”
Addy flicked her gaze from the Geezer, to Jerome, then back again. Apparently, the apprentice didn’t know his soul was already marked to be taken. But if the creature really was after the Souls of the city’s denizens, then the Lady would be pissed if it pulled it off, and who knows what she’d have in store for Addy at that point. Addy sighed, rubbed the bridge of her nose, then said, “Well, this gets me the most likely location where that fucking thing is going to pop up next.”
Addy stood up and made to leave, but the Geezer said, “You got a plan?”
Addy paused in the doorway, then said, “The beginnings of one. Just need to chat with the Leaser and raid an orthopedic clinic.”