“This place creeps me out.” was the title of the email that had arrived about an hour before Mitch got into bed. Exhausted from his excessive training on the obstacle course he was ready to pass out but he needed to catch up. Fresh from a shower and into a pair of pyjamas he opened up the email to read what had happened;
Once Lara had finished sending her first email she took a few moments to reflect on the plan as she rested in the hotel room. “Okay…” she sighed, running through it in her head “First off, explore and get information from everyone. Then take these private lessons and try to coax some information out of him. Get to know the other people here, avoid those two Mitch knows.”
She was unable to shake this feeling of uneasiness every time she thought too hard about the situation and certainly she couldn’t shake the feeling whenever Joseph was around. “Lets hope I can be of some use.” she muttered, pulling herself from the bed to enter the bathroom where she began preparing.
After a short time, no longer than 10 minutes, there was a knock on her door. She was rather surprised by how soon he had come for her and she opened with a quiet “Hello?”
Though she wasn’t greeted by Joseph but rather a hotel staff member who had a tray on a trolley “A meal had been ordered to your room.”
“Oh, I didn’t order anything.” she tried to assure him, though the worker nodded and responded.
“It’s courtesy of Joseph, he asked us to bring a meal up.”
“Well… Thank you.” she said, rather confused but she accepted the tray which she took into her room and rested on the table in the far right table that had a single armchair beside it.
“Odd…” She opened the tray to find a traditional sunday dinner of roast beef slices, mash, gravy, and assorted vegetables still steaming hot.
“Should I even eat this?” She thought, not sure just how far her paranoia should reach. “Surely he couldn’t have spiked it, that would make national news.” that same little voice in the back of her head mentioned before it took its usual darker turn “That being said, can’t make national news if he makes all the evidence disappear.”
For once she opted to ignore her inner monologue, knowing that he wouldn’t be stupid enough to drug a dinner sent to her room. Feeling this was a small victory in her own right she sat down to eat.
Later in the day the door would knock once more, and this time she could tell it was him because he shouted “Hey, It’s me!” from the other side of the door.
“Figures.” she chuckled as she walked over and opened the door. “Well, about time you showed up.” She teased, plastering a fake grin across her face.
“Oh, you’ve been waiting?” He asked as he stood in a cleaner getup than his usual dingy homeless look. He sported a pair of jeans and a sleek brown coat with some black boots, his hair was cleaned and gelled to the left. “Well I should have come earlier then.”
She nodded in response and leaned on the doorway “Thank you for the food.” She said, her smile more genuine this time “It was very nice.”
“Well, gotta keep my guests fed and rested.” He said as he stepped back “Well, I came to ask if you would like to begin that training before we meet the others.”
Lara took a few moments to think it over, even though she already had the answer pre prepared she couldn’t give too much away by being too eager. “I like the sound of that.” She eventually replied, standing upright from the door “Let me change into something better for that.”
She closed the door and returned to her suitcase before she took out a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a thick shirt.
“He’s probably spying on me changing” she thought in the back of her mind, a thought that was most certainly troubling but she had no proof for that.
“So what?” she tried to lie, maybe if she forced herself to believe it she wouldn’t be as scared about it.
She somehow expected a response from her own subconscious as if it was some separate entity that existed only to spite her. She couldn’t help but feel nervous that he may have been watching somehow but she changed and eventually returned to the door quietly.
“Ah, all ready?” He asked, leaning off of the wall beside the door.
“All ready.” she responded.
She followed behind him as he brought her down the hall to an elevator. “What I want to show you is very sensitive information too, so you must be very careful about who you tell until we find out how to properly harness it.”
“I am sure this will be very important in the coming years… If what happened in that Manor was just us not understanding it.”
Once they stepped into the elevator he felt it was appropriate to start talking her ear off with topics such as “ghost hunting 101” and “the signs of the paranormal.” While she knew this was all gibberish of a man who wanted to spend his life playing ghost hunter she couldn’t help but feel like she was back at the family headquarters in Dublin being lectured by a myriad of people she didn’t know on a myriad of topics she could barely understand.
She quietly nodded along until they got to their destination, the 9th floor. He took her out to a nearly empty conference room. Some tables and chairs folded up and leaned against the wall but that was it. “This is where we will work on your training.”
“I’m very sorry.” she added once he said that, a concerned look creeping across her previously calm face “But what sort of training will we be doing in an empty room”
“Oh don’t worry too much about that.” he said “I will be bringing items here for training.”
“What kind of items would we even use for something like this?” She asked, partly curious and partly needing to ask.
“Well simple things, like some water, salt, and a cross.” He said as he pulled one of the tables out to unfold it. “I’ll be back with them in a moment.”
“Cross?” she asked herself once she was left alone, allowing her to wander around the room devoid of almost anything. The window overlooked some of the town around them and the large shopping centre across the street which felt like it might have been a bad place to be practising anything like this.
“What has my life come to?” she thought with an exasperated sigh “Playing fake ghost hunter with some nut job, so I can deliver this information back to the real ghost hunters”
While this thought was a rather bleak and depressing way to put it she did have another thought “Well, perhaps I could think of it like being a double agent.” which put a much more movie tint onto the situation, and felt like a far more interesting way to explain it to someone even though she had no one she was ever able to explain it to that didn’t already know of her status within the family.
It was at this moment she got a sudden feeling of unease, her breath turning cold and goosebumps forming along her arms. “A ghost?” She thought as she looked about the room with a slight panic.
She heard rummaging in the halls and made her way back to the door. Hesitantly she put her hand on the door handle, taking a moment to compose herself before she pulled it open to look out into the hallway.
All she found was Joseph carrying a large basin in his arms and kicking a box along the floor every few steps. “Ah, could I get a hand?” he asked as he saw her.
“Of course, one second” She quickly responded, putting a chair against the door before she came to his aid, grabbing the box and carrying it inside.
She couldn’t shake that coldness she was feeling, a coldness she only had been able to associate with spirits. She had thought that perhaps she was falling ill as she put the box atop the table where the basin was soon added by Joseph.
“You doing well?” Joseph asked, pointing her up and down. “Look pretty jittery.”
“Oh I am.” She responded with a forced laugh while waving him off slightly “This is a very scary topic!”
He seemed to buy that and opened the box atop the table “Well, that is fine. I am here to help you through it” reassuring words if it was anyone else saying them to her.
He took out a cross and put it on the table, along with a tube of salt and a thermometer. “Simple ghost hunting tools” he said in a strangely confident tone. “Each of these should give off some form of magical signature, if you could activate that thing surely you must be able to sense magic!”
She stared over the objects for some time, occasionally glancing at him. “Is this some kind of weird test?” she thought, nervously tracing her hands over the objects “None of these are inherently magical, but does he feel they are?”
It felt like some form of double bluff he was pulling, but logically he should have no idea what inherent magic was and most likely felt one of these had a similar feeling to the rune. Eventually she came to the water and moved her hand up to touch it gently. When her finger dipped into the water she felt that same coldness travel up her arm which caused her to shudder.
“Is the water?” she asked as she had felt the water itself was lukewarm so the sensation had to be some form of magic, albeit faint.
“I had the same feeling when I came into contact with it!” he exclaimed, clearly excited he was trying to hide just how much he composed himself. “Ahem… Yes, I felt there was an unnatural energy from this water.”
She raised a brow at the sudden attention to his own actions but didn’t bring it any further than that. “Well, what does this mean?”
“It means you are sensitive to magic, just like me.” Though he tried to sound convincing in his statement Lara could only internally chuckle that he thought this was sensitive.
“Well, what do we do with it?” she asked as she pulled her finger out and wiped it off with a tissue that he provided.
“Well now that I am sure you have the gift, we try and figure out together how to best use it.” He explained, leaning against the table and fidgeting with the cross.
“So he was just winging it…” Lara thought, placing the tissue down onto the table. “That doesn’t answer much.”
“For now, now that I can trust you, we put these away.” He explained, picking up his tools off of the table. “We are going to meet the others.”
She kept quiet for some time and helped him put away the tools before emptying the water and the basin was placed back within the storage closet. “Water holds a natural amount of magic.” she thought as they worked. “But barely any… If he thinks what he felt was a large amount of magical energy, boy would he be shocked.”
Once everything was away the room was set up to have rows of seats and general refreshments had been taken up such as sandwich sets and a large container for holding tea.
“Going all out for this.” Lara teased as she set the tray down.
“What can I say, my guests only get the best.” He replied with a large happy grin plastered across his face. She would have to admit, it was hard to not be infected by his optimism at times. He was certainly charismatic.
She couldn’t help but chuckle at his goofy smile and nodded once more “Well I’ll help where I can, partner.”
He looked rather shocked at the term used, frozen in place as he stared at her. Eventually a smile began to creep across his face again and he nodded over enthusiastically “Of course, of course. We are partners in this now” he mumbled as he quickened his pace in placing chairs.
“You’re a dork. You know that?” she asked, mostly wanting to stay friendly with him but she couldn’t help but find him to be like a small child who had just found what his father told him was a real life dinosaur. She did feel bad playing with his emotions in this way, he seemed so into it and part of her understood wanting to explore the unknown but it had to be done.
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He clammed up a bit at that and began to revert into himself slightly. His pace slowed down a bit once more before Lara felt she needed to specify “It’s a compliment, don’t worry.”
“Ah, of course!” He replied with a slightly awkward chuckle.
She pulled her attention from him and finished laying out the mugs on the table. “Well it looks like everything is ready.”
“Well enjoy mingling with everyone, they are the only ones who accepted my offer.” He explained before he opened the door and went into the hall. She could hear him say outside “Ah, welcome! Come on in!” before he returned with a crowd.
She counted them as they came in, adding up over time to a sizable group of twenty five people who began to just chat and idly wait around the room for Joseph to do something.
“This is… A lot of people” Lara whispered to him as she stood close by.
“Far more than I was expecting at first, but happily surprised.” He replied under his breath. He soon cleared his throat to gain the attention of the crowd and said “Well, I can only thank all you for coming first of all. Secondly I wanted to talk about what happened when we last met.” This time he spoke with a confidence to his voice that he simply lacked the first time they attended his meetings and even lacked moments ago when talking to Lara.
He walked about at the front of the room by a blank whiteboard that hung above “The media has done its best to label what we were all witness to as a scam, but anyone who was there knows that it is far from that.”
Lara noted the overwhelming agreement from the crowd, though it wasn’t exactly surprising since they agreed to come all the way out here for what they could only have believed in.
“Well we are here to commemorate that what we felt was nothing short of a miracle, a glimpse at the first traces of real magic.” He continued, beginning to pace around the room “They can call us what they want, but they cannot take what we felt away from us. In this, I ask you all to join me in trying to find more about what happened that night.”
The crowd had begun to get visibly anxious when he brought up halloween, some quiet chatter over the topic began. There was a lack of heckling this time as those who had before either did not come, or had their view converted up by the feeling of actual magic.
“We will continue.” Joseph added after, hushing the chatter. “Tonight we are going to go back to the manor, and we will solidify to ourselves that the feeling we had was real.”
Shaun, as Lara recognised him, asked from the front of the audience “What even was that light?”
“I wish I could tell you.” Joseph said as he began to pace once more, though this time closer to the crowd and to Shaun in front. “All I know is the feeling that came from it. Now, follow me and we can go confirm it.”
While he confidently strode out of the room Lara took a visual snapshot of the crowd and followed behind. She saw confusion and what she could only make out as a hint of fear.
She understood where that fear came from, that uncertainty gnawing at the inside of your brain that you have found some form of secret that you weren’t fully sure if it was real or not. “They might see us as insane.” A common thought she had before she had been taken in by the family. “This is a dangerous belief to solidify. We are different from them, we know more than they do…”
After some fuss with getting people to the venue, which included calling several taxis and a failed attempt at getting a bus, they gathered outside where the lights from last time were still set up and the guards he had hired still stood around the building.
“Finally.” Joseph sighed, having paid off the last taxi and asked them to wait. He placed his credit card away and once more stood by the front door to address everyone “Follow me, and we can reaffirm what we saw. One more time.”
Lara was getting increasingly uncomfortable with the phrasing he was using, reaffirming a belief was an odd way to put it. She silently followed, knowing that she had to play the long con and gain trust and power within the group.
Walking through these halls again felt surreal. It was only a few days ago they were here and witnessed what should have changed the world, but all that happened was a mockery of the man who had found it.
“Now.” Joseph said sternly as they entered the room. “This is the easy part.”
He stood over the rune once more and placed his hands atop, before he hesitated. “Lara, would you like to try again?” He asked her, turning the attention of the crowd onto her.
“What?” she asked shocked, her face turning a bright shade of red as the eyes all landed on her “I… I don’t know anything about how to use this!” she desperately tried to explain, though Joseph was having none of it.
“Come on, you almost had it last time.” He got up and took her arm to take her over to the rune where he left her standing over it, staring down at the simple creation used to once trap a spirit.
The crowd's gaze made her increasingly nervous but she was too deep now to pull out. “R…Right!” she stammered, getting down onto her knees to place her hands on either side of the rune, tracing her finger along the indents in the ground.
She soon placed both hands flatly onto the surface around her and thought “do I really want to activate it? Probably not… Perhaps a half activation?”
There wasn’t much time to think as she had an entire crowd waiting for her to do something so she began to take in some of the natural mana from the air around them and pumped it directly into the rune which caused it to light up and begin to fill the crevasse like a body of water seeping out of her fingers slowly filling the curves of the rune, though ultimately she didn’t use enough on purpose so the glow faded and died out. Add that to her over acting that it was rather strenuous and the crowd began to murmur and stir.
Joseph would nod reassuringly at her once she stood up. “It’s okay. We will find out how to let you use it.” He whispered to her before he stepped up to the rune.
She stepped to the side and watched him once more place his hands upon the runes where he had intentions to activate it. The mana pooled up into the crevices of the rune slowly, usually this process was almost instant from someone who knew how to use mana.
Once it was fully filled the light lit up before it was followed by that flash bang of a spell. A pillar of light came at first, but it soon continued to grow wildly and soon engulf the room.
Lara found her body tense up as she stood close to the light. She grunted in discomfort as she tried to move her arm, but she felt her muscles fighting back against her “What even…” She thought as the light began to fade. Mitch had explained to her before that the rune was used to keep the fiend in place but she didn’t expect it to have such a strong effect on a person.
The crowd was standing in blind amazement yet again as they felt the sheer power of the rune that only managed to cement whatever convictions they had. Though there were still those in the crowd who seemed unsure, there were at least two more who were left standing with mouth agape and a thousand year stare.
“Now.” Joseph said, clearing his throat as he stood. He stood confidently with his one arm supporting the other crossed across his chest . “Now that we can prove this wasn’t a once off fluke. I personally think it is a good idea to continue meeting here as a group to try and figure out if this rune is a good idea. Everyone is welcome to drop in and out whenever they want.”
The crowd didn’t even resort to chattering like any time he said something strange. “What could we even hope to achieve?” a middle aged woman asked from the centre of the group.
“Good question.” Joseph quickly replied, pointing at her as he asked “What do you think we could do with such information?”
She didn’t even have a chance to reply before Joseph answered in her stead “We can discover even more!” bostfully, taking a stoic stance as he confidently looked her over “This could be a breakthrough, something that will expand mankind's knowledge of the universe.”
Lara stared at him for a few moments, unable to fathom the sheer cheesiness of his confidence. “Are we supposed to take you seriously or not?” she thought, trying not to show her unamusement.
The woman looked equally surprised at the response but then another question arose from the crowd “What could we do about this? We can’t do anything with that light.”
He changed his stance and spent a moment thinking about the question before responding “I am sure if I can do this, we can find a way to teach all of you to do it too. We already have Lara here who is on her way to learning.”
That came as a shock, her eyes widening as he continued to turn the crowd towards her. “A-Ah yeah!” She hastily stammered, “I have been learning from him.” Her embarrassment was easily seen as she couldn’t control her emotions well enough to stop her face from turning red once more.
The crowd soon returned their attention to Joseph who cleared his throat and said “Yes, so I have made progress on teaching one person. Surely I can help more!”
That statement left Lara a bit more sceptical of his intentions. As the embarrassment faded it was replaced with worry, he hadn’t taught her anything other than water has magic in it which he hadn’t even taught her as she already knew.
There was a silence for some time while Joseph overlooked the group and kept his confidence on display. Eventually the silence was broken by Shaun, who raised his hand and asked with a nervous tone “When can we start?” It made sense for a teenager to be the most eager to dabble in this form of business to Lara.
“I plan to start today.” He responded, turning his attention to Shaun from the rune.
He walked up and nodded as he took his place at the front of the slowly forming line “I’m ready to start.”
Emma followed him without a word, along with a small handful of the crowd. The others were not too sold just yet and the chatter began again.
“It's just so hard to believe.” some said. “I can’t deny that feeling…” It seemed to vary between leaning on believing him or planning to leave but any of them choosing to stay was certainly a bad thing for their investigation.
“No one is forced to stay of course, it is all personal choice.” She said to try and lean some towards that option. It was all she could say as anything else would make her look suspicious.
After some time the crowd began to thin as others left, being taken down to exit the building. Once they had left Joshua looked over those who remained and beamed a smile at them “Well, a bit smaller than one could hope. It is nice to see those who have chosen to stay around still.”
He left the rune and walked closer to the group, kicking up some dust that had managed to settle in this ancient room. “Firstly we are going to do an experiment I have done with Lara here a few hours ago.”
His choice of wording could have been much better as the group began to look uneasy, some ready to back out now while they still had a chance. “No, no, nothing weird!” He quickly added once he saw the shift in the group's mood, his projected confidence failing him now. “Tell them Lara!”
Once again he threw the attention of the crowd onto her, causing her to freeze on the spot but this time it wasnt the attention, it was with the implications of conducting a private experiment with him. “It was nothing!” she blurted out. “Just a simple experiment!”
It didn’t do much to convince the group but Joseph felt it was enough to let him continue “It's a simple test to see if any of you are in tune with magic at all. We have to decide what we need to teach first”
“How would you even teach us something like this?” The same middle aged woman from before asked, staring down over the rune on the floor.
The crowd seemed to share her curiosity, as did Lara as to how one could just teach a normal person how to use magic without the actual knowledge of how to do so yourself? “We wean you into the feeling of magic. It exists in our world, some can feel its existence. It’ll take time but you will have to come back regularly to keep up the training.”
The email itself ended with a brief summary of the test they had put everyone through, as one could imagine none of them there had any natural hidden potential and Joseph invited them back the next day to begin their training.
Closing over the email he noticed that he had received a new one very recently. “Jasper messaging this late?” He mumbled as he pulled it open.
“This is a very troubling account Lara.” Was the header of the email, luckily when it came to the body it wasn’t multiple pages at all. “This is rapidly forming into a cult and I feel we should fast forward our investigation. I will call the school and have them send Mitch back tomorrow morning and we will start preparing.”
He could only chuckle at the email, shaking his head and lifting himself out of bed. “Not even a full day of training. Figures.” he thought as he pulled his suitcase out from under the bed.
“You good?” Joel asked as he lay on the bed next to his.
“I gotta get packing. Apparently there has been a big development in that case we are working on, I’m being sent home in the morning.”
“Well that sucks.” Joel replied, sitting up on the side of his bed to watch him check his bag, clearly upset but he knew just as well as Mitch that this was important. “But I guess it is a very important mission. Just a shame we don’t get to hang out much anymore.”
His words weighed heavy on Mitch, although he felt he wanted to avoid social contact all together to make his job easier, Joel and Saoirse were family along with friends, people he could confide in. “It is a shame, we need to all hang out for a few days when we get a break.”
Once he finished checking his suitcase he closed it over and set it atop his bed, sitting down to face Joel. “I still need to come see your place, never been to Galway.”
“You do.” was his prompt response, sitting with his hands clasped atop his knees “Times are tough at the moment, especially with a cult starting up you have to deal with. We get it, just miss chilling with a bad movie on the weekends after class.”
Mitch had to take a few moments to think of a response to that, though he eventually settled on “Once this is all over, everything will go back to normal. Just a shame we don’t know how long that will take.”
Joel silently patted his arm with his response and said “Well, rest up. I imagine you have a lot of work tomorrow.”
As they settled in for the night, around the time lights were to go off, Nick showed up by the door and said “Mitch, come with me. Bring your stuff.” Bluntly and with authority.
It had gotten all heads lifted from their pillows for a moment and Joel whispered “Don’t worry. I’ll tell ‘em all what happened.”
“Right, thanks.” He mumbled in response, grabbing his suitcase and slipping past Nick to head downstairs and outside where he was left waiting in the singular light that hung above the door. It was almost tranquil until he noticed that same odd feeling that he had on the way in.
A large creature seemed to be watching him from the distance within the woods, its eyes piercing through the shadows and while it could possibly be a fiend, there was no chance that the instructors let one get this close to the students unless there was a plan for it.
After a while of running through the nightly rules Nick made his way downstairs to meet him. “So I got a call from your grandfather, and while he wanted to wait until the morning I have no qualms bringing you home now so you can start first thing in the morning.”
“I don’t really mind. Just embarrassing to be called out in front of everyone when they already think strangely of me.” He explained, though he followed closely to his van that was parked some ways away from the dorm.
“Sometimes we have to just cope with the social aspect of this job. It affects us in many ways.” He explained as he got into the driver's seat.
Passing the seat and getting into the car he found the presence had vanished back into the forest, only to be met with an equally ominous saying from Nick “Oh that’s Beth. She doesn’t hurt the students. Just curious is all.”