“Okay, did anyone remember the things we discussed in the last lecture?” in a course about apparitions, ghosts and paranormality, the lecturer, Assistant Professor Urkel Jackson stood nervously behind his podium and asked the students without much anticipation of getting a response.

“... the similarities and differences between different kinds of spirits and ghosts?” seeing that no one answered and it is kinda embarrassing the assistant professor, Jason raised his hand and answered: “Especially the basic characteristics of spirits that were born of grudge, hatred, despair and dread.”

“Exactly, thank you Mr. Lin.” Assistant Professor Jackson nodded and smiled: “And, one of the key points I stressed in the last lecture, was that the contagious nature of these negative emotions that beget vengeful spirits. And in the reading material for today’s lecture, the essay authored by paranormal scholar Styrn Carpenter: Fundamentals of Malicious Contagion, this theory was proposed: that negative emotions, like dread, despair, purposeless, not only beget vengeful spirits, they also link and bind spirits together, like some kind of self-fueling binding curse.

“Not that unlike the psychological phenomena caused by strong social sentiment amongst sentient and intellectual beings like human, and in some extreme cases, mass hysteria, these negative emotions drove the spirits further into the depths of these emotions, twist them, corrupt them, deprive them of what’s left of their individuality and reason. And given enough time, spirits that are lured into these traps and bind by these emotions will integrate and form what are essentially spectral abominations. Carpenter gave this kind of spectral abomination a name: clustered malice, or hived malice. It endangers innocent spirits and corporeal creatures alike - by consuming their essence, their energy and sanity.

“Carpenter traveled through a lot of places in the world and had documented a lot of instances of clustered malice. One of the common factors is: that it tends to occur naturally when there are large scale disasters like war, famine and plague, where there were a lot of casualties and thus high levels of these previously mentioned negative emotions. And wherever whenever clustered malice appeared, the harm and hurt brought by the pre-existing disasters will be exacerbated. And even when the disasters had passed, the healing of these wounds would be stifled purely because of the presence of the clustered malice in the area.

“But, I guess you would have this question: if the clustered malice is such an ever growing and ever spreading danger, how come we’ve not seen more of it? If no one interfered, it should just be able to keep growing right? If it was just able to grow by absorbing more and more spirits and negative emotions, surely someday it would grow to a stage where no one would be able to ever face it.”

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Assistant Professor Jackson looked over at the students in the classroom, most of them were still paying attention but not enough to answer the question, and a few of the students were actually looking down at something beneath their desks. And then he looked over to Jason and Caroline again, expecting that they might at least have something meaningful to say.

“Well...” Caroline scratched her hair and said hesitantly: “There must be a natural limit to how much the abomination can grow right? I am not sure what constitutes this kind of limit...”

“Probably the … the … the emotions themselves?” when Caroline looked over to Jason, Jason stammered: “You can’t just stitch these many similar things - spirits together and expect things to just work out. You’ll need some kind of internal communication and… maybe like a skeleton of some sort, if we can use real life corporeal creatures as an example … without a skeleton and the nervous system we’re just blobs of flesh. And we will just crumble and cannot do anything.”

“Pretty much, you two got the right idea.” Assistant Professor Jackson appeared quite glad that Caroline and Jason were able to give an answer: “The natural limit to the growth of clustered malice comes from the very nature of these negative emotions - they needed to grow in order to to exist, but when they grew to a certain extent, they uncontrollably turn into madness, insanity and chaotic rage, which in turn will destroy the cluster from within. Eventually, without any external intervention, these instances of clustered malice will invariably implode.”

“Hmmm. I have a question, Professor Jackson.” Jason raised his hand.

“Yes, Jason?”

“For these spirits that are trapped and bound by the negative emotions and being integrated into the clustered malice - you mentioned they would lose individuality, does that come with some visual representations? Like becoming disfigured, distorted and maybe a little slim, and...”

“... and sort of faceless and sometimes dark, sometimes pale like their skins have been peeled off and their bodies were burnt?” Caroline continued Jason’s question.

“Um… as a matter of fact, those are pretty typical examples.” Assistant Professor Jackson nodded at Caroline and Jason: “What, have you had encounters with them?”

“Oh god, multiple times.” Jason exchanged looks with Caroline: “And… and my question is how can clustered malice be present among normal living humans and not cause havoc all the time?”

“That would probably fall under the scenario of external intervention.” Assistant Professor Jackson thought for a short while and answered: “Clustered malice does not have any coherent thought, it just has instincts. But due to its power potential, there have been many cases of necromancers and other dark wizards and witches who attempt to gain control of it. And sadly, some of them did succeed - the details vary, but the one thing in common is injecting a core - something that can tune down the negative emotions, balancing them and even organizing them.”

“Holy - do you remember the core of that spider? That sleeping girl?” Caroline smacked Jason’s arm.

“Oh god - I feel like I have to call my friends - my ex friends. But still.” Jason shook his head and turned to Assistant Professor Jackson: “Professor, I’m really sorry, but we need to make a call. We just realized something, it’s kind of an emergency.”

“Umm, yeah sure. Just come back when you’re done. Okay?”