Chapter 99: The Ghost's Cosmetics Box
The brand on my arm, the one the Pope had seared into my flesh from that other place, was a living, writhing knot of maggots. I had been terrified of it, convinced that real creatures were squirming beneath my skin. Jared had suggested I cover it, to put it out of my mind. Now, as I unwrapped the bandage, I saw that the brand had changed. The maggots, the ones that had burst from the ghost, had joined their brethren. The brand was more active now, the pale, segmented bodies no longer just squirming in place, but writhing with a frantic, excited energy.
In my past life, I had a classmate who kept a parrot, and he fed it mealworms. I can still vividly recall the moment he opened the lid of their container—a single, writhing mass of fat, pale worms, all squeezed together, endlessly burrowing over and under one another. The brand on my arm was a perfect, horrifying echo of that memory. The maggots were in a constant, frantic frenzy, yet they never broke their coiled, circular formation.
To look upon a box of worms is one thing—a simple, fleeting revulsion. But to know that such things are living inside you… that is a terror of a different order entirely. The moment I looked at the brand, the sensation returned, a phantom crawling just beneath my skin, an itch so profound it made my very soul cringe and my hair stand on end. The maggots, they were real. The ghost had tried to possess me, and these things, this brand, had repelled her, infesting her spectral form. Jared had seen them. They were real.
“Parula,” Jared whispered, his voice tight with a new kind of fear. “Your arm… the brand… it’s actually moving! The maggots… they’re squirming!”
“You can see it now?” I asked, my voice flat. He nodded, his eyes wide. He could finally see what I saw. But the confirmation brought me no comfort.
“Wait," I said, a new thought cutting through my panic. "You only see them writhing? Are they moving fast?" I had suddenly noticed a subtle, yet deeply unsettling, discrepancy between Jared's description and the scene I was witnessing.
“No, not fast,” he said, frowning in concentration. “It’s… it’s like they’re breathing. A slow squirming. You have to look closely to even notice it.”
Strange. The scene he described was different from the one I was seeing. And it had been the same before, hadn't it? I had seen the ghost from the very beginning, a clear and present horror. But he… he had only seen her after she'd tried to possess me, after she had recoiled in terror from the maggots. And for that matter, why could he see these strange things at all? When had his world, the simple, brutal world of the living, started to bleed into mine?
“Brother Jared,” I asked, my voice quiet, “had you ever seen a ghost before today?”
“Eh? No,” he said, shaking his head, still shaken from the encounter. “I’d heard the stories, of course. But today… today was the first time.” So, he had never seen ghosts before; this new sight, this sudden ability to perceive the dead, had to be a recent affliction—something from the last two or three days. Perhaps it had only started today. My own mind raced, sifting through the strange, unsettling events of our recent past, searching for a cause.
That was it. Yesterday, when he was looking at the Bible, I had seen it—a flash of gold in his eyes. It was the same light, the exact same holy radiance that had just now coated his blade. So I hadn't been mad. I hadn't been hallucinating.
It had started last night, with the water stains. This change in him, this new sight, it had to be connected. It was the golden light that allowed him to see the world as I saw it, to see the ghosts. And it was the golden light, I was certain, that had given his dagger the power to destroy her. And why had Jared's eyes glowed with that strange, golden light? It had happened while he was reading the Bible.
So that was it. The Bible. The holy book was the source of his newfound power.
No. It couldn't be. I looked at Jared, my mind reeling with disbelief. In my old life, my impression of the Church was that it was an institution of charlatans and frauds, preying on the ignorant. I had assumed it was the same here. During the witch's execution, I had been silently scoffing at their empty rituals and hollow faith.
But if witches were real, truly real, then it stood to reason that the Church, their sworn enemy, might possess real power as well. That their so-called 'miracles' might be more than just smoke and mirrors and cheap theatrics. But Jared... he couldn't even read. He had merely looked at a few pictures, a few illustrations in a dusty old book. And now he could perform miracles? He could wield holy light? If that were true, then wouldn't this world be crawling with priests and nuns? If you could gain divine power just by looking at a Bible, then everyone would be a miracle worker. What would be the point of effort, of faith?
“Brother Jared,” I asked, needing to be sure, “when you killed the ghost… did you see the golden light on the dagger?”
“I did,” he said, his eyes wide with a remembered awe. “Was that the light you were talking about last night? I don’t even know how I did it.”
“Can you do it again? Now?” I pressed. He tried, concentrating, his hand gripping the dagger. But nothing happened. He shook his head. “No. It’s gone.”
So there was still no way to confirm it. I would have to examine that Bible more closely. For now, we had other problems. “Let’s go back,” I said, picking up the ornate cosmetics box.
“Wait, Parula, are you sure you want to take that thing with you?” Jared asked, his voice still laced with fear. He knew, as I did, that the box was the reason the ghost had followed us.
“It’s fine,” I said, my voice confident. “She’s gone now. You destroyed her.” The strange, cold aura that had clung to the box was gone. When I had first held it, it had felt like it was stained with blood. Now, it was just a simple, wooden box. The ghost had been bound to it, a classic haunting. And she had tried to possess me. I knew these things with a strange, unbidden certainty. And I knew, too, that her whispers had been a form of seduction, a subtle magic that had likely influenced Jared to steal the box in the first place, despite his fear.
Vengeful spirits, like Wraiths, must have an anchor to this world, an object to bind themselves to. If Jared hadn't taken that cosmetics box, she never could have left that manor house. And for that matter... how in God's name did I know any of that?
“I’m sorry, Parula,” Jared said, his voice filled with a familiar guilt. “I was just trying to help. I didn’t mean to bring that thing back with us.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, trying to comfort him. “I was the one who asked for it. And we need it. Even if it is haunted.” It was strange how quickly one’s perspective could change. A few days ago, I was disgusted by the thought of using a dead man’s things. Now, I was perfectly willing to use a haunted object as an offering to a demon. It was for a demon, so what did it matter? It reminded me of a dark joke from my old life: a man finds a dead person's money on the road—the coin meant to pay for their passage in the afterlife. He takes the cursed money and throws it into a temple's offering box. Let the ghost bargain with the Buddha for its own soul, he figures.
As we made our way back, a new idea occurred to me. I wanted to test the limits of Jared’s new sight. I led him to a place I had noticed earlier, a grand, Gothic-style church, its windows filled with beautiful, ornate stained glass. But the figures in the glass, the saints and the angels… their painted eyes moved, tracking us as we approached.
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