They had found nothing within the graves. Just rotted dirt, and the hungry bones of the Mystvale dead.

‘No’, the exorcist muttered, ‘there has to be something!’

He crawled into the open ditch, and desperately continued digging, shovel indiscriminately shattering the human remains, as though he no longer had any intention of honoring their forgotten memory. Bone crumbled to bits with the sand by his feet, as he dug and dug.

He dug until his arms gave out, and he could no longer hold the shovel.

Then dug with his bare hands into the hard barren earth.

His fingers bled until the earth was as dark as the sky above him.

He turned around, realizing he was alone.

And it was night.

The pieces of bone around him trembled, and skeletal hands broke free of the Earth to catch hold of his.

Skulls clattered all around him, as though laughing, as though crying.

He could hear a hellish screech.

In the mouth of hole above him, a sinister form lined against the light of the fae moon.

Aaaiiiieeeaaeeee!

•••

Blinking himself to wakefulness in the dull reflection of the soft morning glow, the exorcist rose with difficulty among the hard banks of the chapel nave. He had close to fainted upon returning from his excursion, and his clothes had been an utter mess, even by his very lax standards. He resembled one of those homeless vagrants who refuged within the charity of the Lord. Finding holy symbols adorning every mildewed wall, he listened for the distant, demonic creaking that had possessed the wooden windows throughout the night.

The phantom hissing that had harassed his sleep.

Once again, he could almost laugh at how feeble a protection this little house of prayer had provided. Though to be fair, he was not sure how much of the nightmare had been the result of the ghost, how much of his own weak and defeated spirit.

One thing he knew for certain: the ghost was growing stronger.

He wondered if the tide of her power had merely followed the cycles of the moon, or if she’d summoned it from some unknown reserve, in response to the threat he’d posed to her existence. The latter was entirely a baseless and idle conjecture, but it would have at least comforted him to know if it was true.

He would appreciate the comfort. He didn’t need it nearly as much as the support the townsfolk had withdrawn from him, after the huge plunge his potato-eating reputation had taken. But appreciate it he would.

‘Maybe algae… or mustard leaves?’ he pondered spacily, whether Father Edmund had had any other cooking notes on these things.

With strong, violent movements, he abruptly righted himself and raked through his thick black hair.

He needed to clear his mind before he started thinking turning stone to bread was the ultimate providence of the divine nature.

He needed to think rationally.

So the head turned out not to be within the seven years’ graves. It didn’t specifically rule out everything else he had deduced. The fact remained that: Father Edmund and his so-called disciples could only have managed the corpse within their closed circle. Had they somehow sneaked the corpse-pieces into some of the later period graves? No, they had recovered the tradition of affording funeral rites and coffins by then. That required the family of the bereaved to make certain confirmation before the burials, and it wasn’t likely that they’d had external confidantes. Besides, the window between the time the body was deposited and the revenant risen did not allow much variance.

He put a hand on his forehead.

His aching thoughts were interrupted by the creak of an opening door.

‘I hope you’ve had a good night’s rest’, said the priest brightly and briskly as he invited the morning sun inside. The exorcist’s brows uncomfortably knitted together.

‘... I was just thinking where else the severed head could have been hidden’, his gaze absently wandered.

The old man eyed him over more closely once he’d approached. ‘You look like a mess’, he declared simply.

The exorcist sighed. ‘My insides are a mess.’ He let his head collapse into the cradle of his palms. ‘Nothing makes much sense.’

The priest comfortably seated himself. ‘You’re talking about the witch?’

‘...Yes.’

‘Well, it’s a very hard problem’, he said naturally as though the affair had nary a thing to do with him. ‘Evaded us for centuries. But I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of it.’

The exorcist wasn’t feeling as optimistic. ‘How?’ he fitfully questioned. ‘Where else am I supposed to find the head?’

The priest considered his questions for a moment, only speaking up before he lost hope and hung his head again.

‘Perhaps… don’t find it anymore?’ he said tentatively.

‘...What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean…’ the priest cheerfully clapped his hands together, ‘...why not continue exactly as it is?’

The exorcist stared at him in disbelief. ‘...Don’t you want me to deliver you from the ghost?’

The priest smiled. ‘You’ve been doing exactly that!’

‘Ever since you’ve arrived here, Mystvale has been peaceful, untouched by devil hands!’

The exorcist just sighed, and shook his head. The priest was only able to say such things, because he had kept the details of his troubled dreaming to himself.

Suddenly, the priest laid a hand on him.

‘You may or may not be able to expel the demon ultimately—which I believe you’re able—but in the meantime, why not just settle for this?’

He looked with emotion into his black, confused eyes.

‘Stay with us, and be something other than just Mr Exorcist.’

•••

The exorcist was not prepared for the current development. He reclined against the hard bank behind him, and put a tired arm over his face.

‘...Mr Exorcist?’

He didn’t need this complication.

He hadn’t even gotten his thoughts in order yet, and now he was supposed to deal with the sensations rising inside of him.

It was unfair.

They just wanted to hire him for cheap.

Daily potatoes were cheaper than half a yield of produce.

He needed to keep his head on straight.

How was he ever going to solve the case at this rate.

How would he even live out his life in Mystvale?

The witch wanted to kill him.

As a pastor? As a farmer?

Tilling the land would be hard without ploughing.

Kill him.

A teacher? Those children could really use a proper education.

He needed to get back to the witch.

He didn’t need this.

He didn’t want this.

‘...’

‘...’

‘... I’ll consider it, Father.’

The priest seemed absolutely overjoyed over his hard-uttered reply.

‘But I still think it’s of the utmost importance’, he added gravely, ‘that we deal with the witch as soon as possible.’

The priest looked at him with a little disappointment.

‘... No one would want to live here if it’s not safe’, he cracked a hard smile.

‘Why, of course! Of course!’ said the priest exuberantly.

He eagerly stood up and spun around as though looking for something he could do to expedite the process, then after a moment, sat back down again.

‘How about we pray?’ he said all of a sudden, priest-like.

‘Pray?’

‘It’s what people do when they need help’, the priest smiled brightly. ‘They ask for guidance from above.’

‘...’

The exorcist rarely prayed when he knew he could think, but after briefly considering his options, he sighed, and put his hands together.

In silent reverie, he could hear the little titters the old man was emitting from beside him. Silly sounds nothing like what a priest should be making, but they made him feel warm—welcomed.

Perhaps he really should consider the offer.

He could hear the opening of the front door, and pairs of smaller feet coming in. It was probably the womenfolk, come to commune with their faith, reciting the scriptures as he had prescribed. It was becoming like morning church.

It was nothing like the Mystvale he had heard of. This wasn’t so uncultured.

This wasn’t so bad...

‘You there!’

An angry female voice suddenly shouted from behind him.

His body reacted to the threat of her inimical tone, and he shuffled to his feet.

A woman stood before all the rest.

‘Martha!’ the priest cried out. ‘Whatever is the matter’—

‘That greedy, good-for-nothing liar is the matter!’ the woman charged ahead, finger outstretched to single the exorcist out. ‘Thanks to him, all of our young men—my boy included—were led round on a wild goose chase, desecrating the graves of our ancestors!’

‘It was all done with good intentions!’ the priest tried to stand before her. ‘We were trying to find the witch! He’s here to’—

‘And did any witch ever turn up!?—Did you see any witch get vanquished last night too!?’’

‘We’re all trying our best here!’—

‘Just trying your best isn’t good enough!’

‘—in fact, it’s because of his advice to take to prayers that has given us sound sleep these past couple nights’—

‘Exactly!’ the woman cried, pushing the old priest —‘Our prayer! What has he done but made a mockery of our dead forefathers? I’ve heard about the deal he asked for! He expects us to pay his extortionate prices for this?!’

The women behind all rallied in her support. In the corner of his eye, the exorcist could spot the young lady from yesterday, holding her silence in the back of the crowd.

Cold melancholy welled up inside him.

‘If you believe offering your prayers will be sufficient protection from the ghost, I will leave it to you’, he announced stolidly, mustering up the fortitude to keep his turbulent emotions at bay. ‘Just remember to read from the texts I’ve laid out’—

‘This is what I think about your texts!’ The woman reached for the lectern, and threw the volume upon it to the floor.

The exorcist could hear an explosive plop inside his head, like a swirling vortex, the moment the holy book hit the rough, unclean surface of the ground.

‘We don’t need you or your stupid texts!—We have Father Edmund to answer our prayers!’ The women all cheered.

It was at that moment that everything connected.

His eyes lit up, and he stumbled past the female mob. Some took the opportunity to beat and spit on him as he passed, triumphantly mistaking his behaviour for flight from being shamefully exposed, but he ignored their abuse in his epiphanic trance. The old priest followed closely behind him.

‘Mr Exorcist!’ he yelled. ‘Wait! Please do not take what Martha says to heart!—she’s the blasted mayor’s sister for crying out loud!—Where are you going?!’

They had exited chapel property when the exorcist regained enough sense to communicate his ideas.

‘To Father Edmund!’ he said abruptly.

The simple statement startled the priest beyond all his faculties of acceptance. He raised a dumb finger. ‘Father Edmund is in heaven.’

The exorcist looked at him. He knew the old man was not that senile.

A grave that the Mystvale townsfolk would never desecrate.

‘I’m going to need a shovel, perhaps a hammer’, the exorcist considered as he recalled the construct he’d seen, ‘... But you’re not even lending me a trowel, now are you?’

The priest’s face filled with regret. ‘...I can only hope that you return as soon as possible.’

The exorcist smiled bitterly. The priest had not meant that as a blessing.

He turned back to the chapel. ‘I will not tell the others.’

‘Thank you’—

‘But I beg you, return!’

‘...’

‘...’

After that, they parted ways.

The exorcist made it as fast as he could past the winding town, to the monument in the burial grounds, under whose grand appearance purportedly rested the noble reverend’s earthly remains. It was clean and well-maintained, unlike all the other graves around it. A holy box, containing all the potential for hope and chaos within it.

The stones as he touched them were a solid material, but nothing enchanted. Nothing he couldn’t break through if he put his back into it.

Black plumes of smoke rose from his spare, cloaked figure.

‘I’ll eat enough potatoes to make up for it afterwards.’

He raised his smoking fist above the stone structure.

A faint, foreign resonance could be heard throughout the town of Mystvale that day.

Dully repeating itself over and over, like a smith’s hammer.

Only the priest had a suspicion as to why.

As soon as the lid to the monument was finally shattered, the exorcist shoved the broken plates and pieces aside, and leapt into the depths of the grave.

A beautiful, ornate casket lay at the bottom.

Impatiently flinging the wooden cover aside with the black mist tendrils sprouting around his body, his eyes widened at the sight of the contents.

There was almost nothing inside, except…

Destroyed pieces of chemically preserved body matter. Some with blond hair turned flaxen.

He picked something he recognized to be an angular jawline, dead flesh stretched close against their pillar, like a jerkied piece of fish.

‘So half of you is yours.’

•••

When the exorcist strode back into chapel premises, the women were already adjourning for the day. They were glad to meet him with eager abuses, until they noticed the eerie strings of black mist wreathing his entire body.

The priest was alerted to the commotion.

‘Please withdraw your magic!’ he implored from the gates of the holy building. ‘You are frightening them!’

The exorcist entered without heeding his advice, and knelt before the cross of the congregation. As he had done before, he laid a hand on the stony surface, and black mist seeped into its minute pores.

A hazy vision entered his mind, this time going from the ground downwards. Beneath the place where he was kneeling, there was another great box.

Uttering a groan of exertion, the smog intensified around him.

The floor of the chapel trembled.

Suddenly, patches of stone and concrete collapsed before him.

Revealing a passage underground.

•••

The passage reeked of the stench of a stagnant century, and the unpleasant odours of chemicals wafted from the chamber just ahead. There were several shelves of organic materials in various states of preservation, and thick volumes of arcane and forbidden lore.

In the heart of the chamber, there was another casket, circled by what was revealed to be gothic inscriptions and runic symbols, under the meagre light of the leaking sunset.

‘...Necromancy.’

The exorcist carefully pushed the lid of the casket off.

There lay a perfectly preserved male body, in priestly garments.

In his hand, a dated volume with a handwritten title...

...Revelata Evae. Eve Uncovered.

The male body had been severed from the neck, and the head that rested above it had…

‘Poppy locks and porcelain skin’, he said as he beheld the beautiful face of the woman.

‘Are you the one they call the witch?’

As the exorcist admired the beautiful face, he wondered what methods Edmund had applied to his corpses. He doubted that mere medical knowledge could have preserved the soul of one's expression.

As had remained upon the pristine face before him.

It felt as though she was still alive, still only sleeping.

He expected her eyes to twitch any moment now, as though he had rudely trespassed upon her precious slumber.

Then her soft lips would quiver gently.

Answering him.

... Yes.