Occulturation #11 Screamer Trap

Garesh looks up at another street sign. “Ultipa Street.” He says, “Looks like this is where we turn.” Millie looks up at the sign and frowns. “I can’t read.” She says, “I need to learn to read.” Garesh doesn’t respond to Millie’s comment. He knows that it might be useful if Millie could read, but he is not going to take the time to teach her to read. After walking down Ultipa Street for a few minutes, Millie says, “Garesh, I need to read. You must teach me.” Garesh continues to ignore her. Finally Millie says, “As my caretaker, you are obligated to provide me with an education. If you won’t teach me yourself, then you must provide me with a teacher.”

“I’m not your caretaker.” Garesh says, though he instantly knows that he’s wrong. The last clause in his part of the verbal contract “Care for and carry me.” He has to care for Millie. And apparently that means teaching her to read. Garesh still isn’t going to teach her himself. He knows that his other Incorporeals can read since they use the word wall to communicate. He wonders if there is a way to enable them to teach Millie to read and write. As he thinks about it, he can make this work. He just needs a small, portable word wall, and some paper and pens.

He stops by a small shop and buys a stack of thin papers, a handful of pens, and a small wooden board that has every letter in the alphabet printed in two arcs with the numbers from 0 to 9 in a line below. It also has a circle with the word “Yes” printed next to it in the top left corner and a circle with the word “No” printed next to it in the top right corner. Strangest of all is that beneath everything else in large print are the words “Good Bye.”

He instructs Millie to learn how to read and write words by asking the Incorporeals how to spell a word, then tracing the letters that they indicate onto the paper. Then afterwards, she can ask the Incorporeals if she spelled it correctly, in which they can indicate “yes” or “no” through the board. Garesh likewise instructs the Incorporeals to help Millie learn to read by indicating the letters of the word she wishes to learn to read and write but not to indicate the next letter until she has finished tracing the currently indicated letter. This way she will learn to read and write without Garesh needing to do anything himself.

Millie grudgingly accepts this method of tutoring, though she believes it will be inefficient to be taught by creatures that can neither speak nor write. It’s too hard to write while walking, so they place the papers, pencils, and wooden board in Garesh’s backpack where he is already carrying food and water.

Millie doesn’t quite know where they are in the city. But if they’re heading towards Daisy’s, they need to leave the city entirely and enter the wilderness. Millie thinks the city is really big. She can’t imagine how they’re going to get to Daisy’s on foot. Garesh didn’t even bring a sleeping bag. Millie really hopes that Garesh doesn’t plan on them marching through the night. Garesh stops in front of an abandoned building that has the wooden planks nailed over the windows. Millie doesn’t like the looks of this place. The grass is overgrown and in between the wooden planks, she can see that windows mostly have holes in them or are shattered. Millie asks, “Garesh, why have we come here? This clearly is not Daisy’s.”

“Ystra said that we needed souls to pay for services at Daisy’s.” Garesh says, “I don’t know how to collect souls without killing, and I don’t know how to store souls to use them later. But modern witches do, like Bowlday. Since he’s dead, he won’t need those souls anymore.”

Millie is still confused. “But Garesh,” Millie says, “this isn’t where I found Bowlday.” Garesh chuckles. “We can’t return to the scene of Bowlday’s death for a few days.” Garesh says, “The A.S.S.F. will be crawling all over that place. We need to wait for them to clear out before we go looting there.” Millie doesn’t want to return to the scene where she turned the hellhounds against Bowlday. She is sure a great massacre has occurred there by now, and the hellhounds might have actually learned how to Surge for real. However, Garesh mentioned the A.S.S.F. If the Anti-Screamer Special Forces take out the hellhounds, she won’t have to face them again. Still, going to the site where she indirectly caused many people to die does not seem pleasant to her.

“While we wait for the A.S.S.F. to clear out, we’ll be temporarily taking up residence here.” Garesh says, gesturing to the abandoned house. Millie is pretty sure it is illegal to move into a house that they don’t own, even if no one else owns it either. However, she’d rather stay in a creepy building than on the streets. Garesh directs his Incorporeals to find him a way into the building. He takes out the small wooden board that has letters and numbers on it, and Svartr touches letters in sequence to spell out “Someone is inside.”

Garesh frowns. He hadn’t expected there to be any other squatter already there. Garesh considers the dilapidated building. It’s really not much better than rubble. The roof has collapsed in some areas, and the windows are barred over and broken. There are cracks in the door so wide that you can see into the room inside. It’s actually rather well lit inside from the natural lighting pouring in through the many holes and cracks in the walls, roofs, and broken barred up windows. Garesh doesn’t see anyone inside through the cracks in the door. However, Millie notices silver lining framing the doors and windows and perimeter of the foundation of the house. It appears to be real silver ilke Millie used to see back before she met Garesh, not the steel that seems to be so common now. She also knows that using silver to frame openings to buildings is a barrier that blocks Screamer traversal. As Garesh tries to pry off the planks that bar the door shut, Millie takes another look around and notices that the planks boarding up the windows and doors are fresh and clean, not rotted, old, and splintering like she expected.

Jack the blue flying flame seems to be trying to get Garesh’s attention, jumping across the letters on the alphabet board. Garesh doesn’t pay any mind as he struggles with the planks boarding up the front door. Millie watches Jack intently, and Jack seems to have noticed her stare because it hovers down to a floor mat. Jack jumps up and down on the floor mat and Millie sees the edges of an engraving in the ground. Millie pulls the floor mat out from underneath Garesh, causing him to stumble, holding onto the planks of the door to keep from falling. Garesh turns to yell at Millie but then he sees the symbol carved into the floor that was previously hidden by the floor mat. It’s like a Screamer sigil but it isn’t one the five Screamer types. Garesh thinks it looks familiar, as though he has seen this very same symbol somewhere recently. The symbol is a circle of 5 stars that are interconnected.

A deafening canine low-pitched growl reverberates through the neighborhood.Tremors shake the foundation of the house and throws Garesh off his feet. The sound seems to be coming from the direction of the theater where Bowlday died. As if in response to the roar, The door to the house rattles as though something is trying to open it. But Garesh can’t see anybody through the cracks in the door. The planks covering the window to the right shutter and shake but there is again no one there. Garesh says, “Willheim, is that you.” In response, loud stomping knocks sound on the pavement behind him: the sound that Willheim likes to make. Garesh considers this information for a bit and then says, “It looks like there is an Incorporeal in this house of the same type as Willheim. I’m not sure about those tremors and growls. Millie, what exactly happened with Bowlday?” Millie pales and says, “It’s like I said before. Bowlday’s Screamer dogs turned on him.” Garesh nods. “So that growling, that must be the hellhounds? It can’t be ‘the same hellhounds that attacked us earlier, this growling is from something far stronger.” Millie stays quiet. She thinks she might have an idea on what might have happened. If these hellhounds discovered how to Surge for real, then that growling could very well have come from the same hellhounds. There were a great many cultists in the audience. They could have fueled a great many Surges.

The sound of whirling helicopters fades in from the distance. Garesh is scared now. He needs to find some shelter. He fears the A.S.S.F. will recognize him. It’s unlikely that the special task force of the government will recall him, but his fear is irrational. He doesn’t even care that the dilapidated building is haunted by an Incorporeal, he would rather deal with an Incorporeal than the A.S.S.F. Garesh suddenly has, what to his mind, is a brilliant idea. He takes one of the pencils that Millie uses to practice learning to read and write, and he draws the symbol for Incorporeal on the door. Millie can see what he is doing. He’s going to have Svartr Incorporealize that door through Incorporation. And just as Millie expects, Garesh invokes Svartr to Incorporate the door, but the shadow just sits on the Screamer sigil of Incorporeal but doesn’t do anything. Millie watches as Garesh is confused. She hears Garesh think aloud about why the Svartr didn’t Incorporate. He considers the possibility of the door or house already being Incorporated by another Incorporeal, the possibility of the Incorporeal inside somehow preventing Svartr from Incorporating. Millie admits to herself that such a line of thought would make sense in pretty much every other instance. Millie herself would agree if it wasn’t for the detail she noticed earlier. The doorframe is lined with silver. Screamers and silver don’t mix well. The Incorporeals won’t be able to enter the building or Incorporate it. Luckily, I’m not a Screamer. Millie thinks to herself. Though I don’t want to be in there with an unknown Incorporeal either. Millie thinks the best choice here is to run away. If the Surging hellhounds leave the theater and find them, then not even a silver door frame would be enough to stop them.

The growl reverberates through the city again. This time it is louder, closer. The helicopter is nearly overhead now. Garesh gives up on going through the door and runs along the side of the building, looking for another entrance. He sees a bunch of barred windows until he finds a window that is barred by only two planks and they seem to have been hammered in haphazardly. He yanks on the upper plank, but it doesn’t budge. He pulls on the bottom plank, and the right part of it wobbles a little bit. After he wiggles it a bit, the right part comes loose enough to enlarge the gap in the window so he can fit through. He pulls himself over the windowsill and into the house. Garesh then reaches his arms back out and gestures to Millie, “Come here, I’ll lift you in!” Millie takes a step backwards. She doesn’t want to go in there and be trapped with an Incorporeal that must have been purposefully trapped recently. This Screamer trap is actually terrifying. Based on what she knows about Screamers, the Screamer trap must have been built within the month to have trapped an Incorporeal inside. But if the A.S.S.F. has resources to have strange flying metal contraptions like helicopters and with all of the new technology and manufacturing she has seen in this metropolis, why would they construct a trap in such a ramshackle building? This is not a long term solution, even with the silver. It only needs to last a month, but with the roof already caved in at places, it wouldn’t take much to knock down a wall. This really could only hold an Incorporeal that lacked physical strength. Even then, it has to be an especially weak Incorporeal. Even the hellhounds could break out of here without Surging.

“Come on, Millie!” Garesh says, beckoning with his hand. Millie just shakes her head and backs away. She can see a shadowy silhouette moving behind Garesh, leaning over his shoulder. Though the Incorporeal appears translucent and ethereal, its hands wrap around Garesh’s neck and strangle him. Garesh does indeed start to choke. And as he struggles for air, the Incorporeal’s hands become more opaque, more life-like. She begins to see more detail and it goes from shadow to gnarled and wrinkled old hands that black with decay. They squeeze around Garesh’s throat. She can now see dark purple veins underneath the skin of the hands. The veins pulsate as the hands gain more life and form, as though draining Garesh of his life. Garesh croaks out towards Millie, “S-save me!” Millie really doesn’t want to help. She knows that there is nothing she can do. She’ll surely be killed. But Millie hears words echo in her mind. Vengeance. She feels that she must protect Garesh by destroying his enemies. However, she doesn’t even try crawling through the window because something inside her tells her that she doesn’t even want to try and get through even though the opening is easily big enough for her. The helicopter passes by overhead as tremors shake the ground from a loud crash she hears a few blocks away. Loud growling emanates from the same direction as the crash. A terrible compulsion comes over Millie. She feels the overwhelming focus on the single task of saving Garesh. She can barely register the sounds of chaos a few blocks away or the helicopter above her. She runs towards the window and rasps the ledge of the window. A powerful feeling of apathy comes over her. Almost complete lack of motivation. She feels helpless, utter despair. She doesn’t want to save Garesh. She doesn’t want to do anything. She just wants to sit down and wait for her inevitable death. But she can’t stop, something inside won’t let her. She is forced forward almost as a puppet, propelled to action. She stumbles through the window and falls onto the ground. She feels weak and nauseous. The world spins and she stands up and her vision is blurry. There are so many images of Garesh right now, she can’t even tell where he really is. She stumbles forward but hears the muffling coming from her left. She leans to the left but doesn’t turn and instead crumples to the ground, landing on something soft. A body. The body is still moving. Her burry eyes show this to be Garesh, passed out on the floor. The shadowy hands still gripped around his neck. She feels no desire to anything but lay motionless on the floor and die like Garesh, but no matter how much she wants she is physically incapable of resisting the will to fend off this Incorporeal. This will to fight is not her own.

The Incorporeal is less shadowy than it was before. Color has returned to its hands. Its hands are pale and dead but appear to be real physical human hands now. The arms have appeared as well, covered in long brown sleeves of an office coat. It’s face is still indistinct but it appears to be male with short hair. Millie tries to stand up and trips over Garesh’s body. She falls forward, slamming into the almost human-like Incorporeal. Despite still being mostly translucent, she makes contact with the Incorporeal’s body, pushing the Incorporeal backwards. Millie drops on top of the Incorporeal. The Incorporeal weighs barely anything. It’s like it is made of paper. The Incorporeal struggles to move but can’t get out from underneath Millie. She doesn’t think she weighs too much, she is just a little girl after all. She supposes that an Incorporeal with so little of a physical manifestation would not have much strength to push off even a little girl like Millie. But now that the threat to Garesh is incapacitated, the will driving Millie forward has left. Millie no longer has the willpower to stay awake or alive. She loses all sense of presence and falls unconscious.

Svartr, Willheim, and Jack hide as they see a absolutely massive, grotesquely malformed hellhound that is at least 20 feet tall and 50 feet long and has several heads, one of which has been cut in half, and it has a hairless stump where there was once some sort of tail. The monstrosity barrels down the block, zig-zagging as it crashes into houses on either side of the street. It appears to be desperately looking for something as it smashes through nearly every single house it can find. It even bites through cars and garages. It is only about four houses away from the boarded up Screamer trap house with Garesh and Millie inside. The percussive sound of machine gun fire cracks through the air like repeating thunder, as a man is operating a sentry gun attached to the side of the doorless helicopter. The hellhound stumbles backward as the barrage rips through its heads, bursting two of them, leaving it with only three remaining functional heads. From the bottom of the helicopter a car-sized chunk of steel that appears incredibly battered and full of penetrating holes, lowers via a chain about 10 feet below the helicopter as the machine gun stops and the helicopter rises higher into the air. The boom of what sounds like a cannon is followed by a grappling claw plunges into the chunk of metal from below and about three blocks away. The grappling claw is connected to a metal cord that goes back three blocks to what appears to be someone in a gas mask. With the whir of a motor, the figure slingshots towards the metal chunk, but the grappling claw detaches drops from the metal chunk and slams back into the left arm of the person. The left arm is a cannon-like metal cylinder from the elbow down to a few feet beyond where the hand should be. Before it can crash into the helicopter, the figure fires the grappling claw down into the hellhound, straight through one of its still-functional heads. The heads burst apart as the grappling claw sinks in through the neck all the way down the shoulder of the hellhound. With a whir of a motor, the person is pulled towards the hellhound. But this time, the agent doesn’t redirect their trajectory with another grappling claw. It crashes directly into the hellhound. The hellhound explodes, body parts flying in all directions. Gore coats the rubble that used to be rows of houses. All these shaking tremors have caused the roof of the Screamer trap to fully collapse and the boards are ripping themselves from the doorway and window frames as the silver lining falls off.

The chunk of metal is pulled back into a storage cavity in the bottom of the helicopter and the chopper slowly lowers to the ground. A woman exits the passenger seat of the helicopter and walks up to the person in the gas mask. The woman looks upset and is scowling. “That’s hypocrisy! How come you get to kill Screamers?” The person in the gas masks takes off the mask and reveals herself to be a woman. She says, “I was given a direct order from the council. I don’t agree with it, but unlike some of my subordinates, I obey the commands of my superiors even if I don’t agree.” The woman with a grappling claw cannon for a left arm enters the helicopter and gestures towards the other woman with her right arm, which is another metal cylinder, a cannon that goes up to her shoulder. Her right leg also appears to be metal, along with her left foot. The woman that is completely flesh shakes her head and folds her arms, pouting. “I’m not going to watch you kill the Screamers that I found on my own. I won’t come with you.” The woman in the helicopter sighs and says, “Fine by me. Meet you back at the base, Isuertal.” Then she turns to the pilot, “We’re leaving her; let’s chase down that hellhound.” The helicopter blades whirl ferociously and the helicopter rises back into the air. Soon, it’s out of sight but the whirring blades are still audible in the distance. The woman, Isuertal, turns and surveys the scene of carnage and destruction. The hellhound is undoubtedly destroyed, but it is still alive and can manifest if someone gives it a human soul. Isuertal knows that Incorporeal, unlike other Screamers, aren’t necessarily gone forever once their physical body is destroyed. So she examines the gore covering the nearby buildings and rubble. She walks over the rubble, looking for any clues as to whether this Screamer may still be alive. As she is about to enter the partially collapsed Screamer trap, she pauses. Looking in, she sees that Garesh and Millie are unconscious on the floor and a struggling partially-physical, translucent man underneath Millie. Isuertal is understandably curious about this situation, but more so excited that there is a Screamer. She has a chance to kill a Screamer right there and then, quickly, while Greesha is busy dealing with the other hellhound.

However, as Isuertal raises her foot to take a step forward, she pauses again. She reconsiders. This all seems too convenient. The last time something seemed too convenient, the oddly positioned mannequin turned out to be Greesha. This could be a trap or maybe a test set by Greesha to catch her in the act of attempting to kill a Screamer. But there also appears to be civilians that are hurt. Greesha would never do anything to harm civilians. Isuertal considers the possibility that the injuries are fake. But as she looks closer, she can see that the man is wrinkled and pale, the sign of life siphon from an Incorporeal. And the girl also appears pale and doesn’t appear to be breathing. And with the little girl being actually on top of the Incorporeal, it is clear to Isuertal that the little girl is dead, killed by the Incorporeal. Isuertal feels a tinge of sadness for the death of the little girl, but that small flicker of feeling quickly fades away. She has seen death frequently. The Screamers she hunts down often leave a trail of corpses. It’s part of why she can’t understand how Greesha can be so adamant about sparing the lives of Screamers. Screamers are murderers. Humans aren’t let off the hook for murder, why should Screamers be allowed to live? Isuertal continues to survey the scene. She notices a small board on the ground outside the house. She picks it up. It has the letters of the alphabet and numbers from 0 to 9. There is also a “Yes,” “No,” and “Goodbye.” There is also a magnifying glass that lacks a handle. She hears a loud knocking on the pavement a few yards away. The knocking gets closer and Isuertal starts to back away but then the knocking stops. Instead, the magnifying glass floats out of her hand and hovers over the letters. Isuertal looks through the magnifying glass and sees a letter. Then the magnifying glass moves to hover over another letter. It keeps doing this and Isuertal keeps track of which letters are being selected until she realizes that it is spelling out a word: “B”-”E”-”A”-”D”-”S”. Isuertal is confused. Surely an Incorporeal is speaking to her through the device, but she can’t understand what it is trying to say. “Beads?” That doesn’t make any sense. What is that supposed to mean? She looks back at the rubble beneath her. The white powder of paint chips from the collapsed walls and ceiling. Interspersed in the white powder is some reflective metallic dust. Isuertal feels hazy as she stares at it. She coughs as a cloud of dust and debris, including that silvery substance is still lingering in the air. The magnifying glass repeatedly spells out the word “beads.” Isuertal begins to feel a vague disconnect. It’s all so surreal to her. A tingling paranoia begins to tickle the back of her mind, slowly crawling forwards to her conscious awareness. There is a shadow to her right in her peripheral vision, but when she turns her head to look at it, it’s gone. There is a torch to her left, just out of sight, but when she investigates the location. It’s not there. As a breeze blows past her, she feels a slight tugging on her pockets. The bead necklaces she gathered from the theater with the hellhounds drop to the ground. She quickly picks them up. She has yet to cross the perimeter into the house. And the more she looks at the scene of the man, the girl, and the Incorporeal, the more she wants to leave. The man is still breathing. She considers this strange since the Incorporeal is still alive and even moving a bit. So why hasn’t it killed the man? And why isn’t the Incorporeal getting up from the floor. It lies beneath a dead child, a little girl. But as she looks closer, the girl, though clearly dead, does not appear to have the wrinkled marks of life-siphon. She wasn’t killed by the Incorporeal. Isuertal wonders, What happened here? She begins to envision that something must have incapacitated all three creatures in the house and is killing them. If she enters, she will surely suffer the same fate. Isuertal isn’t scared of dying. She knows that no Screamers here could do any worse than the hellhounds. But, if that is so, then why her hands trembling? Why are her knuckles white, gripping the board and the beads? The magnifying glass has stopped moving and is just hovering, motionless, over the board. Isuertal looks down and sees that the magnifying glass is floating above “Goodbye.” Isuertal drops the board and starts walking backwards. Then she turns away from the house and begins to walk faster. She hears footsteps following her, but when she turns her head to look, there is no one there and the footsteps stop. She sometimes sees the shadow of a man beside her, as though cast from some invisible pursuer. As she speeds up to a jog, she can see dancing shadows in front of her from a flickering blue light coming from behind her. But when she turns around, there is nothing emanating blue light. She comes to a stop at a crosswalk and puts her hands on her knees to catch her breath. But as she pants for air, face towards the ground, she sees the same lettered board at her feet. The magnifying sitting against the board, not on any letter in particular. A chalky white powder stains the wooden board: debris from the house. This is the last straw. She drops the beads and ignores the street lights, breaking into a sprint down the road.

It all feels like a dream to Isuertal. But this dream is quickly turning into a nightmare. She leaps over honking cars that swerve to avoid hitting her. She speeds up and the cars in front of her slow as she runs through the middle of the street like a maniac. She doesn’t know where she is going, she just wants to get away from that building with the man, the girl, and the Incorporeal. The board, the beads, the shadows out of the corner of her eye, the footsteps following her, the flickering blue light from behind, she doesn’t notice it anymore. But she has the intense feeling that if she stopped running, she would see and hear it once again. The world begins to blur and the wind in her ears is deafening. She can hardly keep her eyes open as she runs through intersection after intersection until she finally hits a freeway and runs along the side. She opens her eyes. She hits a brick wall. She opens her eyes. She hadn’t realized she had closed them. She looks around. She isn’t sure where she is. She is still in the city, but she isn’t sure where has gone. Surrounded by skyscrapers and intersections that all look the same. She begins to look for a bus stop. She hadn’t brought her phone with her because she is certain that Greesha is tracking location via her phone. But she now needs to find a map to figure out where she is and how to get back to the base. She thinks about what had happened. She had been so afraid. She can barely remember her fear. She doesn’t know why she was afraid. She wasn’t in danger of dying. She wasn’t even in danger of harm. She is now back to her senses and feels ashamed for her irrational hysteria. She hopes Greesha doesn’t discover what she did. That would be even more embarrassing. She knows she can’t be far from the theater since she only recalls running for a few minutes. Though she doesn't actually know how long she has been running because she must have blacked out some time before she ran into the wall.

At the bus stop, she learns that she is on the opposite side of the city, 10 miles from where she had started running. Isuertal is shocked. She wonders just how long she was unconscious. Had she been hit by a car and driven this far? No, she didn’t have any injuries to show she had been hit by a car. Had she collapsed on the side of the freeway and been picked up? If so, why had she ran into a wall? Had she woken up and escaped? What happened? Even if she had managed to run the whole way in her unconscious state, how could she have navigated the streets while sleep-running? Why did she only hit a wall once after sleep-running for 10 miles? Or did she hit many walls and only wake up this once? How long has it been if she is 10 miles away? It doesn’t look like it’s been more than four hours, but could several days have passed? Could she have been running around for multiple days? She finds that unlikely, but nothing about this makes sense. Isuertal puts her hands in her pockets to get out money for the bus. That’s when she notices that the bead necklace she had collected from the theater is missing. She must have dropped it. She told herself that it wasn’t a big loss since whatever sentimental value the worthless necklace had for those cultists is lost because they’re all dead, killed by Incorporeals they brought into the world. But she can’t stop thinking about how the magnifying glass kept spelling out “beads.” An Incorporeal wanted her beads. And now it probably has them. She doesn’t think Incorporeals can do anything special with beads, but it scares her. The hellhounds had bead necklaces hanging from their teeth. And they had been stronger than any Incorporeal she had ever seen before.